London Diary: 10 October

Every morning until the end of Frieze, we’ll be rounding up some of the latest exhibition openings in London. Click here to view the whole series.

Glenn Ligon: Call and Response
10 October–11 January 2015, at the Camden Arts Centre

In 1966 the Minimalist composer Steve Reich created a work called Come Out, which layered taped statements by six black youths arrested for murder during the Harlem Riots in 1964. Now Glenn Ligon adds more layers of his own: he’s used the work as his starting point for a new set of silkscreen paintings and neons which examine how language shapes world events, both in the moment and its subsequent retelling.

Come Out, Glenn Ligon © the artist. Courtesy Thomas Dane

Matthew Barney: Crown Zinc
10 October–13 December, at Sadie Coles

Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament premiered this summer. Over the course of the epic six-hour film, three iconic US cars are broken down, their parts ritually scattered and transformed in a contemporary update of the Osiris myth. At Sadie Coles you can see the latest fruits of the performance: a set of transfigured fragments.

Sadie-Coles-Barney-Ad-Image © the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me
10 October–5 November, at the Fine Art Society

‘I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste’, claimed Marcel Duchamp. He might be pleased to see the sheer variety of works on display at the Fine Art Society this month; a sign that his legacy is as broad, inescapable and indefinable as ever.

Rotor Rings , 2014, by Gavin Turk Photo: Andy Keate

Carrie Mae Weems: Color: Real and Imagined

10 October–15 November, at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

Weems’ photographs confront how oppression and marginalization permeate contemporary western society: one series revisits abandoned holding facilities in Senegal once used in the African slave trade; in another, she looks at how everyday notions of domestic life continue to cast people in specific roles according to their gender, race or class.

Kitchen Table Series: Untitled (Woman with friends), Carrie Mae Weems

John McAllister: ‘stellar crash the sea’
10 October–8 November, at Carl Freedman Gallery

McAllister’s paintings are familiar enough – still lifes, interiors and domestic landscapes on a traditional scale – but their deliriously high-key colours transforms them. Pattern-like and saturated, his new works are in a decidedly Fauvist vein.

Saad Qureshi: Congregation
10 October–23 November, at Gazelli Art House

Qureshi’s latest show has been taken over by a flock of legendary Ababil birds. According to a short passage in the Qur’an, the birds defended Mecca by dropping stones on an advancing army. Their models perch here, against a backdrop of the artist’s charcoal on wood works.

The Final Aggregation, Saad Qureshi

Which exhibitions are you most looking forward to this month? Have we missed something? Let us know in the comments.