London Gallery Weekend kicks off this Friday, May 13th, with hundreds of special events and exhibitions taking place across London. To help you navigate we asked Hector Campbell, writer, curator and author of the weekly emerging art newsletter ‘The Shock of the Now‘, to select his top choices from London’s selection of small to mid-size galleries.
Rafal Zajko – ‘Song To The Siren’ Solo Exhibition – Cooke Latham (Parkgate Road, Battersea, South London), until June 27th. Open Friday 13th, 11am-6pm, Saturday 14th, 10am-8pm & Sunday 15th, 11am-5pm.
Cooke Latham Gallery in Battersea presents Rafal Zajko‘s latest solo exhibition ‘Song To The Siren‘, including a new body of wall-based sculptures echoing sci-fi control panels and sensory terracotta totems that emit smoke, stream and sound, all brought together by vibrant Modernist murals. On Saturday Zajko and invited collaborators will be activating the exhibition with intermittent performances, with the schedule as follows: 10:30am – Rafal Zajko performing with Eve Stainton, 11:15am – Performance by Rosa Doornenbal, Midday – Performance by Agnieszka Szczotka, 12:40pm – Rafal Zajko performing with Eve Stainton.
Simon Linke – Solo Exhibition – Darren Flook (Great Portland Street, Fitzrovia, Central London), until May 15th. Open Friday 13th – Sunday 15th, 12-6pm.
Darren Flooks presents Simon Linke’s latest solo exhibition, his first in London for ten years, that marks the 35th anniversary since the artist’s rise to prominence for his painterly plagiarism of Art Forum magazine advertisements. Including recent artworks that appropriate adverts for Bridget Riley’s 2020 Hayward Gallery retrospective and Hauser & Wirth’s 2020 survey of Lucio Fontana’s avant-garde ‘Ambienti spaziali’ series, alongside examples from Linke’s early output of the mid-1980s, the exhibition aims to entertain the question of Why? the artist has so persistently pursued the same subject for almost four decades.
Shamiran Istifan – ‘Precious Pipeline’ Solo Exhibition – Moarain House (Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, East London), until June 11th. Open Friday 13th, 11am-6pm, Saturday 14th, 11am-6pm & Sunday 15th, 10am-5pm.
Moarain House, a gallery on the ascendance in East London after just four exhibitions, presents the debut UK solo exhibition of Shamiran Istifan. ‘Precious Pipeline’ includes video, installation and textile works that address the young Assyrian-Swiss artist’s unique heritage in relation to religion, gender, political sociology and cultural geography. A text by Róisín Tapponi, founder of Habibi Collective and Art Work Magazine, accompanies the exhibition. For London Gallery Weekend, Moarain House, in collaboration with Azeema Magazine, will host a drop-in Life Drawing event on Sunday 15th, 3-5pm.
Rhea Dillon – ‘The Sombre Majesty (or, on being the pronounced dead)’ Solo Exhibition – Soft Opening (Minerva Street, Bethnal Green, East London), until June 11th. Open Friday 13th, 11am-6pm, Saturday 14th, 11am-6pm & Sunday 15th, 10am-5pm.
Soft Opening presents the latest solo exhibition by London-based artist, poet and writer Rhea Dillon. ‘The Sombre Majesty (or, on being the pronounced dead)’ takes as its central inspiration academic, activist and cultural studies pioneer Stuart Hall’s writing on Caribbean identity, which forms the backdrop for the artist’s own exploration of Caribbean diaspora culture and their familial lineage as a second-generation Black British citizen of Jamaican heritage. Dillon will soon unveil a new sculptural commission as part of Bold Tendencies’ 2022 Programme ‘Love’ (20th May – 17th September).
Natalia González Martín – ‘A change (would do you good)’ Solo Exhibition – Hannah Barry Gallery (Holly Grove, Peckham, South London), until June 25th. Open Friday 13th, 11am-6pm w. exhibition opening drinks 6-8pm, Saturday 14th, 10am-8pm & Sunday 15th, 11am-5pm.
Following her inclusion in the gallery’s recent group exhibition ‘Tree and Leaf’, Natalia González Martín returns to Hannah Barry Gallery in Peckham for her debut London solo exhibition. Spread across both floors of the gallery’s Peckham space, all the paintings in ‘A change (would do you good)‘ take their titles from Ovid’s magnum opus The Metamorphoses, which traces the history of the world in typical Latin myth-making style. González Martín offers an alternative interpretation of the renowned narrative poem, through the lens of contemporary societal concerns, popular culture and her own lived experience.
