What’s on our radar this October? La Fomo has curated a list of the top art exhibitions opening this month that we’re excited about—and you won’t want to miss them.
TATE MODERN
Southwark I 3 October to 9 March
From the late 1970s to 2012, experimental artist Mike Kelley made a diverse body of work using drawing, collage, performance, found objects, and video. Drawing on references from popular and underground culture, literature, and philosophy, Kelley explores how the roles we play in society are entangled with historical fact and imaginary characters from the films and images we consume.
DES BAINS
Great Portland Street I 3 October to 14 November
Muñoz's practice, which is well-known for its engagement with the macabre, goth culture, death, horror subcultures, and parody, is also infused with Latin American pop cultural imagery. The "tropical gothic", parasitic through the entirity of his practice, serves as an appropriation of im-ported Western visual cultures, blending them within a cliché-like Latin American landscape.
FASHION AND TEXTILE MUSEUM
Bermondsey I 4 October to 9 March
Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London exhibition centres around the legendary nightclub Taboo, opened by designer and performance artist Leigh Bowery in 1985. Displaying original garments and accessories from Leigh Bowery and over thirty designers, including custom-made pieces from private collections and rare pieces from designers such as John Galliano, John Flett, Stephen Linard and Dean Bright amongst others, plus photography, film and artworks, the exhibition focuses on this vibrant alternative arena where the anarchic energy of the night spilt over into experimental creativity by day.
SOMERSET HOUSE
Temple I 11 October to 19 January
Curated by artist, filmmaker and co-founder of rukus! Federation, Topher Campbell, the exhibition explores Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans creativity, activism, community and pride through over 200 objects including archive materials, contemporary artworks and brand-new commissions, celebrating the work of Black LGBTQIA+ pioneers and artists since the 1970s.
OSCAR MURILLO: A BALANCING ACT BETWEEN COLLAPSE AND SPIRIT
DAVID ZWIRNER
Temple I From 9 October
Oscar Murillo is known for an inventive and itinerant practice that encompasses paintings, works on paper, sculptures, installations, actions, live events, collaborative projects, and videos. Taken as a whole, his body of work demonstrates a sustained emphasis on the notion of cultural exchange and the multiple ways in which ideas, languages, and even everyday items are displaced, circulated, and increasingly intermingled.
Join on 10 October at 18:30 for a conversation with Oscar Murillo and Fi Churchman, presented by David Zwirner and ArtReview. RSVP here.
HAUSER & WIRTH
Soho I 7 October to 21 December
Emerging as a leading figure of the new generation of painters, George Rouy’s debut solo exhibition will feature a new body of work continuing his inquiry into collective mass, multiplicities and movement and human modes of existence. Rouy’s dynamic and signature use of the human figure, vexed with desire, alienation and crisis, speaks to the emotional extremities of our time, resulting in explorations of identity in a globalised, technologically driven 21st Century.
CAMDEN ART CENTRE
Camden I 4 October to 29 December
O’Brien describes the objects and materials he incorporates in his work as “eloquent texts” that encode cultural and historical meaning. Manipulating them by twisting, binding, stretching or puncturing feels charged with the erotic and probes at taboo, fetish and the commodification of queer aesthetics. His signature gesture of tightly wrapping objects with industrial polythene submits them to a kind of restraint that accentuates their outer form whilst withholding full legibility, pushing towards abstraction.
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Leicester Square I 10 October to 19 January
Featuring more than 55 works from the 1950s onwards, this exhibition will explore Francis Bacon’s deep connection to portraiture and how he challenged traditional definitions of the genre.
From his responses to portraiture by earlier artists, to large-scale paintings memorialising lost lovers, works from private and public collections will showcase Bacon’s life story.
THADDAEUS ROPAC
Mayfair I 8 October to 9 November
Seoul-based artist Heemin Chung presents a new body of paintings, sculptures and video. The artist employs her signature use of gel medium to create textured canvases that reimagine the conventions of the traditional form. She is inspired by the objects that she encounters on the streets of Seoul: from manmade urban detritus to elements belonging to the natural world. Sourcing digital images of similar objects, she addresses the process of material loss that occurs when these three-dimensional forms are flattened into two-dimensional data.
GATHERING LONDON
Oxford Circus I 4 October to 9 November
Through monumental paintings that stretch across the exhibition space, inhabiting the gallery like skins peeling off the walls, and a sculpture that extends from one floor to another, Mynerva seeks, as they express, “a personal writing of HIV in my body,” to “name where I am and where I am not, in the dimensions of mental and physical space.” This theme becomes the core of their artistic exploration, which sees the presence of the virus transformed into a language, and the body into a platform that reveals illness, but also uncovers the political and social tensions shaping the experience of disease and its mental and social repercussions.