Frieze week highlights: featuring Kapwani Kiwanga's solo exhibition 'Rudiments'
Kapwani Kiwanga is not a name necessarily associated with sure-fire commercial artworks. Her thoughtful, heavily researched practice seems, in some ways, to be in defiance of commerciality. But as visitors to her Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year will know, her work is as strong from an aesthetic point of view as it is from an intellectual one. So it is rewarding to see a new series of wall-mounted works on show at Goodman Gallery. ‘Rudiments’ (until 6 November) continues the conversation Kiwanga is having about many favoured materials – rope, beads, gold – and advances the conversation in visually arresting form. Upstairs, the beads in luminescent purples and blues hanging in front of brushed metal seem attractive before considerations of exploitation and manufacture become apparent. Downstairs a series of works around tiles seem shinily enticing, luring the viewer into a world of extractive behaviour. Never have hidden systems of profit and economic abuse been so beguilingly explored.
