Pilar Corrias
Every October, the art world travels to London for a week-long celebration of arts and culture in the city. It’s a particularly buzzy time for the gallery, with our two Mayfair spaces welcoming curators, collectors, critics and artists from across the globe.
This year, we’re opening a new exhibition by Sabine Moritz, with a private view on October 14 at our Conduit Street space. The show brings together all-new paintings and works on paper, marking the first time Sabine has united two strands of her practice—abstraction and figuration—that have long stood apart. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries and a long-time admirer of Sabine’s work, will join her in conversation at the opening, followed by a party in one of Mayfair’s chicest bars.
The following day, October 15, Frieze opens. I’m lucky to live walking distance from the Regent’s Park, so my route to the fair will be an autumn stroll and a brief moment of calm before a hectic few hours bumping into friends in the aisles.
Frieze Week is always a whirlwind of exhibitions, events and dinners. One of my favourites and an ideal spot to recover from the day’s events, is the ever-classic J Sheekey, one of London’s oldest and best seafood restaurants - the oysters are incredible!
Later in the week, on October 16 at our Savile Row space, Manuel Mathieu will appear in conversation with Zoé Whitley, one of the city’s leading curatorial voices. The talk coincides with Manuel’s exhibition Bury Your Masters. This is our second exhibition with Manuel; in the interim he’s presented institutional shows and public commissions, his next show opens at PHI in Montreal on October 22.
And as the week draws to a close, just as things begin to quiet in London, I’ll head to Paris for Art Basel at the Grand Palais, to do it all over again.
- Pilar Corrias
Food: The Hart
Credit: Instagram
This month, Marylebone will finally get the pub it’s been whispering about for weeks, The Hart, sauntering in with all the subtlety of a brass band at a funeral. Nestled proudly on the corner of Chiltern Street and Blandford Street, this is no soul-less gastropub because downstairs, you’ll be welcomed by stained glass and Victorian partition screens into a realm of pork scratchings, chicken liver toast and pork pies. Upstairs you’ll find cosy dining rooms with hand-aged panelling, scalloped banquettes, gas fires and a menu that resurrects our nostalgic British comfort hitters (bubble & squeak, steak & potatoes,crab cakes, banoffee pie) with unapologetic gusto. Run by the Public House Group, the folks behind The Pelican and The Hero, The Hart promises to be a love letter to tradition, all in one cosy, slightly rowdy, beery hug. Stay tuned to their website and/or Insta for updates on the official opening in October.
Exhibition: Lee Miller: Retrospective at Tate Britain
Credit: Lee Miller Archives
Opening on the 2nd October, the Lee Miller: Retrospective at Tate Britain, is the UK’s largest ever celebration of a woman who refused to be boxed in. She was a model, Surrealist, fashion photographer, war correspondent and all-round rule-breaker. With around 250 works, including rarely seen prints, the show sweeps from her Paris days with Man Ray and the birth of solarisation to Vogue commissions, through to her harrowing frontline images of WWII and that unforgettable shot of herself in Hitler’s bathtub. It’s not a neat timeline so much as a jolt: a reminder that Miller’s photography straddled glamour and devastation, wit and brutality, making her vision as magnetic and unsettling today as it was in her own turbulent century.
Festival: Peckham Digital / Festival of Creative Computing
Credit: Instagram
Peckham Digital’s Festival of Creative Computing runs from the 16th to 19th October at Copeland Gallery and is your annual excuse to geek out in the best possible way. It’s a four-day mashup of workshops, artist talks, live coding, audiovisual performances, demos, meet ups and an exhibition of interactive digital art. Expect sessions like “Building Interactive Animations with TouchDesigner” (Sat 10:30 am), a hands-on crash course in visual coding, “Intro to Quantum Computing for Creatives” (Sat 3:30 pm), which dares to combine Schrödinger’s cat with glitch art. There’s also Photo Fakery (Thu 5:30 pm), exploring digital image manipulations and Portrait Painter Robot demos (Sat & Sun afternoons) which toy with automation as an artistic tool. It’s a great event no matter if you’re a curious newcomer or someone who eats algorithms for breakfast. There are entry points for all, many events are free or low-cost. It’s a festival built on community, open source culture and the messy power at the intersection of art and tech, so don’t expect polished showpieces, expect provocations, experiments, and surprises. With the world turning more digital by the nanosecond, perhaps it’s high time we all started playing with it a little more don't you think?
Bar: Amazing Grace, Canary Wharf
Credit: Amazing Grace LDN
Amazing Grace in Canary Wharf will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about Docklands nightlife. Spread across a vast new site at 12 Bank Street, it’s part live-music temple, part cocktail playground and part rooftop escape, with views that demand you stay for at least a second drink. The team behind the hugely popular London Bridge spot are bringing their trademark mix of boundary-pushing entertainment and bold food and drink into the heart of the Wharf, which means you can expect a nightly programme that runs the gamut from gospel choirs to DJs, cabaret to up-and-coming bands. The menu is Asian-inspired, designed for sharing and snacking between sets, while the bar isn’t shy about experimenting. We’re talking colourful cocktails as dramatic as the performers on stage. And then there’s the private terrace: a rare, open-air perch where you can soak up the Canary Wharf skyline and watch the whole district buzzing below. In short, it’s not just another bar or music venue, it’s the proof that Canary Wharf can finally play as hard as it works.
