Tabish Khan, the @LondonArtCritic, picks his top 5 exhibitions to see in London after Easter. If you are looking for more exhibitions, check out his previous top 5.
Massoud Hayoun: Paper Ships at Larkin Durey
For an artist of North African heritage living in LA, it’s understandable that ICE features heavily in his work, which includes protests against them, and the migrant workers waiting in car parks that have become a target. The artist himself has been detained by ICE for protesting. He looks back at his own heritage, including his grandparents, the food he associates with his heritage and figurative paintings filled with powerful symbolism. Until 24th April.
Alina Zamanova: Fallout of Silence at General Assembly
Children sheltering under a blanket, trees bearing the scars of the war. Alina Zamarova lives and works in Kyiv and has seen how people and nature have been damaged by the war, but also hopes that they will both rebound once the war is over. She references how we seek solace in nature even in the darkest of times. Until 9th April.
Morag Keil: With You For Life at Arcadia Missa
Living in London means you’re being surveilled at all times; some people find this creepy, others walk on in blissful ignorance. Walk in front of Arcadia Missa, and you’ll be live-streamed into the gallery. While inside, it gets creepier, with camera-headed mannequins symbolising how much of human contact has been disintermediated by technology. Until 25th April.
Sholto Blisset: Orders of Magnitude at Pilar Corrias
I’ve always admired Sholto Blisset’s large-scale and highly skilled landscape paintings. For his debut exhibition at Pilar Corrias, he has created snaking rivers, lush forests and big open skies. Yet, they are all fictional landscapes that ask us to reconsider our interaction with the natural world and lose ourselves in these imagined worlds. Until 2nd May.
Museum of Edible Earth at Somerset House
How often do you get to walk into an exhibition and eat part of it? With tasting sessions running in the afternoons, you get to sample some soil samples in an exhibition that explores the idea of the nutritious value of eating certain types of soil. We get to try two, but there’s a whole range we can look at afterwards on the shelves, from across the world. Until 26th April, pay what you can.
All images are copyrighted and courtesy of the respective artists and galleries. Sholto Blissett photo: Eva Herzog. Somerset House photo: David Parry, PA.
