Frieze Art Fair and other openings
It's Frieze week, which means that London's art world is in overdrive as a rush of exhibitions open at museums, galleries and one-off venues. But before we get on to that, there's the Frieze Art Fair itself (Regent's Park, NW1, to 17 Oct), where global galleries will be hoping to buck the recession and dazzle rich punters with work by their brightest stars. For the rest of us, there's a clutch of standout commissions. A gameshow-inspired offering from Spartacus Chetwynd, and Simon Fujiwara's archaeological dig staged within the fair, are highlights of the special projects. Talks boast the likes of Wolfgang Tillmans and Bridget Riley, while the music programme includes a candlelit performance by harpist Baby Dee (16 Oct).
Perhaps the most seismic cultural event this week though will be the unveiling of the latest Turbine Hall commission (Tate Modern, SE1, to 2 May). Famed for co-creating then practically disowning the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, what will Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, come up with for the Tate's cavernous central space?
Two more major shows opening include Lebanese artist Walid Raad (Whitechapel Gallery, E1, to 2 Jan) whose videos and photos explore conflict in the Middle East, and Move (Hayward Gallery, SE1, to 9 Jan), probing the relationship between art and dance.
The influx of big collectors is the cue for London's private galleries to stage big shows. Draws include the grand-dame of performance art, Marina Abramovic (Lisson, NW1, to 13 Nov); the ever-dotty work of Japanese art icon Yayoi Kusama (Victoria Miro, N1, to 13 Nov); and a posthumous show of Louise Bourgeois's late Fabric Works inaugurating Hauser & Wirth's new Savile Row space (W1, to 18 Dec). My must-see, though, is Christian Marclay's hotly anticipated video installation The Clock (White Cube Mason's Yard, SW1, to 13 Nov). Comprised entirely of sampled movie footage, it's a 24-hour journey around a clock face, minute-by-minute, clip-by-clip.
Away from the usual art beat, one of last autumn's most popular projects, The Museum Of Everything (NW1, to 24 Dec) is back with more outsider art. This time around Sir Peter Blake is presenting his collection of ephemera, from Elvis-branded condoms to Sonny Liston waxworks, alongside a Victorian marvel, Mr Potter's Museum Of Curiosities, marrying the cute with the macabre. One of Potter's present-day fans, Polly Morgan is giving her taxidermy-heavy work a pop-up group show, Hell's Half Acre (Old Vic Tunnels, SE1, to 17 Oct), which promises something hellish in the maze of tunnels beneath Waterloo station.
Finally, if you're seeking a soothing end to the art frenzy, Artangel is launching a constellation of sound installations, madrigals by Susan Philipsz in six City of London spaces (weekends only, to 2 Jan).
Skye Sherwin
Anselm Kiefer, Gateshead
Another strand of the Anthony d'Offay Artist Rooms touring programme, a collection of paintings, sculptures and installations showing the full range of one of the most dramatically expressive living artists. Anselm Kiefer's work is inseparable from the cultural and political history of his native Germany: his paintings here are embedded with charcoal, ash, rope and human hair. The sculptures are made from the dead weight of lead rather than the tactile radiance of traditional bronze. For some Kiefer lays it on just that bit too thick, but one cannot but admire the full range of his intrepid ambition. It's art that takes on the big bad themes: the impossible struggle for transcendence of the certainty of death.
BALTIC, to 16 Jan
Robert Clark
Lindsay Seers And Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Coventry
What an imaginatively apt pairing: video installation by Lindsay Seer set aside the Imaginary Prisons of 18th-century printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Dealing with the disappearance of her stepsister, Seers's work takes us on a journey mapped out by photographic clues and family reminiscences. Piranesi's moody etchings add a backdrop of almost apocalyptic paranoia. His architectural mazes, with their stark monochrome stairways leading nowhere and doors opening on to pits of ultimate darkness, build up an atmosphere of some Kafkaesque psycho-geographic nightmare.
Mead Gallery, to 11 Dec
RC
James Hugonin, Edinburgh
There was a time when a James Hugonin painting appeared from a distance to be a next-to-nothing abstraction. On closer inspection one became drawn in to a shimmering geometric expanse of almost whiteness. These days the grid-like elaboration of Hugonin's large canvases tends to be filled in with relatively saturated colour, yet the aesthetic amazement remains. Hugonin works on just one canvas each year, building up their composition of tiny brush marks so the accumulative effect tends to slow down the process of one's looking to a contemplative calm. One is reminded of the reflective serenity of the Quaker poet Basil Bunting, whose work Briggflatts was a key influence on Hugonin's thinking. While remaining uncompromisingly abstract, Hugonin's images are irresistibly charismatic.
Ingleby Gallery, to 20 Nov
RC
Peter Lanyon, St Ives
Peter Lanyon was the lone Cornishman of the St Ives school and his paintings and sculptures are rooted in the local landscape. Early canvases like 1946's The Yellow Runner turned the implicit dynamism of sweeping hills to an upbeat narrative of postwar rebirth. He sought creative sustenance in rural Italy, and on a trip to the States he encountered the likes of Mark Rothko. He would become a leading advocate of abstract expressionism in the UK, with his later works animated by lively brushstrokes executed with an almost casual verve.
Tate St Ives, Sat to 23 Jan
SS
