Gallery run 7th November

1361Art Marathon. Weekly runs tracked on GPS with stats, plus drop-ins at 8 galleries.
Eight pictures posted weekly plus the updated map.

1362Patrick Staff at Serpentine Gallery explores some of the problems humankind faces. Acid rain is simulated in the gallery with this metal drum filling up with lactic acid and acetic acid. For those into biology, these are mild organic acids important in cell metabolism.

1363Peter Doig at Michael Werner.
Gallery 12 on my map.

1364Alvaro Barrington at Sadie Coles HQ with evocative paintings.
Gallery 13 on my map.

1365Claire Tabouret at Almine Rech with elegant portraits.
Gallery 15 on my map.

1366Cy Twombly at #GagosianLondon with classic style sculpture made from simple materials and some then cast in bronze.
Gallery 14 on my map.

1367Lisa Brice at Stephen Friedman exploring alternative representations of the female figure.
Gallery 21 on my map.

1368Grayson Perry at Victoria Miro Gallery with pots and woven carpets that explore social themes.
Gallery 22 on my map.

1369Betty Parsons at Alison Jacques Gallery with beautiful painted wooden sculptures.
Gallery 28 from my map.

Gallery run 1st October

1351Albert Oehlen at Serpentine Gallery. The bit I liked in his interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine was when the artist said he was sick of Turpentine and HUO quickly warded off the potential pun.

1352Albert Oehlen at Serpentine Gallery is showing this retrospective based on a mash-up of a curious unassuming work by a forgotten artist John Graham. This is the remix series. Spot the mermaid, text element, lock of hair.

1353There’s a message in Leake Street.

1354This is not a light. Ceci n’est pas une lampe, back here in Leake Street.

1355Jannis Varelas at Frieze Week with a stylish use of colour, gesture and detailed flowers.

1356Andre Butzer with Galerie Max Hetzler showing at Frieze Week.
This artist was mentioned earlier in the week by the great abstract painter Albert Oehlen as one of his favourites.

1357Alexandros Vasmoulakis at Frieze Week. What great colours in this abstract.

1358William Monk with Pace Gallery showing at Frieze Week. Lovely abstract work.

Gallery run 20th June

1331Dulwich Pavilion inspired by the Nigerian cloth patterns of artist Yinka Ilori‘s native country. Pricegore architects complete an impressive team.

1332Serpentine Pavilion, what a fantastic jagged roof it has!

1333It’s here!
This year’s Serpentine Pavillion has arrived, curtesy of the architect Junya Ishigami. The rock-covered roof was the chief design consideration and all else is periphery. A crow was the inspiration , the wings mimicked by several tons of slate. Destination, due South!, since for added impact the roof is also aligned to due South, tapering to the rear in the NE and NW directions.

1334He’s still as ascerbic as ever. Blah, blah, blah. The colours are stunning, helped by the velvet fabric. The old print set hasn’t changed but the experimentation with paint continues apace. Mel Bochner at Simon Lee Gallery.

1335Jannis Kounellis at Almine Rech Gallery.
These striking letter-canvases are inspired by ship’s lettering in the artist’s native home of Piraeus, Greece’s shipping port close to Athens.

1336Howardena Pindell at Victoria Miro with collages comprised of paper chads- those circular discs of paper made from hole punchers. Not to be confused with hanging Chad or Florida 2000. These artworks are very beautiful and represent the artist’s mature phase, set against her determination to recover from a severe car accident.

1337Well this is the subject of many an art school dissertation on movement and it’s arrived in London, in the flesh, as it were. Even in its latent state with power switched off it can’t resist a few impromptu light events, Obviously the shadows below are staged, but the refractions further up casting light pools on the surrounding walls are more telling of the machine’s potential to play with light. This is Lazlo Moholy Nagy‘s light machine -a sort of hybrid cross between film projector and stop-motion light house. On show at Hauser and Wirth.

1338Keith Tyson at Hauser and Wirth exploring the genre of flower painting. This is the standout example for me. Beautifully painted too.

1339Francis Bacon at Gagosian Gallery They are all behind glass which makes them a pain to photograph, oblique angle photo to remove my own reflection followed by correction using the tilt toolbox- is not really the way to experience art. Being there , however, brings a few sublime moments and the eye’s remarkable ability to selectively choose its depth of field offers are far more forgiving editing of miscellaneous reflections.

Gallery run 5th June

Marylyn Molisso at Tension Fine Art.
Exciting new show at a gallery that supports experimental art in South East London.

Street art meets canal boat on Islington stretch of Regent’s Canal.

On the water near Kings Cross, propane tanks aglow.

Laure Prouvost at Lisson Gallery with text on a corner.

Faith Ringgold at Serpentine Gallery with poignant painted canvases integrated into stitched, quilted, borders.

Faith Ringgold at Serpentine Gallery with paintings showing powerful narratives. A burning ship and its trade are the very symbols of injustice.

Faith Ringgold holds court and all of our attention at Serpentine Gallery today as she discusses her work there.

