Frieze Focus places emerging artists centre stage

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Frieze’s Focus section, which spotlights young galleries, is back, this time with a new placement near the entrance of the fair. Frieze London director Eva Langret describes it as “an essential starting point for visitors” and “a glimpse into the future of contemporary art”. This edition’s outlook is particularly international, featuring artists from 21 countries, many of whom offer bold takes on sculpture and installation.

Among them is Hannah Morgan, who creates biomorphic alabaster carvings that she calls “creatures”. South London gallery Xxijra Hii presents these together with her steel frames, clay vessels and soundscapes in an installation that aims to draw visitors into the subterranean world where alabaster is formed.

Lighter materials can be found in the “The Birds” by Danish artist Benedikte Bjerre. She fills the booth of Copenhagen gallery Palace Enterprise with an army of baby penguins (actually helium-filled balloons), whose cute appearance masks sharp critiques of capitalism and climate change. New York-based artist David L Johnson, meanwhile, considers the plight of his home city’s feral cats, placing a prefabricated cat shelter in the middle of the booth hosted by Berlin gallery Noah Klink to highlight the consequences of unfettered urban development.

Other artists also reflect on our built environment. At Warsaw-based Wschód’s booth, the intricate tableaux of Canadian artist Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw ponder how civic architecture connects to memory and nostalgia. Using industrial materials such as MDF and wood filler, his wall-based works depict details of buildings and urban spaces that intrigue with their strange familiarity. Similarly, street signage and city spaces are the sources for British artist Georgina Hill’s alluring stained-glass light boxes, which illuminate London gallery South Parade’s booth.

Florence Carr focuses more on domestic interiors, referencing everyday materials such as wallpaper and upholstery fabric in abstract assemblages that unsettle our sense of the ordinary. In her latest work, the British artist turns 1950s tissue-box covers into steel sculptures hung directly on the wall of Parisian gallery Petrine’s booth. Elsewhere, London-based Eva Gold transforms Rose Easton’s space into a cinematic living room to explore themes of voyeurism and danger, and Shoreditch’s Nicoletti presents striking ceramic horns by Togolese-British artist Divine Southgate-Smith, which reflect her research into African domestic sculpture.

Several works push the boundaries of materials and space. Toronto’s Franz Kaka gallery presents an installation by Canadian-Korean artist Lotus L Kang; it builds on her piece for this year’s Whitney Biennial, which featured hung sheets of light-sensitive photographic film that changed colour throughout its display, forming a hypnotic record of their environment. Meanwhile, Madrid/Havana gallery El Apartamento brings the latest minimalist sculptures by Spanish artistic duo Fuentesal Arenillas (Julia Fuentesal and Pablo M Arenillas); work such as “Comisura X” (2024), made from wood and rope, blurs the lines between representation and abstraction while challenging the conventions of traditional sculpture.

It’s clear that Focus remains a pivotal experimental wing for the wider fair. “By championing these voices, the fair helps to diversify the market, making space for risk-taking,” says Langret. “It reinforces the importance of supporting younger galleries as essential contributors to the evolving art ecosystem.”

October 9-13, frieze.com