If you missed your opportunity to gain entry to Frieze London or Frieze Masters this year, fear not. The city is teeming with art openings and exhibitions that might possibly (dare we say it) outshine the annual Regents Park fair. While parading the hallowed corridors of Frieze London is always an exhilarating viewing experience, London has so much visual art to offer beyond the densely populated, white-walled booths of the fair. 

From Kerry James Marshall’s unanimously adored solo show at The Royal Academy, to the debut of the women-led art fair Echo Soho, and Arthur Jafa at Sadie Coles, October is jam-packed with noteworthy exhibitions by exceptional artists from all across the world. We’ve gathered a list of what’s worth seeing in London this week, so you don’t have to do your research (you’re welcome). 

1-54 ART FAIR, SOMERSET HOUSE

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to Somerset House for its 13th consecutive year. The leading international art fair dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, 1-54 London 2025 assembles some 50 international exhibitors, based across 13 countries, the majority of which are from the African continent and work with artists from the Global South. Artists on display this year work across a myriad of mediums from painting, photography and sculpture, performance to mixed media, textiles and ceramics. Renowned artists such as Hassan Hajjaj, Ibrahim El Salehi, Lakwena Maciver and Seydou Keita will be exhibited alongside young and emerging talents, including Joël Bigaignon, Zenaéca Singh, Khadija El Abyad and Afeez Onakoya. Look out for the exiled Sudanese artist and photographer Hashim Nasr, whose surreal photographs grapple with the ongoing conflict in his home country. 

1-54 Art Fair, 16–19 October 2025, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA.

PARADIGM SHIFT, 180 STUDIOS

Signifying a fundamental change in our assumptions, the title of the major group show Paradigm Shift indicates a new way of seeing. This month, 180 Studios unveils the landmark exhibition that transforms the moving image into an immersive landscape of style, sound and identity. Curated by Dazed co-founder and CEO Jefferson Hack and Mark Wadhwa, the show brings together moving-image works from the 1970s to the present day, featuring a wealth of avant-garde names: Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, Arthur Jafa, Pipilotti Rist, Mark Leckey, Martine Syms, Derek Jarman, Dara Birnbaum, Julianknxx, Sophia Al-Maria, Foday Dumbuya, Ryan Trecartin, Josèfa Ntjam, Tremaine Emory, Cao Fei, Meriem Bennani, and Telfar TV. This is a show about the revolutionary impact of technology and moving image culture. 

Paradigm Shift is running until  21 December at 180 Studios, 180 The Strand. London, WC2R 1EA.

ECHO SOHO

This October marks the debut of Echo Soho, a new art fair exclusively for women-led galleries. Conceived by India Rose James, Founder and Director of the gallery Soho Revue, the fair spotlights a new generation of female-led galleries shaping the future of London’s art scene, with names such as: Alice Black, Alice Amati, AWITA, Berntson Bhattacharjee, Gillian Jason Gallery, House of Bandits, LAMB, Liminal Gallery, Lizzie Glendinning, Pipeline, Wilder, Wondering People. 

From intimate paintings, sculptural installations, to photography, Echo Soho celebrates the breadth of contemporary practice shaped by women-led voices across art and design. Look out for work by Giulia Grillo, aka Petitie Doll, whose surrealist work spans photography, video and digital art, as well as the 70s-inspired photography of Rachel Fleminger Hudson, whose meticulously curated photographs capture cultural and fashion nostalgia. 

Echo Soho is running from 16-19 October at Artists House, 14 Manette Street, Soho, W1D 4AW.

MINOR ATTRACTIONS

Co-founded by Jonny Tanna and Jacob Barnes, Minor Attractions returns to The Mandrake in Fitzrovia this year for its third edition, bringing together 70 international galleries. Blending contemporary art with performance and nightlife, the collaborative exhibition, which bills itself as “not an art fair”, is credited with bringing a DIY spirit to Frieze week, especially due to its unconventional approach to curating and focus on emerging artists. Spread over 15 hotel rooms, and with a programme spanning film, sound, and performance arts, the visiting experience has been compared to visiting someone’s home, or more appropriately, hotel room – works are even hung in the hotel room bathrooms. A strong contrast to the booths of Frieze, Minor Attractions transforms the art viewing experience into something a little more playful, warm and decadent. 

Minor Attractions runs until 18 October at the Mandrake Hotel, 20-21 Newman St, London W1T 1PG.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, ROYAL ACADEMY 

Guaranteed to be one of the best shows in town, The Royal Academy of Arts has opened Europe’s largest survey of the American artist and Royal Academician, Kerry James Marshall. Born in Alabama in 1955, the artist is widely considered one of the leading painters today, offering a fresh perspective on the history of Black oppression and erasure. His technical mastery and highly executed large-scale paintings explore historical narratives referring to the Middle Passage, the legacies of the Civil Rights and the struggles of Black Power movements, much of which unfolded in the heart of his native Alabama. This landmark exhibition explores Marshall’s expansive career to date, bringing together over 70 works in the mediums of painting, prints, drawing and sculpture, including a new body of paintings made in his trademark style which render Black subjects in vivid, luminous black tones. This is an unmissable one. 

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories runs at the Royal Academy until 18 January 2026.