Event: Grand Sumo Tournament at Royal Albert Hall
Credit: Japan Sumo Association
The Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall from the 15th to the 19th October, is not your average sporting event but in fact a five-day blast of ritual, raw power and spectacle in the heart of Victorian London. For the first time in 34 years, elite Japanese sumo wrestlers will descend on Kensington Gore to compete in a full “basho” which includes matches, sacred ceremonies, ring-entrance rituals and all. Imagine the Royal Albert Hall transformed: a raised clay and sand dohyō, a Shinto-style roof hovering overhead, spectators seated close, and every clash echoing with centuries of tradition. Silk aprons, salt-throwing rituals, the swirl of foot stomps and then boom….a wrestler is out, the crowd gasps, energy surges. Add onto this excitement lectures and demonstrations around the event (hairdressers, referees and ring builders will be opening their doors) and you’ve got a cultural deep dive as well as a fight night. This really is something like you haven’t seen before because this is one of the rare times that sumo wrestling is held outside Japan. Aren’t we lucky!
Art: Gilbert & George, 21st Century Pictures
Credit: Gilbert and George 2020
With 21st Century Pictures, Gilbert & George return to the Hayward Gallery in full technicolour attack mode, ready to jolt London out of its comfort zone. Sixty-plus enormous panels tower over you, a cacophony of colour, text and twisted imagery that takes on everything from politics and class to death, sex and the odd London street corner. The duo aren’t mellowing with age, as expected. If anything, the new works, including their freshly unveiled Screw Pictures, show them doubling down on the absurd, the grotesque and the darkly funny. Tickets are £20 (with concessions available), but what you’re really buying is the chance to get swallowed up in their uncompromising vision of the 21st century, where beauty and filth jostle for space and nothing is ever neutral. This exhibition opens 7th October and runs until January.
Theatre: Othello
Credit: Instagram
From the 23rd October to 17th January 2026, Shakespeare’s most searing tragedy takes over the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Othello, and it’s shaping up to be a heavyweight production. David Harewood steps back into the title role with magnetic intensity, matched against Toby Jones as a sly, unsettling Iago and Caitlin FitzGerald as a luminous Desdemona. Directed by Tom Morris, with original live music by PJ Harvey adding grit and atmosphere, this staging leans hard into themes of jealousy, race and corrosive manipulation, making the play feel blisteringly current. Running at just under three hours with an interval, it’s not a light evening out, but it’s one designed to leave a mark. Tickets start around £25 and climb into the higher brackets for prime seats, but given the cast and creative team, this is one of those nights at the theatre that earns every pound.
Art: Peter Doig, House of Music
Credit: Peter Doig
If you were wondering how to feel a painting, not just look at it, then Peter Doig: House of Music at Serpentine South (from the 10th October to the 8th February) is your jam. Doig is turning the gallery into a listening chamber as well as a visual one: his new and recent canvases are paired with carefully chosen tracks from his own vinyl and cassette archive, played through rare, restored analogue cinema speakers that anchor sound as sculpture. Some works depict dance, music halls or communal listening spaces; others reflect the rhythms and atmospheres of Trinidad, a place that deeply shaped his relationship to sound and image. On Sundays, the show shifts into a live mode with Sound Service sessions where guest musicians and collectors spin selections in front of audiences, turning the exhibition into a social and sonic experiment. Best bit: it’s free, though you’ll want to book a timed slot so you don’t miss your moment in this hybrid art + audio world.
Craft: Knit & Stitch
Credit: Knit and Stitch Show
Every autumn, The Knitting & Stitching Show, now known as Knit & Stitch, turns Alexandra Palace into a giant playground for anyone even vaguely obsessed with fibre, fabric or the satisfying click of needles. It’s part mega-market, part hands-on school, part art gallery. First you find yourself stocking up on indie-dyed yarns or rare embroidery threads, then next you’re in a workshop learning sashiko or macramé, before you are suddenly gawping at large-scale textile installations that belong in a museum. The vibe is buzzy, welcoming and just the right amount of chaotic with thousands of makers geeking out over skeins, stitches and shiny new tools. It’s just all very therapeutic and the best creative outlet so it truly is a very inspiring, slightly addictive day out.
Charity of the Month: Streets of London
Credit: Streets of London
Streets of London is hosting its Sleep-Out 2025 on the 10th October in central London, a one-night solidarity event where participants give up the comfort of a bed to experience (in a minimal way) the harshness of sleeping rough, while raising funds for homelessness services across the city. The money raised helps fund immediate relief such as meals, shelter and outreach as well as longer-term support for people to move off the streets for good. What’s striking is how the act is both symbolic and practical: people who probably take decent sleep for granted literally lie down for a cause. It’s an evocative way to connect with a crisis that’s become so normalised in London that many of us barely see it anymore.