Gallery run 28th April

Peckham to Chalk Farm.

Having finished coffee and porridge, I can’t delay the run any further. I complete the toe stretches, grab a half beaker of water and set off towards London Bridge. I am outside Damian Hirst’s gallery on Newport Street where I have just returned an unexpected phone call, spotted as I had pulled the phone camera out of a sock I use to keep it wedged in my pocket, and then go in. Ashley Bickerton is showing assemblages that carry a strong flavour of tropical islands with sharks, coconuts hung in small clumps and diving gear that point back to their origins whilst catching the eye with bright flecks of colour. In addition wall mounted silver rock tableaux adorn the gallery walls.
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Ashley Bickerton at Newport Street Gallery with assemblages and vivid sea based objects.

Onwards now northwards across St James park where I dodge the selfies on the bridge and up Berkeley Street to Almine Rech. Here Japanese composer Ryoji Ikeda has created grids from the miniaturised digits of irrational numbers. The subsequent jpeg seems burdened by the weight of information of these numbers, whilst the surface of the artwork itself with the digits shrunk down to the size of dots, appears like a sort of black and white texture resembling the two-tone fabrics used to cover loudspeakers in the 70’s. Extraordinary work.
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Ryoji Ikeda at Almine Rech Gallery with artworks based on irrational numbers, that although simple in essence, require an infinite number of digits to represent them.

Along Maddox Street eastwards now towards Golden Square. Annette Messager is showing giant safety pins made in black chunky material hung from the ceiling of Marian Goodman Gallery. Other objects on a similar scale create a Lilliputian haberdashery. Elsewhere 50 prohibitions are displayed ironically opposite a 51st that prohibits prohibitions.
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Annette Messager of Marian Goodman Gallery with pictures of prohibitions.

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Sol Le Witt with a surprising installation upstairs in Marian Goodman Gallery.

Then across the square to Frith Street Gallery and I see a gallery worker come towards me. I give a polite hello but am aware of the slightly unusual interaction and then with glance round I see why, as I instantly recognise the tall slim frame of Cornelia Parker as she works the camera. It is her opening day and she has to pose for two photographers. I dutifully point my iPhone in the other direction concentrating on her artworks. She is showing video films of revellers in New York who have dressed in horror garb for a festival, but have expanded the remit to include Donald Trump wigs personifying the general anxiety of their class.
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Cornelia Parker of Frith Street Gallery with video work of street revellers in New York shortly before last year’s controversial election.

Nearby I see work at Pilar Corrias, one of my favourite galleries in the area, before heading north to Chalk Farm and the large classical facade of the Zabludowicz Collection.
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Urban Zellweger at Pilar Corrias.

A group of photographers are showing and like a trainspotter I relish the chance to catch the first Jeff Wall artwork in over a year. A light box illuminates a shabby river going into a tunnel and I am struck by its unkempt beauty like some of the canals I run along.
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Jeff Wall with a beautiful/ shabby river at the Zabludowicz Collection.

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Sara Cwynar at Zabludowicz Collection with photos of plastic based structures.

Then it is the long run south and today with time pressing I opt for the shortest route through London’s busy streets.
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Conrad Shawcross at the Crick Institute.

Gallery run 2nd March

West End to Thames to London Bridge.

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Gerhard Richter of Marian Goodman Gallery with parallel lines printed on a grand scale.

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Niele Toroni of Marian Goodman Gallery.

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Maria Lassnig of Hauser and Wirth with human figures that display their inner sense of being.

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Ibrahim Mahama at White Cube with materials used in trade but displayed on epic scale.

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Alice Theobald of Pilar Corrias Gallery with film for 3D specs. Good film and installation.

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Josiah McElheny of White Cube with a reimagining of Modernism and the different paths it could have taken. 3 separate installations.

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John Bock of Sadie Coles HQ with a film and props based on the American Western.

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Ian McKeever of Matt’s Gallery with photo painting juxtapositions in deconstructed space.

Gallery run 13th January

Saatchi Gallery to London Bridge along Thames.

