West, London
Group Exhibition
Three Exhibitions
Frieze No.9 Cork StreetJames Cohan presents Christopher Myers: I Dare Not Appear Commonwealth and Council presents Danielle Dean, Nikita Gale, P. Staff, and EJ Hill: Give Up Proyectos Ultravioleta presents Elisabeth Wild and Vivian Suter: Nina’s Wishbone No.9 Cork Street, Frieze’s major new initiative in the historic heart of Mayfair in London, opens with exciting exhibitions from James Cohan, Commonwealth and Council, and Proyectos Ultravioleta. New York-based gallery James Cohan presents ‘I Dare Not Appear,’ a solo exhibition of new work by Christopher Myers. ‘I Dare Not Appear’ brings together new applique textile works with a collection of historical letters written by Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a young Egbado girl bequeathed to Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy in 1850. Raised at the interstices of global imaginaries of race, class, and colonialism, Forbes Bonetta’s life serves as an apt illustration of the conceptual knots of Victorian England: an era characterised by a mindset that could simultaneously trample the world in colonial endeavour and see itself as civilising souls like Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Seven of Forbes Bonetta’s letters from the collection of the artist’s family will be exhibited for the first time, offering an intimate counterpoint to the large-scale tapestries created by Myers. Commonwealth and Council debuts new works by artists Danielle Dean, Nikita Gale, P. Staff, and EJ Hill. Spanning diverse practices including time-based media, sculpture and installation, these four artists examine the implications of being a marginalised body in an entangled ecosystem of market economy, neoliberal politics, and mass media, revealing the invisible and silenced labour, speech, and self-assertion of identity. Highlights from the presentation include: a series of new sculptures by P. Staff expanding on their installation On Venus exhibited at London's Serpentine in 2019; a new body of work by EJ Hill inspired by his upcoming presentation at Prospect 5, New Orleans. Also on view, an ongoing body of work from Danielle Dean investigating the nature of labour and its fungibility under capitalism through a series of lush landscape paintings; Nikita Gale's Ruiners sculpture series, which explores ideas of silencing and obfuscation, and features steel armatures which recall bannisters or barricades: structures that alternately congregate and divide people. Proyectos Ultravioleta shows a joint exhibition by mother-daughter artists Elisabeth Wild and Vivian Suter. The presentation sees Suter's characteristically vibrant unstretched canvases hung freely in a way that evokes the lush greenery surrounding her house and studio in Lake Atitlán (Guatemala), alongside a selection of Wild's lapidary collages, composed of magazine cutouts. The show is the artists' second joint display in London, after being awarded the Focus Stand Prize for Proyectos Ultravioleta's booth at Frieze London 2016.