EVA HELENE PADE, THADDAEUS ROPAC

The rising star Eva Helene Pade is a Danish painter who only graduated from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2024. This month she’ll be exhibiting new, large-scale works for her debut show at Thaddaeus Ropac, titled Søgelys, translating into ‘searchlight’ or ‘spotlight’ in Danish – a recurring visual motif in her raw, unvarnished canvases. Carnivalesque and alluringly primal, her figurative works, bathed in dusky, golden light, capture the heady atmosphere of a nightclub. They pay homage to the art historical tradition of depicting crowds in psychologically-charged, urban spaces, from the likes of Éduouard Manet and Toulouse Lautrec. Following her major solo show at Denmark’s Arken Museum of Modern Art, this new body of work also centres on elusive female figures in mysterious, liminal places between the real and imaginary.

Søgelys runs until 22 November 2025 at Thaddaeus Ropac Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NJ.

JENNIE BAPTISTE, SOMERSET HOUSE

The first solo show of the Black British photographer Jennie Baptiste is on display at Somerset House this month. Born to St. Lucian parents who migrated to London in the 1960s, Baptiste’s practice is informed by the perspectives of growing up among the Windrush generations, hip hop, ragga, dance hall and Black youth culture and fashion in London. The exhibition spotlights particular series that contemplate the Black British identity, including shots from Brixton Boyz produced in the late 90s and early 2000s, to her portraits of hip hop and RnB stars, such as Nas, Roots Manuva, Estelle and south London rapper Ty who tragically died during the COVID crisis in 2020. “I hope that my photography inspires others to embrace their individuality and the power of their creative voice” Baptiste says. 

Jennie Baptise: Rhythm & Roots runs from 17 Oct 2025 until 4 Jan 2026 at Somerset House, Terrace Rooms.

ARTHUR JAFA, SADIE COLES

For his debut at Sadies Coles HQ, the renowned, Los-Angeles-based filmmaker and artist will present two new moving image works alongside paintings, silkscreen works and cutouts. Known for his deep engagement with cultural theory and compiling archival imagery that celebrates and catalogues a Black visual vocabulary, Jafa’s practice pays allegiance to Black lives, histories and narratives. His multidisciplinary work captures the emotional and political complexity of Black life in 21st-century America. This show significantly exhibits Jafa’s paintings in conjunction with his photographic and film work for the first time. 

Arthur Jafa: GLAS NEGUS SUPREME runs until 20 December 2025 at Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly Street, London, W1B 5QN.

MORGAN QUAINTANCE, CHELSEA SPACE

Nominated for this year’s Film London Jarman Award, the British writer, musician and artist Morgan Quaintance is set to unveil his debut exhibition at the Chelsea Space this month. The London-based artist’s show assembles photographic and moving image work, alongside text and archival material, with a conceptual, curatorial approach that takes inspiration from the idea of a zine. ‘Often exhibitions are fielded as some form of essayistic text or series of serious propositions’ he explains. ‘But I wanted to use the more anarchistic, free-associative and energetic logic of zines to help me devise placement, juxtaposition and design.' Centred on themes of belonging and alienation, a highlight of the exhibition is the 16mm to digital film Available Light (2024), in which the artist interviewed workers in a Tokyo museum and juxtaposed the footage against interviews with London renters to make a commentary upon the lived experience of urban, contemporary life.

Morgan Quaintance: Available Light, Chelsea Space until Friday 12 December 2025.

KUDZANAI-VIOLET HWAMI, VICTORIA MIRO

The Zimbabwean, UK-based artist Kudzanai-Violet Hwami presents a new series of paintings at Victoria Miro this month. Conceived in dialogue with the artist’s photography and never-before-seen bronze sculptures, this show marks the artist’s first experimentation with three-dimensional work. Keeping in the theme of the title Incantations, these seductive and spellbinding works draw from an array of sources: family photographs, religious and mythological narratives. In the manner of collage, the artist plays with visual fragmentation as visual and metaphorical gesture. “I’ve tried to keep the idea of fragmentation at the forefront,” Hwami explains. “It is all rooted in rapture, not distraction. A breakdown of inherited systems: religion, identity, gender and the body.” 

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami: Incantations until 1 November 2025 at Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW.

VICTOR MAN, DAVID ZWIRNER

The striking and uncanny portraits of Romanian artist Victor Man are currently on display at David Zwirner. The Rome-based artist adopts an unconventional, nocturnal palette which bathes his figures in a deathly, cold, blue-ish, green light. Symbolically rich and psychologically-loaded with a sense of foreboding, Man’s distinctive approach to painting echoes the iconography of early Christian with Gothic overtones, and with a refreshingly contemporary twist. The strange romanticism of his figures alludes to literary references and points to religious motifs, the Pietà or the Lamentation. Don’t miss the opportunity to see these unique and evocative works in the flesh before the show closes at the end of October. 

The Absence That We Are is running until October 31, 2025, at David Zwirner.

JOY GREGORY, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY

Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey is the first major survey show of the British-Jamaican artist, Joy Gregory, who has worked with photography and related mediums since the 1980s. The show brings over 250 photographic and moving image works together, many of which probe into the themes of history, race, colonialism, gender and beauty norms, especially in the context of the UK’s cultural and art history. Gregory’s work has always been rooted in political and social commentary, but also draws attention to the traditions and materiality of photography itself. The title of the Whitechapel show derives from a proverb often used by her mother, “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar”, meaning it is easier to get what you want by being sweet rather than sharp or rude – an explanation (perhaps) for her sensuous approach to image making. 

Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey is running until 1 March 2026 at Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Lydia Figes, writer and author of Survival Notes: Life Lessons from Contemporary Artists