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David Salle of Maureen Paley Gallery showing at Saatchi Gallery.

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Josef Albers at David Zwirner with works on theme of both this shape and the famous layered squares.

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John Baldessari at Marian Goodman Gallery with images from Hollywood and Miro plus text.

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Dexter Dalwood of Simon Lee Gallery showing at Saatchi Gallery.

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Austin Emery led this participatory stone carving project with residents of the estate.

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Annette Messager at Marian Goodman Gallery in a group show upstairs.

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Bjarne Melgaard at Saatchi Gallery.

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Sigmar Polke at Michael Werner with a series of pour paintings.

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Ansel Krut of Stuart Shave Modern Art showing at Saatchi Gallery.

Gallery run 16th December

Battersea Park, Hyde Park.

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Haris Epaminonda at Rodeo Gallery using inset light coloured wood.

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Maria Nepomuceno at Victoria Miro with sculptures using woven beads and fired clay.

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David Ogle showing at The Royal British Society Of Sculptors.

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Caragh Thuring at Thomas Dane Gallery with delicate paintings on unprimed canvas here.

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Dayanita Singh at Frith Street Gallery with photos and wooden constructions evocative of 20th century institutions and museums.

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Ken Price at Hauser And Wirth with beautiful ceramics and drawings in this retrospective.

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Robert Mapplethorpe at Alison Jacques Gallery mostly figurative but here is a TV with chains.

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Gerasimos Floratos at Pilar Corrias with figures that have both a primitive and cartoon quality.

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Stephan Balkenhol of Stephen Friedman Gallery in a group show at Marian Goodman Gallery.

Gallery run 27th October

Regent’s Canal from the west to Hackney.

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Tony Cragg at Lisson Gallery with sculptures inspired by organic and technological forms.

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Maureen Gallace at Maureen Paley with work inspired by the artist’s local landscape.

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Eddie Martinez of Timothy Taylor at Frieze 2016 sculpture park.

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Rallou Panagiotou at Ibid Gallery with sculptures inspired by a derelict holiday resort.

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Tala Madani at Pilar Corrias with a metaphysical take on disco.

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Nairy Bagrhamian at Marian Goodman Gallery in Frieze 2016 sculpture park.

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Ed Ruscha at Gagosian with works exploring ideas of extension in space and time.

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Jeff Koons at Almine Rech with recreations of old master paintings bearing a mirror ball. Inspiration from Kiss Of Judas by Giotto at The Arena Chapel in Padua.

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David Adamo at Ibid Gallery with small figures on ceder plinths.

Gallery run 8th September

From the Peckham Festival through St James’ Park to Sadie Coles HQ. Along the Regent’s Canal to Stuart Shave Modern Art and finally Marian Goodman’s opening of Giuseppe Penone.

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Nicolas Deshayes at Stuart Shave Modern Art. The pipes are hot!

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Uri Anan at Sadie Coles HQ with altered objects arranged in boxes and on tables.

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Dorothea Tanning FlowerPaintings at Alison Jacques.

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Jack McConville Capital Depths at IBID London. Money as water in these paintings.

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Giuseppe Penone at Marian Goodman Gallery. Art Povera.

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Dinh Q Le The Colony in The Peckham Festival 2016. The use of drones for filming makes for stunning footage about the guano harvesters on a Peruvian island.

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Rachel Rose Lake Valley at Pilar Corrias. Animated film with childlike imagery but dealing with universal themes of rejection and loneliness!

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David Korty at Sadie Coles HQ with collages text portraits.

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Invader

Sculpture in the City 2016, 12th August

Some artworks take time to absorb fully their significance and this was the case with Michael Lyons sculpture, Centaurus. As a consequence of this, the present gallery run, entitled Sculpture in the City 2016, is described on two separate time scales, the day itself and a few days later from whence I was able to cast my gaze across the City whilst on a separate run and at a greater distance. The inspiration for a critique of this sort was also inspired by the writer Marcel Proust who used the changing distance of a spectator to reveal different truths about an object under mental scrutiny.

