London in Five: October 2024

The London Magazine‘s guide to five of the capital’s best cultural events and shows this October.

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Art | Paula Rae Gibson: Be Alive with Me 

In the magnificent setting of Fitzrovia Chapel’s mosaic interior, Paula Rae Gibson showcases ‘Be Alive With Me’, a photographic tribute to her late husband, British film director Brian Gibson. Featuring twenty unique prints created using Gibson’s signature process – silver gelatin with hand-applied textures in paint, chemicals and chalk – the series charts a deeply personal period of intense love, life, and loss. 

What are you doing forever is how he asked me to marry him. It was three weeks into our togetherness though we had been friends for over a year. How do you go on without that sort of love? Just as life came totally together with the birth of our daughter, he was given 6 months to live. It felt impossible, going on without him felt impossible.

Curated by Katy Barron, the exhibition will take place at Fitzrovia Chapel from 1-6 October 2024.

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Art | Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights

A stone’s throw from Euston station and Regent’s Park, the Wellcome Collection opens its vibrant doors to show ‘Hard Graft’, a free major exhibition exploring experiences of physical work and its impacts on health and the body. Making connections between undervalued labour, the people who do it, and the spaces where it happens, this exhibition brings in to focus the people whose health, work and rights remain hidden on the margins of society: sex workers, street vendors, prisoners and more. Featuring more than 150 objects, with artworks from Brazil, Bangladesh, Trinidad, Sudan, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico and the USA, to name a few, the exhibition draws upon the interconnections of working practices across the world.

Curated by Cindy Sissokho, the exhibition will take place at Wellcome Collection from 19 September 2024 to 27 April 2025. 

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Theatre | Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett is an integral part of The London Magazine‘s history. ‘Texts for Nothing: IV’, a short fiction by Beckett, was published in the August 1967 edition of The London Magazine, alongside an essay by Marilyn Gaddis comparing representations of purgatory in Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Yeat’s ‘Purgatory’. Imagine our excitement, then, that the Theatre Royal Haymarket are putting on a new staging of ‘Waiting for Godot’ with Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati this October. Brutal and funny, the tragicomic staging explores existence and life under the sharp direction of James MacDonald.

Running until 14 December 2024, ‘Waiting for Godot’ is put on by Theatre Royal Haymarket.

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Art | Freedom in Multitudes

Wedged in between Paddington Station and the autumnal vista of Hyde Park in October, the new 1897 Gallery brings us ‘Freedom in Multitudes’, the first in a series of exhibitions that will be presented in 2025. A profound interrogation of identity, the African Diaspora, and the enduring legacies of colonialism, the exhibition gathers the work of nine artists living across Japan, Nigeria, England, and the US which unveils the complex nuances of self-perception, transcending external expectations and societal limitations.

Curated by Sosa Omorogbe, the exhibition will take place at 1897 Gallery from 5-14 October 2024. 

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Literature | London Literature Festival 

On the bank of the Thames, The Southbank Centre presents the London Literature Festival 2024, a celebration of the power of spoken and written word to bring audiences together and illuminate the issues of the present. Following last year’s inaugural curatorship, this year’s festival welcomes the award-winning London-born rapper Ghetts as co-curator of the festival’s opening weekend. Showcasing the vibrant and collaborative relationship between spoken word and music, the critically-acclaimed artist lends his razor-sharp lyricism, humour and wordplay to two nights of music and poetry at the Southbank Centre. Ted Hodgkinson, Head of Literature & Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, says:

From spotlighting the cultural communities on our doorstep, to an incredible array of world renowned voices, the festival celebrates the power of poetry, plurality and dialogue to spark new thinking. In these turbulent times, the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival provides an evermore vital space for democratic discussion and we’re proud to offer a fantastic programme to inspire and nourish the next generation of creators and storytellers.

From 23 October to 3 November, the seventeenth edition of the London Literature Festival is held at the Southbank Centre.

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