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Frieze London 2025
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Frieze London diary: a boozy gallery bar, head-turning headlines and talking mice

Plus: artworks with ectoplasm

The Art Newspaper
14 October 2025
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Enjoy a boozy beverage at Thaddaeus Ropac this week, as part of Tom Sachs’s solo exhibition

Enjoy a boozy beverage at Thaddaeus Ropac this week, as part of Tom Sachs’s solo exhibition

Make way for Mezcal

Visitors to Thaddaeus Ropac gallery during Frieze week can expect a caffeined, boozy boost thanks to the artist Tom Sachs, who has set up a working coffee and mezcal bar during his show A Good Shelf (until 20 December). “It is high-quality coffee. I have one a day but maybe today I need two. It is a whole ritual,” Sachs says. “The mezcal is 43% so it’s not that powerful. What’s dangerous is that it goes down easy, so watch out!” Sachs is showing a selection of 30 ceramics inspired by chawan (Japanese tea bowls), which are artfully displayed on shelves built from found materials. “Every morning before I let the electronic world come in, I touch clay between the subconscious state of dreams and the liminal state of waking up,” says Sachs, who usually wakes at 5am. “I try to exist for a few moments before language.” The rest of us mere mortals just settle for a cup of coffee at that time.

Art hits the headlines at satellite fair

The performance artist Artist Taxi Driver plastered one-liners over the UK newspaper Daily Mail

One of the art world’s most entertaining and likeable provocateurs, Artist Taxi Driver, is showing racy works at Minor Attractions, an art-selling event held in the Mandrake hotel in Fitzrovia. The taxi man is none other than Mark McGowan, a minicab driver whose performance art pieces are part of art world legend—who else would push a monkey nut along a road for seven miles in protest at student loans? McGowan’s subverted Daily Mail works are turning heads, with headlines plastered in white across the pages. “I’m not sure why I’m here, I might pack up soon,” McGowan said when asked about taking part in Minor Attractions. The dour art star is nonetheless a magnet, drawing in visitors savouring the headlines.

Ryan Gander lets the mice do the talking

Animatronic mice poke their heads out of walls and wax poetic, acting as alter egos for Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander is apparently not happy with the current state of art. I’ve Fallen Foul of My Desire is the disconsolate title of his new solo show at Camden Arts Projects, where he has also unveiled the fourth in his series of disconcertingly lifelike animatronic mice that he describes as “little moralistic fable making critters”. The mice poke their heads out of holes in gallery walls, spouting forth philosophical musings in the voice of the artist’s daughter. According to Gander, these chatty rodents—three of which currently reside in François Pinault’s galleries in Paris and Venice—act as alter egos, “saying the things I really think—a bit like therapy”. Past discourses include a treatise on growth and an adaptation of Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator (1940). So, what does this latest oracle reveal? “This one is about how shit art has become, how we’ve lost our way and champion politics and identity over creativity,” Gander says. “Art is not about art any more, it’s just about the people that make it.” Seems like he has arrived at his elder art world statesman phase. Let’s hope he feels better having had a bit of a vent.

Supernatural substances for sale

Extraction (2025) by the painter Mathew Weir Courtesy of Mathew Weir

Those with an interest in the afterlife should head to the Gallery of Everything in London, which is showing works depicting ectoplasm, the sticky substance supposedly exuded during contact with the spirit world (Ectoplasmix, until 30 November). Plasma oozes from all sorts of orifices in featured works by artists such as the Czech palaeontologist František Jaroslav Pecka and the UK painter Mathew Weir (look out also for striking photographs by Susan Hiller). Crowds flocked to the gallery earlier this week to ponder on the supernatural substance in all its arty forms, savouring a performance by a pair of Montenegro poets. The gallery founder James Brett was keen to point out some real ectoplasm hanging in the gallery window. “That’s from my mum who tried to contact my lovely father who passed away some years ago at the age of 88,” he said. He was joking (we hope).

Frieze London 2025Art marketDiary
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