Close up, Sculpture in the City is a trail that extends south from the building formerly known as the NatWest tower, and for those who are interested in its design, it displays in its vertical section the logo of the bank. Doubling back at Leadenhall market, one soon arrives at the grand plaza of the Leadenhall Cheesegrater, and then further back one arrives at the plaza of the St Mary’s Axe Gherkin. This doubling back at Leadenhall gives the sculpture trail an overall V shape with the Cheesegrater near the tip.

It was this constellation of three buildings I would see from afar as I jogged round the long curving banks of the Thames a few days later. They formed a slowly rotating compass which would constantly pick out due south thanks to the illumination of a rather vivid red sunset reflecting off the Cheesgrater’s long sloping facade. Thanks also to Michael Lyons sculpture, it would inspire me on my return home to write the present account of the sculpture trail mindful of the fact that some artworks give a delayed reaction to the understanding of their truths.

On the day, Michael Lyon’s sculpture appeared sited on ground level in a plaza close to these iconic buildings. It had a roughly worked steel form and stone plinth and what looked like a gestural curve applied to a horizontal steel bar as a head and which sat atop a thick tapered pole in reference to a neck. It had a presence a bit like a sentinel and its name Centaurus suggested it was distracted by a point or constellation in the southern sky, despite the bright midday sun temporarily obscuring any poetic reference to the stars. Then comes the moment referred to at the beginning of this account, of realisation. The sculpture was actually in alignment with the paving slabs of the plaza and this in turn through the vision of architects, extended to an overall south facing aspect for all the buildings in that little region of the city. Thus from afar I would be looking at London’s Compass as the three buildings of the trail formed a V shaped constellation brought to life by the glowing tip of the foremost building, the Cheesegrater, a compass which would be there in perpetuity for any city visitor henceforth to help them pick out due south and thus guide them on their way.

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Centaurus by Michael Lyons. The sculpture faces due south, as do the surrounding buildings, in fact, and is the inspiration for this week’s blog, the London Compass.

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Gavin Turk in Sculpture In The City

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Huma Bhabha of Stephen Friedman in Sculpture In The City.

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William Kentridge of Marian Goodman gallery. The artist has produced a composite portrait of a poverty stricken figure selling coals.

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Sarah Lucas of Sadie Coles HQ in Sculpture In The City.

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Ugo Rondinone of Sadie Coles HQ in Sculpture In The City.

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Lukas Duwenhogger at Raven Row. Exotic symbol-laden paintings.

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Giuseppe Penone in Sculpture In The City. Bronze tree with smooth boulders.

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Brick Lane activity.

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Anthony Caro of Gagosian in Sculpture In The City. Made from additions to a sea floatation tank.

Parkland Walk, 23rd June

As usual this run is a loop, but unlike the Regent’s Canal circuit described elsewhere, it extends further north to take in Parkland walk. Parkland Walk is a nature reserve created from an old railway used until 1970. Amongst its trees and wildlife, graffiti and nature have rounded off the sharp angular forms of station platforms and decorated the arched bridges that carry criss-crossing roads overhead. Meanwhile, walkers and cyclists barely notice the gentle gradient of this green corridor that rises slowly up to Highgate from Finsbury Park.

From here, the beautiful green space of Hampstead Heath provides the next section of the loop before I arrive at Camden Arts Centre which despite its name is well north of Camden on the Finchley Road. It is hosting Anya Gallaccio and as I wasn’t allowed to get a photo of another group-show inside, am relieved to see her artwork stretched out across the garden, where no photography restriction could possibly apply. As an object it looks like a long, woven, rope structure and even has some similarities to a hammock. This impression is reinforced further by it being draped across the trees in the garden, having extended from the roof terrace space above the garden cafe. With its clear structure of frayed, brown rope that has been joined with knots and cross-links, the real subject of the artwork seems to switch back towards the trees on which it is resting. Somehow the artwork serves as a reminder that the living material over which it is currently draped has an intricacy and strength all of its own.

