Art critic Tabish Khan brings you ‘The Top Art Exhibitions to see in London’. Each one comes with a concise review to help you decide whether it’s for you. All end soon, so hurry if you want to catch them:
Shubha Taparia @ Her studio, Atlas Business Centre
A huge and ethereal installation is suspended from the ceiling creating shadows using items used in construction, such as crates and ladders. It can only be seen in early evening when the last light filters through the skylights to create this marvellous effect that changes as the light shifts. Couple this with a soundtrack that rattles through my bones and we have an ambitious work that’s well worth trekking out to North London to see. Until 19 April.
The anatomy of melancholy @ Bethlem Museum of the Mind
What causes us to be melancholic? This exhibition of art looks at the possible causes from disappointment in love to religious melancholy. 200 years of paintings right through to contemporary artists look at the causes. Whether it be an 1854 sketch of a chained man displaying ‘raving madness’ or contemporary work where the mind and brain are isolated in darkness. Until 27 April. 
Tom Lovelace: Interval & Ken Currie: Red Ground @ Flowers East
A gutted shark with its intestines spilled out on the floor is a painting I’m unlikely to forget soon. Ken Currie’s paintings are all filled with violent imagery — whether it be a nightmare of a man valiantly trying to fend off a giant stag beetle with a rolled up newspaper or the hunting of gannet chicks which still happens in Scottish islands. Upstairs is a more subtle affair where Tom Lovelace’s show plays with texture and the gallery floor, plus a playful performance where a hand comes out of a hole in the wall and tinkers with clock on the adjacent wall. Until 27 April.
Katrin Fridriks: Grey Area @ JD Malat
Abstract explosions burst forth across sole canvases and sometimes across multiple canvases arranged in the patterns of a wave of a frequency of light. I’ve seen her colourful works before but her grayscale ones lose none of their potency. Until 27 April.
Marcus Dove: Fading Figures @ Justin Cook Art
These paintings and photographs are as much about the process of how they’re created as the finished product. Marcus Dove uses items such as smoke grenades and a homemade missile launcher to ‘attack’ the landscape and his studio with painterly explosions. The video projected in the gallery, showing how the works are made, gives a great grounding to the show and his unique production process. Until 25 April.
All images copyright artist and courtesy gallery. Bethlem image copyright George Harding.
