The Wick Culture

The Wick Culture The art world insider. An intelligent community invested in culture. A world that celebrates visual arts, culture and creativity in all its forms.

Filled with conversations, debate and insights.

This week’s heads from the English countryside to the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain, with Nancy Cadogan p...
09/10/2026

This week’s heads from the English countryside to the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain, with Nancy Cadogan painting memory into landscape, Tim Walker building a Q***r Fairyland and Edward Enninful revisiting the art and fashion of the 1990s.

‘The 90s: Art and Fashion’
📍 Tate Britain
8 October 2026 - 14 February 2027
Edward Enninful rewinds to the 1990s with more than 100 works spanning fashion, photography and contemporary art.

‘Nancy Cadogan: The Lost Trees’ & ‘Nancy Cadogan: At the Bend in the River’
📍 Compton Verney, Warwickshire & Beningbrough, York
10 October 2026 - 4 April 2027
Nancy Cadogan has two exhibitions unfolding across the countryside this autumn, with new paintings shaped by local trees, rivers and remembered places.

‘Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends’
📍 National Portrait Gallery
9 October 2026 - 7 February 2027
Tim Walker brings 250 specially created portraits to the National Portrait Gallery, tracing more than 50 years of Q***r activism and culture through figures including Isaac Julien, Ian McKellen, Miriam Margolyes, Björk, Lady Gaga and Chappell Roan.

Read the full features on The Wick’s website, link in bio.



Tate Nancy Cadogan Compton Verney Beningbrough - National Trust Tim Walker National Portrait Gallery

Fair warning.October in London means one thing: the art world is out in full force.As Frieze London and Frieze Masters r...
09/10/2026

Fair warning.

October in London means one thing: the art world is out in full force.

As Frieze London and Frieze Masters return to The Regent’s Park, the action spills well beyond the tents, with fairs taking over galleries, historic buildings, hotels and unexpected corners of the capital.

Swipe through for The Wick’s must-see art fairs across London this Frieze season.

Fairs include:
🎨 Frieze London | 14–18 October
🎨 Frieze Masters | 14–18 October
🎨 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair | 15–18 October
🎨 Fair Play Art Fair | 15–18 October
🎨 Paraíso Latin American Art Fair | 15–18 October
🎨 FOCUS Art Fair London | 15–18 October
🎨 PAD London | 13–18 October
🎨 Minor Attractions 2026 | 13–17 October
🎨 London Invitational | 15–18 October
🎨 Affordable Art Fair Battersea – Autumn | 14–18 October
🎨 The Other Art Fair London | 8–11 October
🎨 Imprint Art Fair | 29 October–1 November
🎨 Asian Art in London 2026 | 29 October–10 November

Last night, collectors, art world figures and friends gathered at Close for “Between Empires: Gordon Cheung in Conversat...
08/10/2026

Last night, collectors, art world figures and friends gathered at Close for “Between Empires: Gordon Cheung in Conversation with Carrie Scott”, an evening celebrating a new body of work by British artist Gordon Cheung, presented by Close.

The evening opened with a welcome from CLOSE Founder and Creative Director Freeny Yianni . It was a treat to hear Gordon Cheung in conversation with curator, art historian and broadcaster Carrie Scott - Art Historian + Curator , founder of Seen . The dynamic conversation covered themes of Cheung’s Vanitas works, preoccupied with power, trade and the rise and fall of civilisations that run through his work.

Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, British - Chinese Cheung has developed a distinctive visual language that merges physical and digital processes, often incorporating financial data as both material and conceptual framework. His work reflects on the psychological and geopolitical conditions of global capitalism, exploring how narratives of identity, territory, and belief are constructed, contested, and destabilised.

Presented in partnership with The Wick.

CLOSE Gallery Gordon Cheung Carrie Scott - Art Historian + Curator hassina hassan THE WICK Freeny Yianni Richard A Scarry

Photos: Hannah Goldsmith Photographer | London | Mallorca

Walking into Fairyland Stepping into Tim Walker Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends for the press view. It is the l...
08/10/2026

Walking into Fairyland

Stepping into Tim Walker Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends for the press view. It is the largest exhibition ever devoted to the British photographer, and an extraordinary celebration of q***r identity, community and love.

Over five years, Walker photographed around fifty activists, artists, performers and writers. The result is 250 previously unseen portraits. Ian McKellen, Miriam Margolyes, Isaac Julien, Chappell Roan, Hunter Schafer, Peter Tatchell and Paul O’Grady all appear, alongside trailblazers from every chapter of q***r history, placed together in one vivid visual conversation.

Many of the sitters are staged in the tradition of Tudor portraiture, after Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard. They are surrounded by couture, fantastical sets and personal objects they chose themselves. Fashion, fairytale, humour and eroticism run through every room. The show also reflects on the HIV/AIDS crisis with real tenderness.