Whilst Parkland Walk and Anya Gallaccio’s artwork have united to create a theme of nature and its regeneration into cultural artefacts, the next piece at Michael Werner Gallery remains obstinately removed from nature. Jorg Immendorf has painted two figures of children in a cartoon-like idiom that oppose nature through their puffed out cheeks and inflated torsos. They represent a sort of distorted or lost innocence. As the artwork was painted during the Vietnam war, the theme of lost innocence is also historically relevant, though the precise meaning of the image still remains hard to pin down. Formally, the painting is a cut-out round two figures and a pool of water they are sitting in.

Soap suds cascade down these yellow cartoonish torsos and collect on the surface of water, still buoyed by the vigour of a sponge that created them, and then a marvellous little piece of logic unites the yellow of the skin with the blue of the water to determine that the submerged body should necessarily be tinted green. This green and yellow colour palette sets up a system based on the false initial premise of the bright yellow human flesh and lends a sense of disquietude to the image but also a beauty. Then with false premises of my very own it is necessary to make all haste through the busy metropolis and visit the next stop which shall be the RA Schools show in Piccadilly.

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Parkland Walk between Finsbury Park and Highgate. On the way to the Camden Arts Centre.

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Guillermo Kuitca at Hauser and Wirth. The fragmentation cubism-lines become a floor plan.

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Anya Gallaccio of Thomas Dane Gallery showing at Camden Arts Centre. Part of Making and Unmaking show.

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Victoria Morton at Sadie Coles HQ. Colourful images with beautiful recurring motifs.

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Jorg Immendorff at Michael Werner. The babies are iconic symbols of innocence amidst his fierce campaigning against the Vietnam war.

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Nairy Baghramian at Marian Goodman Gallery. The pole structures hold the elements together

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Anna Paterson at RA Schools Show 2016. Oil, pastel and print on aluminium. Another interesting artist at the RA schools show.

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Joseph Grigely shows The Gregory Battcock Archive at Marian Goodman Gallery. Gregory himself is photographed in front of the first plane painted by Alexander Calder for Braniff Airlines in 1972.

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Rafal Topolewski at RA Schools Show 2016. Yellow, Orange and Black and Turn. Great paintings.

Gallery run 5th May

Monochromes and figures.

189Giacometti at Gagosian showing with Yves Klein.

188Yoshimoto Nara at Stephen Friedman with new paintings in his smooth style.

187Ettore Spalletti at Marian Goodman with paintings inspired by the Adriatic coast. The paintings are sculptural and here a white pencil acts as a pivot.

186Georg Baselitz at Whitecube with new paintings of the artist and wife Elke . He revisits images he made in the 70’s and makes the passing of time part of the work.

185How do you get a giant broken canvas through a small doorway? This striking large piece by Angela de la Cruz at Peer in Hoxton poses the question.

184Hoxton artwork creates a figure.

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182Keith Coventry at Pace London turns the famous twin arches logo into art.

181Piero Manzoni at Ibid . A single painting is placed in relation to a contemporary piece for a week.

Gallery run 11th March

James Coleman, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Lari Pittman offer their established styles in new works. Joanne Greenbaum and Polly Apfelbaum bring colour whilst Imran Qureshi, Jeff Zilm and Maria Taniguchi show great delicacy.121Lari Pittman at Thomas Dane Gallery with layered paintings.

122In Wardour Street, Chinatown, where the lanterns are up.

123Jeff Zilm at Simon Lee Gallery produced these filmic spray-painted images. He does a chemical reaction on 35mm film stock and transposes the results onto canvas.

124Polly Apfelbaum at Frith Street Gallery.

125James Coleman with a mini retrospective at Marian Goodman. This new piece is on a giant, bright, led screen that actually seems to radiate warmth.

126Maria Taniguchi at Ibid with a series of brick paintings.

127Rirkrit Tiravanija at Pilar Corrias was in discussion with Andrea Zittel shown above. She saw the rock as a symbolic place for a future commune shelter project.

128Imran Qureshi at Corvi Mora with Mughal inspired miniature watercolour paintings.

129Joanne Greenbaum at Greengrassi. Great drips, spaces and interconnections.