A 3-Dot List of London’s Frieze Week 2026

I am a list person… especially when I do art fair duty. Well, I did holiday duty in the northwest of Scotland and now I’m on art fair duty with the Frieze Week kicking off in London. I already had a boatload of reviews, previews, thoughts, feelings, ideas to share, but instead I wanted to turn this into a little 3-dot overview of some things I think you should know… so here we go…

Studio Lenca @ Frieze
In the Deutsche Bank lounges at the actual Frieze Art Fair is Issue 03 cover artist, Studio Lenca… this is a big deal for so many reasons, as Lenca as pretty much been on a tear over the last few years, creating works in both painting and sculpture that are about history and belonging, but this is also a bit of a homecoming for the El Salvadorean-born, Margate-based artist…

“For the installation at Frieze, I am suspending thirty handmade hammocks from El Salvador, each cradling heavy forms directly based on volcanic rocks,” Lenca told us in the cover story. “I wanted to bring these two Salvadoran icons together to map out a landscape of endurance. The softness and intimacy of the hammock contrasts directly with the immense pressure of the boulders. I wanted to construct a charged, suspended space that exists right between relaxation and overhead danger…”

Salman Toor @ The Courtauld
I booked tickets in advance for this one like a good art student would… Toor, like Louis Fratino, is at a particularly important level of male painters in figuration at the moment… timeless and classic, political and moving, Someone Like You is the first Europe solo for the Pakistan-born, NY-based artist… 

Khalif Tahir Thompson @ Victoria Miro Gallery
The Brooklyn-based painter gets a major solo at Miro… “Send in the Clowns is a love letter to my younger self, my journey as an artist, and Brooklyn,” he says. “It encompasses what I value in painting and how it allowed me to reflect on important experiences and honour the people I hold so dear…”

Louis Fratino @ David Zwirner
Let’s keep it New Yorkers invading London, and I have a lot I want to say about this show when I see it in person at Zwirner’s London space, but this quote just sums it up beautifully … “In our lived experiences, it can be painful to experience something that is so beautiful, but that you know is already ending..”

Nicole Eisenman @ Sadie Coles
Another one… NY in London! I don’t think I ever like to miss an Eisenman show, because they all have this fantastic ability to look fresh and new each time they show. This one feels like it's about time at Sadie Coles, in a moment where we all sort of want time to fly… I have time for this…

Robin F. Williams @ 9 Cork Street with PPOW
Need another Brooklyn artist in your London plans?... I sort of love this now… We podding about this one on Unibrow Radio, but in case you forgot… Robin has a show with PPOW in conjunction with Frieze… this show is about the impending forces of tech and AI into our creative lives through the lens of “low-brow, nitty-gritty, American stuff”...

Giorgos Ioannou @ The Hellenic Centre
Give me a big, bold Greek now… Ioannou is The Greek Pop Artist, and I haven’t seen a large collection of his works before but it looks like The Hellenic Centre has a vast collection of works from the 1960s and 70s… 

Celeste Rapone @ Josh Lilley
How We’re Doing this show says, asks, proclaims… and in Rapone’s way, it’s a surreal and magical way of showing us just how twisted and mixed up the soul really is in 2026… a good way to move us into the week…