7 Must-See Exhibitions During Frieze London
From Rick Owens and Michele Lamy’s ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ to Wolfgang Tillmans’ ‘Build From Here,’ check out these standout shows.
Frieze week has taken over London, pulling artists, collectors and casual art wanderers into a citywide orbit of openings, parties and late-night conversations. Beyond the fair tents in Regent’s Park, the programming spills across town as Rick Owens and Michele Lamy explore the poetry of decay in Rust Never Sleeps at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, while São Paulo’s Sonia Gomes brings warmth and memory to Pace with É preciso não ter medo de criar.
At White Cube, Cai Guo-Qiang ignites Gunpowder and Abstraction and Peter Doig transforms the Serpentine into a space of sound and stillness complete with custom towering speakers in House of Music. These are some of our favorite shows to check out in London this Frieze week.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s ‘Rust Never Sleeps’
Courtesy Of Carpenters Workshop Gallery
Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents Rust Never Sleeps, a new show by Rick Owens Furniture curated by Michele Lamy, running until February 14, 2026. Borrowing its name from Neil Young’s 1979 song, the exhibition treats rust as a symbol of strength and endurance, showing that what looks worn can still hold power. Highlights include the recycled elm “Antler Bed,” the rusted steel and graphite leather “Double Bubble,” the bronze “K Plug Table,” and the patinated steel “Pedalò Rust” with camel leather cushions. Together, the works show how decay can become renewal.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery
Ladbroke Hall
79 Barlby Rd
London, GB
Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s ‘Incantations’
Courtesy Of Kudzanai-Violet Hwami And Victoria Miro
Victoria Miro presents Incantations, a new exhibition by Kudzanai-Violet Hwami running until November 1, 2025. The show features new paintings, large photographic wall vinyls, and the artist’s first bronze sculptures. Centered on fragmentation, identity, and spirituality, Hwami explores how images and memory shape who we are in a digital world. Drawing from personal photos, mythology, and family history, her works act as visual spells that channel emotion, chaos, and transformation. The exhibition includes her Atom paintings, inspired by Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” where multiple canvases combine into intricate grids filled with overlapping imagery.
Victoria Miro
16 Wharf Rd,
London N1 7RW, GB
Wolfgang Tillmans’ Build From Here’
Courtesy Of Wolfgang Tillmans And Maureen Paley
Wolfgang Tillmans’s Build From Here runs through December 20, 2025, across Maureen Paley’s East London spaces. The exhibition marks the opening of the gallery’s new location, once Tillmans’s own London studio, and brings together new photographic works made with and without a camera, recent photocopies, and video pieces first shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Exploring how observation turns into creation, the show features works like Easter Passion (2007), a quiet reflection on his old studio, and new pieces made in a metalworking factory in his hometown of Remscheid.
Maureen Paley
Studio M, Rochelle School,
7 Playground Gardens,
London, GB
Sonia Gomes’s ‘É preciso não ter medo de criar’
Courtesy Of Sonia Gomes And Pace London
Sonia Gomes’s É preciso não ter medo de criar is now on view at Pace London until November 15, marking the São Paulo-based artist’s first solo show in the UK. Curated by Paulo Miyada, the exhibition features new works that expand on Gomes’s signature use of textiles, including pendants, torsions, and new sculptures in bronze, alongside paintings. The show coincides with the release of her new catalogue Assombrar o mundo com Beleza (I Haunt the World with Beauty). Known for transforming found fabrics and everyday materials like birdcages, driftwood, and wire into abstract forms, Gomes explores themes of ancestry, resilience and identity rooted in Afro-diasporic traditions.
Pace
5 Hanover Square
London W1S 1HQ, GB
Cai Guo-Qiang’s ‘Gunpowder and Abstraction’
Courtesy Of Cai Studio And White Cube
Running until November 9, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015–2025 marks his first London show in more than twenty years, featuring over thirty works that trace a decade of experimentation with gunpowder. The exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey explores how creation and destruction, control and chaos, and Eastern and Western ideas intersect through Cai’s explosive process. Beginning with his early experiments in 1980s Fujian, where he first ignited firecracker powder on canvas, the show highlights the evolution of his unique technique.
White Cube
144 – 152 Bermondsey Street
London, GB
‘Peter Doig: House of Music’ at Serpentine
Courtesy Of Peter Doig And Serpenting
Peter Doig: House of Music at Serpentine turns the gallery into a space for listening, gathering, and reflection. The show brings together new paintings with restored vintage speakers playing music from Doig’s personal record and tape collection. Many of the works draw from his years in Trinidad, where sound-system culture and cinema shaped his connection to music. At the center is a rare 1930s sound system revived with audio expert Laurence Passera, offering an intimate way to experience sound and image together. The title references the song Dat Soca Boat by Trinidadian musician Shadow, whose portrait appears in the show. On Sundays, “Sound Service” sessions invite artists like Ed Ruscha, Duval Timothy and others to share music live.
Serpentine South Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA, GB
Tom Sachs’ ‘A Good Shelf’
Courtesy Of Tom Sachs And Thaddaeus Ropac
Running until December 20, Tom Sachs: A Good Shelf at Thaddaeus Ropac London brings together thirty of the New York artist’s hand-formed ceramics displayed on shelves built from found materials, alongside Mezcaleria, a working coffee and mezcal bar. The show merges Sachs’s signature bricolage style with his decade-long ceramics practice, exploring ritual, process, and everyday function. The pieces on view range from mezcal cups to cereal bowls, inspired by the traditional Japanese chawan. Sachs first began making NASA-logo chawans after his 2012 Space Program: Mars project, where he reimagined a tea ceremony on Mars. Over the years, he’s continued refining the form and A Good Shelf marks the first European exhibition dedicated entirely to these ceramic works.
Ely House
Dianne Way, London
Barnet EN4 9RY, GB