Shelagh Cluett at Greengrassi with delicate, sea-creature-like sculptures.

David Lieske at Corvi Mora.

Gallery run 22nd May

1311
Zaha Hadid design for the Sackler Gallery where we met for a press view this morning.

1312
Luchita Hurtado at The Serpentine Gallery with beautiful studies of light. There are also fine figurative works and amazing abstracts in this retrospective of a woman who met artists from all the great artistic movements of the last century whilst resolutely pursuing her own ideas.

1313
Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery with large scale stone works exhibited in the gallery’s courtyard. They look stunning in the summer sun.

1314
Jason Martin at Lisson Gallery with bands of paint that remind me of newly laid snow snagging occasionally on small protrusions.

1315
Fergus Polglase at Central Saint Martins graduate show. Great tongue-in-cheek abstract painting of a motorbike road trip.

1316
Navid Nuur at Parasol Unit with blown up doodles from those scribble pads where customers try out the new pens. We are all graffiti artists when we are not thinking about it.

1317
Frank Bowling at Hales Gallery with abstracts reminiscent of the artist’s native Grenada. A warning is struck too as the iridescent water sometimes has rubbish strewn across the surface portrayed playfully by collage.

1318
Near Brick Lane. Was in the prospect of a bagel or this fab mural that injected energy into those flagging limbs?

1319
Sarah Morris at White Cube Gallery with an installation that reminds me of artificial intelligence.

Gallery run 28th June

1201
Roger Hiorns of Corvi Mora with works based on the human figure.

1202
Pae White of Greengrassi with, yes, Doritos embedded into a block and cast in nylon.

1203
Rae Hicks at RCA MA show.

1204
Tom Kaniok at RCA MA show with great, bold forms.

1205
Lydia Boehm at RCA MA show with vivid gestural paintings that address the viewer almost like signs.

1206
Alvin Ong at RCA MA show.

1207
Christo and Jeanne Claude at The Serpentine with an exhibition of their barrel projects to accompany their giant Mastaba which is floating on the water near by.

1208
Josh Pye at Royal Academy School’s show.

1209
Thomas Langley at Royal Academy school’s show. Let’s get straight to the point!

Gallery run 11th June

1181
Serpentine Pavilion 2018 by Frida Escobedo that uses standard roof tiles to create the loosely stacked walls. These in turn have been orientated and cut away as shown, to create powerful juxtapositions with the outside space.

1182
An unassuming roof tile forms the basic structural element of the Serpentine Pavilion 2018.

1183
Frida Escobedo stands in the 5mm of water that makes a striking reflecting surface in her Serpentine Pavilion as the press capture images at an opening event.

1184
Frida Escobedo and her team who have worked together to create the Serpentine Pavilion.

1185
Tomma Abts at the Serpentine Gallery with abstract paintings of radiating circles and other geometric forms. The use of shadows cast by these different forms helps create a powerful overall composition.

1186
Christo and Jeanne Claude with a giant artwork on The Serpentine made from stacked oil barrels.

Gallery run 26th April

1111
Rezi Van Lankveld of Approach Gallery with great surreal, abstract paintings.

1112
Evren Tekinoktay at The Approach.

1113
Spencer Finch of Lisson Gallery showing at Whitechapel Gallery in Art For The Elizabeth Line.

1114
Paloma Varga Weisz of Sadie Coles HQ showing at Whitechapel Gallery.

1115
Maria Bartuszova of Alison Jacques showing at Whitechapel Gallery.

1116
Sondra Perry at Serpentine Galleries with a reinterpretation of a tragic event, originally depicted by Turner, of sick and weakened slaves being thrown overboard a ship to cash in on insurance payouts.

1117
Stefanie Heinze at Saatchi Gallery.

1118
Chris Hood at Saatchi Gallery.

1119
Pasta hanging off sculpture in preparation for studio lunch, with machine in the foreground. Iconic Peckham show with ArtCPGalleria.

Gallery run 13th April

Like last week, this Gallery-Run-write-up has been reduced to the individual photo captions, shown further down the page, in order to make room for a temporary project called Plus 1 that now follows. Guests join me, hopefully, on a gallery run and will share ideas. Alas there are still no takers, though admittedly I still haven’t really asked anyone else yet, beyond the hopeful invitations shown last week. This week’s article features something entirely different, though still comprising a sort of plus 1, whilst also verging on the confessional! For two months I learnt the names of artists associated with London-Frieze-exhibiting galleries, from lists of paper whilst out jogging being careful not to run into lampposts or pedestrians. Each list could be hand-held and studied. Some even show the effects of rain or of being stuffed into a pocket. Along with a two word summary of something that each artist did, the process helped to create a stack of memory boxes that follows the sequence of the numbered lists shown in the photograph below. The memory boxes automatically bring forth the next in the stack, provided they are cycled through in recall about once every fortnight. The boxes also bring with them an essence of each artist, since they have gradually filled up with experiences of gallery visits. Memory is a strange thing and this sequential recall is probably born through the need to piece together consecutive events in time, something the philosopher David Hume considered to be the rather unphilosophical survival function that shapes the human brain.

listsThe Lists Cycle. Gallery Runner lists in the foreground.