Curated by Susanna Brown and accompanied by a new book with contributions from Russell T Davies, Shon Faye, Travis Alabanza, Lisa Power and Joelle Taylor, this is a Fairyland where everyone is free to be themselves.

“Your difference is your power.”

National Portrait Gallery, London
Opens Friday 9 October and runs until 7 February 2027

Tim Walker National Portrait Gallery

This week’s is Marie McPartlin, inaugural Director of Somerset House Studios, which celebrates its tenth anniversary t...
05/10/2026

This week’s is Marie McPartlin, inaugural Director of Somerset House Studios, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this October. Since 2015, McPartlin has helped shape the Studios into a space for artists to experiment across disciplines, supporting more than 200 artists over the past decade and offering some the rare luxury of time, with residencies lasting up to ten years.

The anniversary continues from 16 to 18 October with 3 Evenings, taking Somerset House Studios offsite to Wapping Hydraulic Power Station for three nights of performance and technology inspired by the radical 1966 collaboration 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering.

In her Monday Muse interview, McPartlin speaks to The Wick about creating the conditions for artists to take risks, what experimentation looks like in the age of AI and why London needs to do more than simply show art. Plus, the artists currently on her radar, the project she still thinks about and why SOPHIE is her ultimate Monday Muse.

Read the full interview at the link in bio.

With World Mental Health Day approaching, this week’s turns to artful objects for the smaller rituals that can make a ...
03/10/2026

With World Mental Health Day approaching, this week’s turns to artful objects for the smaller rituals that can make a busy day feel a little less so.

☕ Indigo Storm Mug by Faye Toogood
Deep blue whorls and irregular marks make every cup of tea feel a little more considered. Designed for 1882 Ltd., Toogood’s fine earthenware mug takes its cue from traditional English Delftware and the beauty of materials behaving unexpectedly.

🛋️ Cashmere Blanket by Rachel Whiteread
Made from 100% superfine cashmere in Scotland, this limited edition blanket translates Whiteread’s artwork into a softer, more tactile form. Art collecting has rarely looked quite so comfortable.

🕯️ Psychoanalysis Candle by Bella Freud
Neroli, lilac, to***co flower, amber and cedarwood meet Freud’s unmistakable graphic lettering in a candle made for long October evenings. Light it, put the phone down and let the evening get a little less busy.

This week’s spans prophecy in a former recording studio, the archive of one of Britain’s most influential stage design...
02/10/2026

This week’s spans prophecy in a former recording studio, the archive of one of Britain’s most influential stage designers and a trip to the south with the French Riviera at the Royal Academy.

‘Painting the French Riviera’
📍 Royal Academy of Arts, London
2 October 2026 - 31 January 2027
Royal Academy

The Royal Academy heads south with more than 160 works tracing how Mediterranean light transformed modern art. Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Yves Klein are among those drawn to the Côte d’Azur and its famously seductive colour.

‘Es Devlin: Other Worlds’
📍 Design Museum, London
2 October 2026 - 4 April 2027
Es Devlin the Design Museum

Es Devlin showcases 30 years of world-building in her first European retrospective. Models, drawings and archive material reveal how projects for theatre, music and major public events begin long before the spectacle.

‘The Soothsayer’s Chorus’
📍 35 Britannia Row, London
3 - 23 October

Sixteen women artists gather around the figure of Cassandra in a haunting group show. Cecilia Vicuña, Katie Paterson, Judy Chicago and Ana Mendieta are among the names filling Pink Floyd’s former studio with visions of warning, myth and memory.

Read the full features on The Wick’s website, link in bio.

This week’s is Nigerian-born contemporary painter Ndidi Emefiele, whose work uses the female body to question inherite...
30/09/2026

This week’s is Nigerian-born contemporary painter Ndidi Emefiele, whose work uses the female body to question inherited expectations around identity and freedom.

Growing up as one of five daughters in a conservative environment, Emefiele became attentive to the rules surrounding how women were expected to behave and be seen. Her paintings push against those structures, presenting female figures with autonomy and placing women at the centre of their own image.

Emefiele is championed by British-Nigerian curator and writer Péjú Oshin, whose early encounters with her work included an AWITA event at collector Valeria Napoleone’s home.

“Ndidi’s impetus to protect women and depict them as worthy of protection even when nonchalant or appearing to be strong highlights the multifacetedness of women,” Oshin tells The Wick.

This October, Emefiele opens her solo exhibition ‘A Longing for Home’ at Gallery Rosenfeld’s new South Molton Street space.

Read the full at the link in bio.



Ndidi Emefiele Péjú Oshin

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