The SLG is back at Frieze London, an art fair taking place in Regent’s Park from 9-13 October 2024. We are presenting five artists’ editions, made exclusively for the gallery by artists to support our exhibitions, events, and education programmes. All proceeds from the sale of editions go directly to the gallery, helping us realise our ambition of making contemporary art accessible for all.
You can visit us over at the Allied Editions stand at Frieze, where we’re excited to be launching two brand-new editions by Helen Marten and Hoda Afshar. Also on view at the fair are limited artist editions by Paul Morrison, Federico Herrero and Basim Magdy.
Find out more about the SLG editions on display at Frieze, which are available to purchase in the gallery, or over on our online shop.
Helen Marten, Goodnight!, 2024
Edition of 25
£3,500
Helen Marten works across sculpture, painting, video and writing to create work that questions the stability of the material world and our place within it. Alluding to ideas, systems and experiences, her work sets out to articulate complex ideas about the way in which we exist in and understand the world around us.
Goodnight! is a multi-layered work, incorporating two- and three-dimensional elements housed within a bespoke frame. The central image is created from a drawing of women dancing in checked pyjamas, retranslated in blend of coloured pigment, watercolour, acrylic and graphite powder. The figures are blurred with movement and overlapping. Around this depiction of joy and comfort are further motifs of daily preoccupations: trees, beds, tables, notepaper, a cocktail.
The artist says: “Goodnight! is a mode of optimism, a work with countless permutations of visual and linguistic knotting. The perplexing sense remains that of abstract breach and delirious play – cookie cutters to excise and reform one’s material reality – beneath the forthcoming darkness and dizzying stars of night. Goodnight! offers the anticipatory elegies of candles and flowers: pleasure and ferocity hovering with equally weighted potential.”
Hoda Afshar, Untitled 7 (From In Turn Series), 2024
Hoda Afshar, Untitled 7 (From In Turn Series), 2024
Edition of 25
£450
Hoda Afshar’s series titled In Turn, was made in response to the feminist uprising that began in Iran in September 2022, following the death of 22-year-old Jina Amini. Amini had been arrested by Iran’s morality police for not wearing the hijab in a way that they considered appropriate. The photographs are a tribute and a testament to collective action and collective grief.
The women in the series are, like Afshar, Iranian Australians who have watched the protests unfold from afar. Dressed in black, they cluster together and braid each other’s hair. This is a direct allusion to the images on social media of women in Iran defiantly discarding the veil, and to a practice common among Kurdish female fighters who plait each other’s hair before heading into battle against the Islamic State.
In Untitled 7, two doves are released. Often a symbol of peace, here they also reference grief felt by so many in Iran. When protesters are killed, their family and friends release birds into the sky. The twines of a plait are referred to as pichesh-e-moo in Farsi, meaning the turn or fold of the hair. A revolution is a turning point, but it is never without loss.
In Turn was included in the South London Gallery’s 2024 exhibition, Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, organised in collaboration with the V&A.
Basim Magdy, One Eye Was a Diamond, the Other Was a Crystal Ball. Everyone Saw the Future in her Eyes, 2019
Basim Magdy, One Eye Was a Diamond, the Other Was a Crystal Ball. Everyone Saw the Future in her Eyes, 2019
Edition of 10
£2,000
This limited edition was produced on the occasion of Basim Magdy’s commission at the SLG in 2019.
Basim Magdy‘s work encompasses photography, video, sculpture and installation. This is one of a number of photographs that came out of a sudden interest in human eyes and how much they communicate about our personalities and emotions. The roll of film the image was shot on was pickled in acidic household chemicals for a calculated period of time, resulting in a dominant blue colour.
Magdy was commissioned to transform Art Block, the SLG’s free space for local children to make things, be creative and play. His installation PINGPINPOOLPONG, or How I Learned to Laugh at Failure, 2018 was a table-based game that aimed to challenge the idea of winning and encourage participants to celebrate failing together.
Federico Herrero, Playground, 2018
Federico Herrero, Playground, 2018
Edition of 20
£540
This edition was produced following Federico Herrero’s public commission for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative exhibition Under the Same Sun: Art in Latin America. Herrero created a mural on the playground of Pelican housing estate which backs onto the South London Gallery.
Federico Herrero’s visual language is rooted in his observations of everyday life in Costa Rica’s ever evolving landscape, especially the way nature and culture collide. In his paintings brightly hued organic shapes jostle against each other as they inhabit and negotiate space.
Herrero’s practice is essentially a study of liminal spaces—gaps between public and private, canvas and wall, figure and background, work and viewer—always infused with elements of play, pleasure, and humour.
Visit us at Frieze
We’re delighted to present all of these works at Frieze, you can find us at the Allied Editions stand alongside our friends at Camden Arts Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Serpentine, Studio Voltaire, Whitechapel Gallery and Liverpool Biennial. Come and say hello at Booth P03 from 9-13 October, and help support the SLG!