Regent’s Park once again transforms into London’s most open and free exhibition space as Frieze Sculpture 2025 unfolds across the English Gardens. It obviously coincides with Frieze London and Masters’ week and runs until 2 November.

Now in its 13th edition, the free public exhibition gathers 14 leading international artists in a dialogue between material, myth, and landscape. For the first time, curator Fatoş Üstek introduces a unifying theme, In the Shadows, a poetic framework that reimagines the shadow not as a symbol of darkness, but as a fertile space. Through sculptures and installations, artists examine ideas of memory, ecology, and human transformation.

The sculptures scattered through the park are free to view: Andy Holden’s bronze birdcalls resonate like echoes of extinction; Reena Saini Kallat’s monumental sound sculptures give form to unheard voices; and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s King of the Mountain honours Indigenous continuity and resistance. Elsewhere, Erwin Wurm’s ghostly garments evoke the traces of vanished bodies, while Burçak Bingöl literally grounds her work in the park’s clay-rich soil. Henrique Oliveira’s Desnatureza 8 surges with organic force, and Grace Schwindt’s ethereal forms contemplate regeneration. Each piece, in its own way, asks us to look closer, into what hides in plain sight, what the light omits, what stories remain half-told.

Üstek’s vision is accompanied by a dynamic programme of performances, workshops and guided walks animates the park: a costumed procession by Assemble, drawing performances by Simon Hitchens and curator-led tours that invite reflection. “In the Shadows,” Üstek notes, “embraces the unknown, the concealed and the forgotten… Shadows are zones of potential, where stories unfold quietly yet powerfully.”

The exhibition forms the cornerstone of London Sculpture Week (20–28 September), which unites Frieze Sculpture, Sculpture in the City, The Line and the Fourth Plinth projects in a celebration of public art across the capital. Together they affirm London’s role as a global sculpture city too.

Participating artists include Simon Hitchens (Bearing Witness to Things Unseen), Timur Si-Qin (Last of the Wild and Free), Reena Saini Kallat (Requiem [The Last Call]), Burçak Bingöl (Unit Terrenum Rosa), Lucía Pizzani (The Tale of the Eye, the Snake and the Seed), Grace Schwindt (When I Remember Through You), Abdollah Nafisi (Neighbours), Henrique Oliveira (Desnatureza 8), Erwin Wurm (Ghost [Substitutes]), Assemble (Fibredog), Elmgreen & Dragset (Life Rings, Fig. 3), David Altmejd (Nymph 1 2 3), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (King of the Mountain), and Andy Holden (Auguries [Lament]).

Image: Elmgreen & Dragset, Life Rings, Fig. 3, 2023. Photo: Linda Nylind