1091
Pablo Bronstein of Herald Street Gallery with a film that crosses the glam game show format with some of the grand narratives of Greek mythology.

1092
Bernard Cohen at Flowers Gallery.

1093
Elizabeth Murray of Pace Gallery showing at Victoria Miro with what looks like biological imagery on the shaped canvas.

1094
Joan Mitchell at Victoria Miro in a group show.

1095
Carlos Garaicoa at Parasol Unit with reconstructions of tiled Cuban adverts, albeit with a few alterations.

1096
Fab boat in Camden.

1097
Ryan Gander of Lisson Gallery with carved shapes from an important mathematical blueprint. Meanwhile the black pile of sand steadily grows during the show from a thin stream of sand falling out of a hole in the ceiling.

1098
Pedro Reyes of Lisson Gallery with a room full of sculpture and wall tableaux forming a complete system of ideas, some executed and some pending.

1099
Ian Cheng of Pilar Corrias showing at Serpentine Galleries. We see what appears to be a simple animation but gradually learn that the creature is living in real time and using a sort of AI to try things out and get used to its rather unusual body.

Gallery run 20th December

Rose Wiley has a show at the Serpentine Gallery and the jog out west from Peckham proceeds over Lambeth Bridge, along the Embankment to Chelsea before finally reaching the damp Autumn grass of Hyde Park. In the show, a great painting made of several panels, has been installed where two walls meet at right angles. A sort of half panorama is the result. Several figures float around the space, sporting tabs like the kind that were used in children’s cut-out kits for adding outfits and interspersed amongst these figures are various symbols such as ovals and bits of text, each deeply evocative. The overall effect is a painting that feels like a powerful memory since, in addition to the aforementioned symbols, there is also an extensive network of completely untouched canvas. The artist hasn’t tried to fill this space, as would be the case in a normal panorama functioning as a window on the world, but rather has left the raw canvas as a conduit allowing the eye to move smoothly from one symbol to the next.

To the north of Hyde Park lies the little cul-de-sac of canal called the Paddington Basin, and it is via this little stretch of waterway that one then arrives at Lisson Gallery, spared in the meantime from hearing the thunderous A40 traffic, by a sort of emotional bubble that this charming stretch of canal has put in place. Carmen Herera paints jagged forms that jump across the canvas like lightening bolts and it is in the first of Lisson’s two galleries that the viewer encounters them. In addition there is a surprise. The artist has installed a three-dimensional structure, about the size of two back to back wardrobes and with its shiny blue paint, it seems to encourage various dialogues with the other brightly coloured paintings in the show.

In the second gallery are artworks by Roy Colmer from the 1970’s. Think back to the tech prevalent then and we have bulky old TV sets with horizontal band patterns, flickering away due to the limits of their technology. These are exactly what the artist has evoked in his paintings with their uniformly wide bands of colour. The unique quality of these bands is that they change colour during a single pass and this is what makes them hard to pin down as simply a band of coloured paint, a feat achieved, we are told, by the artist having rigged the spray gun to switch colour whilst still applying the paint in a continuous stream.

Lastly, in Brewer Street, Amanda Wilkinson has set up a new gallery after the restructuring of what was previously Wilkinson gallery. She has taken approximately half of the original artist list and of these artists, Jewyo Rhii, is showing a great installation of make-shift printing devices. Reversed lettering and some strange pivoted arms along with black lettering marks on the gallery wall accompanied by various drips and splats, provides the evidence that these machines actually work, up to a fashion. A lump of rock has been placed in a makeshift tray and this seems to function quite literally as a power supply in the manner of the swinging motion of a pendulum in a clock. With this low tech set-up the artist has enabled the viewer to turn away from the immediate function of a printing device and, rather as Roy Colmer had done, in fact, with his depictions of the TV raster pattern, offer instead a profound meditation on the general nature of the reproduced image without the burdensome presence of the duplication devices themselves.

951
The Gingerbread City in Museum of Architecture with different companies of architects offering various cameos that have fitted together in this carefully designed edible city.

952
Rose Wylie at Serpentine Gallery with a panoramic artwork that uses a novel method to portray the human figure.

953
Carmen Herrera of Lisson Gallery with evocative hard edge paintings.

954
Roy Colmer at Lisson Gallery with subject matter based on old flickering 70’s TV sets, but using a cleverly rigged spray gun that can change colour on a single pass.

955
Susan Hiller of Lisson Gallery with painted over wallpaper allowing bits of cartoon and word-caption to show through.

956
Bex Simon has designed this great public participation artwork on Westminster Magistrates Court.

957
Gower Street birthplace of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood.

958
Polly Apfelbaum of Frith Street Gallery with a show themed around a foot drawing by Dubuffet.

959
Jewyo Rhii at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery with an imaginative design for a printing press. The rocks help the hidden upper sections swing against the gallery wall, imparting black ink from the various word moulds in the process.