Tabish Khan the @LondonArtCritic picks his top 5 Art Exhibitions to see before Christmas. 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 but one remains open to visit.
Tim Lewis: The Forest Visits @ Flowers, Cork Street
Press a pedal and a deer with a guitar for a body strums itself or an Echidna / tree hybrid spins around. Alternatively, turn a handle and a moth flies around an apple or butterflies perched on scissors open and close their wings. Tim Lewis’s surreal zoomorphic kinetic works are remarkable interactive pieces and in this show he’s taken them to another level. Until 6 January.
Untitled rencontres @ Opera Gallery
Opera Gallery opens its impressive new space on New Bond Street across three floors with works by artists such as Picasso and Kusama, and a display of works by Ron Arad in the upstairs space. The works I was most drawn to are in the basement gallery with the ‘glitched’ paintings of Andy Denzler (pictured). Given we now see much of our world through screens, here are figurative paintings disturbed as if they have the potential to glitch as art imitates life. Until 7 January.
Ghada Amer: QR codes revisited @ Goodman Gallery
QR codes are everywhere now and it’s how many of us access a press release when entering a gallery. Ghada Amer takes the pattern of these codes to produce textiles with powerful quotes such as ‘your silence will not protect you’, and in Arabic the words for love, freedom, security and peace to challenge the often Islamophobic narrative that associates the Arab world with violence. Until 22 December.
The Drawing Year 2023 @ Royal Drawing School
With over 400 drawings on show there are figurative pieces, landscape works, abstract pieces – those in black and white, and others bursting with colour. What unites them all is these highly skilled artists have all graduated from the Royal Drawing School’s postgraduate course, plus the works are affordable and I was very tempted by several of them. Until 19 December
Julia Maiuri: Yesterday & The End @ Workplace
The dissolve is the cinematic technique where one image fades as another comes through, briefly overlapping – it’s something we see in films all the time even if we don’t take notice of it. It’s designed to be a transitory moment and Julia Maiuri captures them in freeze frame and immortalises them in the permanence of paint, Until 6 January.
All images copyright and courtesy respective artists and gallery. Opera gallery image Eva Herzog photography. Royal Drawing School photo: Gregory De Wode.
