Although it feels like Fashion Week’s only just finished, now it’s the art crowd’s turn to take over London’s streets, parks and pubs from dawn to dusk. Everyone’s in town for Frieze Art Fair and you’re very welcome there, too – but if you’re unwilling to splash out on a £33 day ticket, here are five other amazing exhibitions that you can visit for free.
Frieze’s Sculpture Park
While its art fair costs a lot, Frieze’s calming Sculpture Park is free for anyone to walk around. Set among the autumnal trees and cascading waterfalls of Regent’s Park’s English Gardens, it showcases 20 sculptures, ranging from the classical to the contemporary, in an open-air environment where ducks can waddle over them and squirrels can store nuts under them. This year’s artists include George Condo, who painted Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album cover and also customised Kim’s Hermès bag; KAWS, who recently flew a 40ft-long cartoon inflatable above the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; and Yayoi Kusama, the 85-year-old Japanese lady who collaborated with Louis Vuitton and covered all of its stores in polka dots.
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Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin at Zabludowicz Collection
Having taken over an old chapel in Chalk Farm and converted it into a gallery, the Zabludowicz Collection is now hosting Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin’s first solo show in the UK. These two artists from Los Angeles have created an immersive – and very weird – world that you could happily lose yourself in for hours, so why not slump into a bean-bag in one of their sculptural movie theatres and watch their strange, chaotic sitcoms for as long as you dare?
Lorenzo Vitturi at the Photographers’ Gallery
Hidden down a secret alley just off Oxford Street, the Photographers’ Gallery is an architecturally striking space arranged over many levels. At the moment its top floor is full of colourful sculptures and vibrant photographs that Lorenzo Vitturi has taken at Ridley Road Market: a street in Dalston renowned for its strange treasures and exotic stalls. So if you’d like to see pigs trotters, hair dyes and giant snails transformed into art, well this is the exhibition for you.
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd at Studio Voltaire
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd changes her name a lot, lives in a nudist commune in south-east London, and dreams up magical performances and films full of home-made props and costumes. Inside her Turner Prize exhibition space at Tate Britain she had a cast of dancing forest folk and a puppet-oracle that pulled strangers out of the audience and told them a secret. They told me, “All your friends laugh at you when you’re not around.” Whatever she does it’s always excellent, and this weekend Marvin Gaye’s premiering a detective drama starring a giant frog at Studio Voltaire in Clapham.
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Smiljan Radić at Serpentine Gallery
Finally, the Serpentine’s summer pavilion in Hyde Park is always worth a visit. Every year it’s designed by someone different and this time it’s Chilean architect Smiljan Radić, who’s created a massive squashed pumpkin of a space, which sits on quarry stones and glows with soft amber light. Inside there’s a coffee shop to enjoy all week long, after which it will be dismantled and taken away forever.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.