Fiona Banner | Gallery Runner

Richard Deacon at Lisson Gallery with strained, stressed and, here, undulating forms.

Tony Cragg at Lisson Gallery with stacked forms with highly worked and intricate surfaces.

Bright oil pattern on a sunny day.

Hilary Lloyd at Sadie Coles with images and sounds from her adopted Thamesmead.

Erik Lindman at Almine Rech with attractive, shard-like paintings with glimmers of light and colour set in plain backgrounds.

Merlin Carpenter at Simon Lee Gallery with bright well-worked paintings offering some surreal twists.

Ged Quinn at Stephen Friedman Gallery with images that carry interesting surface markings that work with and against the 3d landscapes depicted.

Mark Bradford at Hauser and Wirth with amazingly intricate paintings that have underlying stacked paper structures.

Fiona Banner at Frith Street Gallery with sea-like images and objects plus a marvellous text detachable from a giant pile at the gallery entrance.

Today is another hot day and with sun cream and cap at the ready, I head over Lambeth Bridge towards Pace Gallery just off Piccadilly. Nathalie Du Pasquier has created an installation out of the entire gallery. Central to the space is an inner room with walls painted red onto which four works have been hung. One artwork catches my eye here, comprising several chunky objects painted in separate primary colours but concealed behind a white screen allowing a multitude of shadows and colour combinations to be explored in their resulting still life depiction. Other paintings include factory-like images which occupy a strange middle space between the expanse of landscape and the intimate private space of a still-life set up. This is partly achieved through the artist having made wooden maquettes of the original objects before then painting these directly.

A few streets away in Golden Square, there is a group show at Frith Street Gallery and three artists catch my eye, Daniel Silver, Fiona Banner and Callum Innes. They have created, respectively, life-sized sculptures of elegant figures, strips of paper with heavily worked graphite surfaces and finally a painting of solid blocks of colour with delicate overworking that soften their geometric forms. With the temperature rising now towards midday I am switching vest and T-shirt over as I leave, in order to remain presentable in the galleries.

Along Eastcastle street, just north of Oxford Circus, I come to Pilar Corrias Gallery. Here another group show announces that summer is upon us, since this is a preferred format for this time of year, and there is some great work on show here too. Judith Bernstein has produced a fantastic depiction of life, the universe and everything in a single compact painting. Downstairs, Sophie Von Hellermann has joined two canvases together in the middle of the room to create an image that extends across their two surfaces up to the ceiling. It is a diving board but with a marvellous sense of light and colour that gives the art a fantastic sense of presence.

Finally at Alison Jacques Gallery I see two great artists on show. Of particular note are the artworks of Sue Dunkley. They are portraits of figures in social poses and situations and the best examples are two paintings each comprising two bathers. Though they inhabit a social space, the figures have a powerful sense of self-reflection and seem absorbed in their own consciousnesses uniting perfectly the public and the private lives of an individual. Now it is time to meet my Argentine relatives at our rendezvous just off Piccadilly and with their tickets loaded up on my iPhone, I will be taking them around a show.

Nathalie Du Pasquier at Pace Gallery with simplified and striking cityscapes that merge into the genre of still life.