This year the SLG is back at Frieze London, an art fair taking place in Regent’s Park from 11 – 15 October. We are presenting three 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 our brand-new edition by London-based artist Chiizii, produced to coincide with the exhibition Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes. Also on view at the fair is the SLG130 Portfolio, created in 2021 to mark the SLG’s 130th anniversary and featuring the work of Alvaro Barrington, Rashid Johnson, Gabriel Orozco, Christina Quarles and Haegue Yang.
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.
Chiizii – Untitled Collage 5, 2023
Produced for our exhibition Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes, Chiizii’s print layers images taken in the UK and in Nigeria. The background is a photograph taken by the artist in London of plantain and melons, neither of which are native to the UK but both are grown in Nigeria. For Chiizii, this speaks to the efforts and needs of the diaspora to consume their cultural foods. Layered over this is an image she shot of her aunt’s former home in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. The home holds many core experiences and memories with Igbo and Nigerian food for the artist.
These two images have been combined to look as if they are one, seamlessly blended. The print explores the experience of engaging with Igbo food culture in settings outside of Igboland. The work is a limited edition of just 50 prints, all signed and numbered by Chiizii.
Rene Matić, Jesus is, Peckham Teacup, 2022
Rene Matić – Jesus is, Peckham Teacup, 2022
This limited-edition cup and saucer is designed by British artist Rene Matić as part of their solo exhibition last year at the SLG, upon this rock.
The cup and saucer draws on themes of domesticity. The work explores notions of ‘Britishness’, particularly a form of ‘Britishness’ that might attempt to deny or erase Matić’s existence.
Matić’s work was recently included in the rehang at Tate Britain as part of the Modern and Contemporary British Art collection. Their photography often touches on themes of post-Blackness and glitch feminism, using dance and music movements to explore the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain.
Yuna Goda & Michelle Williams Gamaker – Counterparts (Thieves Edition), 2023
Yuna Goda & Michelle Williams Gamaker – Counterparts (Thieves Edition), 2023
Designed in collaboration with London-based designer Yuna Goda, this edition by artist Michelle Williams Gamaker brings together cast members of the artist’s film Thieves.
Williams Gamaker reimagines the marginalised characters from the 1924 film The Thief of Baghdad in her vivid cinematic retelling, Thieves. The work sits within her practice of Fictional Activism – a way to interrogate 20th century cinema with critical alternatives to colonial storytelling of classic British and Hollywood studio films.
Thieves was part of Williams Gamaker’s 2023 exhibition at the SLG, Our Mountains Are Painted On Glass. The show explored race, identity, her love of cinema, and the power of storytelling. This limited edition features Thieves cast members alongside the original stars of the 1924 and 1940 versions of The Thief of Baghdad, depicted on coins.
Our Mountains Are Painted On Glass was co-commissioned with Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), where it will be shown in late 2023.
Christina Quarles, ‘I’s Above Me, As Below’, 2021. Photo: David Harrison.
SLG130 Portfolio, 2021
Marking 130 years of the South London Gallery, this portfolio is made up of limited edition prints by five leading international artists.
The featured artists are Alvaro Barrington, Rashid Johnson, Gabriel Orozco, Christina Quarles and Haegue Yang, who donated the limited edition works on paper.
Quarles’ dazzlingly distinctive print comprises paintings layered on top of one another, digitally tweaked throughout the process, whilst Orozco used a photograph of the garden he designed for the SLG in 2016 as the starting point for his print. Barrington’s print edition overlays a multitude of references, from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Peppa Pig, to Grand Theft Auto and the African folktale of Anansi the Spider. The SLG’s original marquetry floor provides inspiration for Yang’s print, whilst Johnson employs a boat motif in his print, a metaphorical vehicle of escape.
The works are presented in a bespoke portfolio box adorned with the slogan ‘The source of art is in the life of a people’. The phrase is taken from the inscription on the SLG’s original nineteenth-century marquetry floor, designed by Walter Crane.
Visit us at Frieze
We’re delighted to present all of these works on the SLG’s return to Frieze, you can find us at the Allied Editions stand alongside our friends at Camden Art Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Serpentine, Studio Voltaire and Whitechapel Gallery. Come and say hello at Booth P3 from 11 – 15 October, and help support the SLG!