Image: Helen Chadwick, Glossolalia, 1993
Helen Chadwick (1953–1996) and Cathy de Monchaux (born 1960) are shown side by side in ‘Something The Matter’, a two-artist presentation by Richard Saltoun at Frieze London, which runs from 14 to 18 October 2026. The title looks back to the artists’ first joint appearance, at the 22nd Bienal de São Paulo in 1994, where the two met. According to the gallery, the meeting grew into a close friendship and a lasting exchange of ideas, which this presentation sets out to continue.
The gallery describes Chadwick as a mentor to the generation that became known as the Young British Artists, and de Monchaux as a leading graduate of Goldsmiths. Both, in its account, work in the uncertain territory between the body, materials and desire, producing work that is hard to classify and that is drawn to the pull between attraction and revulsion, to the grotesque and to radical approaches to form.
Two large works sit at the centre of the selection and, the gallery says, are being shown together for the first time. In Chadwick’s ‘Loop my Loop’ (1991), golden locks of hair are wound together with a pig’s intestine and photographed as a still life in a contemporary Baroque manner, setting luxury against the visceral. De Monchaux’s ‘Sovereign’ (1999) repeats armour-like forms alongside fleshy, anatomical elements, giving a surface that reads at once as decorative, protective and menacing. Chadwick’s ‘Glossolalia’ (1993) is also included, together with further sculpture, assemblage and photography from the 1980s onwards; fur, animal material and sculptural form recur across the selection.
The pairing comes at a moment of renewed museum attention for both artists. Both are included in ‘The 90s: Art and Fashion’ at Tate Britain, and Chadwick featured in ‘YBA & Beyond: British Art in the 90s’, drawn from the Tate collection and shown in Tokyo and Kyoto. Her touring exhibition ‘Life Pleasures’ has been seen at The Hepworth Wakefield and the Museo Novecento and travels to the Kunsthaus Graz in 2026, while de Monchaux is the subject of a retrospective at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris this year.
