Frieze Sculpture 2018: the highlights

Between Wimbledon and the FIFA World Cup, there’s been plenty of distractions from London’s unusually Mediterranean weather of late. But for those who are able to pry their eyes away from the summer’s double sporting bonanza, Frieze Sculpture’s annual outing in Regent’s Park is set to command its own record-breaking audience after the outdoor display attracted more than five million visitors last year.

For the exhibition’s second summer edition, John Baldessari, Barry Flanagan, Elmgreen & Dragset, Tracey Emin, Dan Graham, Sean Scully, Conrad Shawcross, Monika Sosnowska, and Richard Woods are among the 25 artists taking over the 19th-century Markham Nesfield-designed English Gardens. Works in Frieze Sculpture are selected and placed by Clare Lilley, director of programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, following an open call for proposals submitted by international galleries.

No. 814, 2018, by Rana Begum, with The Third Line Jhaveri Contemporary Kate Macgarry. Photography: Stephen White. Courtesy of Frieze

There are 15 new works in this year’s outdoor sculpture trail, from a decidedly stoic Corten steel stack by Sean Scully, to a shamanistic figure in bronze by Bharti Kher and James Capper’s prelude to his project at the Venice Biennale next year. The animal world seems to have been playing on artists’ minds recently – there’s Tracey Emin’s ‘lyrical flock’ and a coloured leaf-like form by Simon Periton; John Baldessari, too, has waddled into the park with a curious penguin.

Elsewhere, Richard Woods has pitched up in Regent’s Park with a ‘holiday home’ bedecked in his signature vibrant colours, and Conrad Shawcross debuts a new, monumental Optic Labryinth. Other highlights include Dan Graham’s glass pavilion; Larry Achiampong’s Afrofuturistic flags; and a 14-metre-high needle woman tower by Kimsooja. §