Tabish Khan the @LondonArtCritic picks his top 5 Art Exhibitions to see in December. Each one comes with a concise review to help you decide whether it’s for you. If you’re looking for more shows, check out last week’s top 5 that all remain open to visit.
Avery Singer: Free Fall @ Hauser & Wirth
It’s rare to step into a gallery and wonder whether this is a gallery at all. That’s what happens with Avery Singer’s installation at Hauser & Wirth. It’s based on her childhood memories of the World Trace Centre lobby and offices before they were destroyed. The installation is paired with portraits of people impacted by the attack and a severed hand found after the horrific day. She’s taken the mundane setting of an office and made it very unsettling. Until 22 December.
Anna Uddenberg: Home Wreckers @ The Perimeter
These eroticized mannequins look rather silly while holding a pram or running fingers over a furry counter. And that’s the point as the artist targets the contrary expectations on women to be sexualised but also at to manage a household. Based within a gallery that feels like it’s a home is the perfect setting for these creepy satirical works. Until 22 December.
Erin Holly: A Trans Arrangement of the Painted Space @ JD Malat
These beautiful domestic scenes are dream-like in their colour palette and often devoid of a human presence, but hint at being recently occupied with a running tap or products in the bathroom. It’s can also be read as a nod to the bathroom being a place of refuge to many but to Erin, as a trans artist, it’s become a political flashpoint in wider societal debates. Until 9 December.
The Living House @ Van Gogh House
In Van Gogh House there’s not just art that can be touched, but art that needs to be touched to fully experience it. Godai Sahara has made works in soap that can be used to wash your hands in the bathroom and tactile golden boules that should be picked in the bedroom. In a house that’s filled with the memory of Van Gogh’s stay here, all the four artists in the show play off that theme in works that blend into the domestic setting. Until 17 December.
Paulina Olowska: Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas @ Pace
Taking contemporary muses, dressing them in handmade costumes and placing them in Northern European forests these paintings bring Slavic folklore into a contemporary setting that celebrates the role of women and nature that has existed throughout history in paintings that feel playful and cinematic. Until 6 January.
All images courtesy and copyright respective artist and gallery. Avery Singer photo: Alex Delfanne. Anna Uddenberg image: courtesy the artist and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin. Photo: Stephen James.
