Eight rising artists reveal their boldest works at London's Frieze art fair

Every October, Regent's Park in London fills with an enormous tent. Inside, thousands of artworks hang on white walls, sit on pedestals, lean against temporary structures. Collectors move through the aisles. Dealers stand ready. This is Frieze, the art fair that has run since 2003, and it is, by design, a marketplace—a place where contemporary art becomes a commodity. Some people hate it for exactly that reason. Others come because nowhere else can you see so much new work in a single afternoon.

Eight British-based artists are showing their work there this October, and they talk about what they've made and why. Their practices are varied. Kira Freije, 41, works in metal and fabric, casting aluminium and bronze into what she calls gesture works—wall-based sculptures that suggest crowds without depicting them literally. Mohammed Z Rahman, 29, is self-taught and describes his work as outsider art, drawing from nursery rhymes and ethnographic texts, mixing figuration with installation. Jake Grewal, 32, makes large charcoal drawings of genderless figures in landscapes at liminal times—dusk, dawn, the edges of things. His work carries what he calls a queer undertone.

Alvaro Barrington, 43, paints portraits. He grew up in hip-hop culture and has spent years thinking about how to make hip-hop versions of heads—portraits that feel true to how he understands the world. Louise Giovanelli, 32, paints faces projected onto sparkly glitter curtains, exploring what she calls cathexia, a Greek term meaning to invest your energy into a specific thing. She's interested in how humans have always poured themselves into transient materials—silk, flesh, marble—and how desire gets materialized. Shaqúelle Whyte, 26, is the youngest of the group. She recently showed at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and has a solo show coming at South London Gallery, which will make her the youngest artist ever to have a solo exhibition in that space. She calls herself a kid from Wolves, still processing how far she's come.

Poppy Jones, 41, works at intimate scale, cutting canvases from materials meant for clothing, sometimes from her own jackets. She's interested in eBay as a cultural archive and in how objects can suddenly express inner emotion. Christina Kimeze, 40, came to art through a non-linear path—she studied science, worked various jobs, started a startup with her sister. She rejects traditional materials and embraces imperfection, informed by years of making art in cramped home spaces. She's currently pregnant with her third child and thinks often about time as a luxury.

What these artists share is not a style but a seriousness about what art can do. Rahman talks about the Venice Biennale earlier this year and how, after the death of curator Koyo Kouoh, the artists came together. Whyte speaks about bringing her work back to Wolverhampton and seeing people with varying understandings of art—people whose education in art had been degraded by the education system—want to know more. That mattered to her more than sales. Kimeze's show at South London Gallery was a turning point because it drew local young people on roller-skates, genuinely reacting to the energy of the work, not politely nodding at wall text.

When asked what they hope will happen to their work once it sells, the answers reveal the tension at the heart of art fairs. Barrington wants someone to live with his painting, to have it in their house or a museum, because art should be lived with. Giovanelli puts trust in her gallery to place the work with someone who understands her practice and might loan it to museum shows later. Whyte is explicit: she wants an institution to buy it, but only one that will be responsible for it as her career grows, not one that will flip it for profit. Jones, by contrast, says she doesn't get overly attached once work leaves the studio. She lets it go on its own journey.

The artists name their influences—Marisa Merz, Paul Thek, Frida Kahlo, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Turner, Nan Goldin, Tupac, Piero della Francesca, Rothko, Paul Nash, Eileen Agar, Matisse, Chris Ofili. They talk about what they want to be in twenty years. Freije says she hopes to still be alive and excited about what she's making. Barrington describes his life in four chapters—Garvey, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Biggie Smalls—each one a reinvention. Kimeze, thinking about her third child and the scarcity of time, hopes to have space to explore sculpture and installation. The fair is a marketplace, yes, but these conversations suggest something else is happening too: artists thinking seriously about what their work means, who they want to reach, and what they want to leave behind.