Ione & Mann present a solo exhibition Bárbara Alegre: Dancing in the Sky, Waiting for the Sunset. This intimate and deeply personal body of work created over a period of more than a year, follows the loss of her parents in 2020. For this series of paintings, predominately works on paper, Alegre used the make-up and brushes her mother left behind. What started initially as an attempt to keep her close and a way to process the unassimilable void, gradually evolved into a symbolic exploration of what "makes up" who we are, our beliefs, and the links to the world around us.
ammann // projects return to Cromwell Place with two exhibitions as part of the weekend.
REV - Studio Nucelo - FWD is an extensive exhibition celebrating over a decade of Ammann working with Italian art and design collaborative Studio Nucleo. Featuring a curated selection of significant works from Nucleo's projects since 2009 and brand-new creations. Meanwhile, the gallery also bring A Different Landscape, the first solo exhibition of unique works by Sumie García Hirata, a Mexican artist of Japanese descent, for the first time in Europe.
Several of our Emerging Members are also staging exhibitions this weekend:
Black Box Projects presents Joanne Dugan: Persistent Awakening, a series of works which were inspired and created throughout the pandemic in New York City. The exhibition explores the intersections between photography and painting, combining traditional analogue photo materials and processes to record both traces of the hand and the interaction between light and material, with the resulting works evolving into an almost painterly process in the artist’s typically monochrome palette.
Casa AmaCord’s exhibition Macondo: Colombian Imaginaries brings together a group of 15 contemporary artists from Colombia to explore the vicissitudes of memory and the malleability of collective narratives. The artists engage with themes of landscape, life, memory, society and the imaginary through a diverse range of mediums including painted works, weaving and installation.
Berntson Bhattacharjee’s The Red Room, is an exploration into the colour red by four emerging UK-based artists for whom this colour is a central element of their practice. The exhibition explores the polarising meaning of the colour through art history, a colour which has traditionally represented sin, prostitution and shame but that has also represented notions of liberation. Artists Shannon Bono, Hannah Lim, Paula Turmina and Georg Wilson present new works, illustrating what this colour means to each of them.
DADA Gallery presents Fluidity, a group exhibition featuring works by artists Samson Bakare, Daniel Obasi, Abe Ogunlende and Cameron Ugbodu. The exhibition explores themes of gender expression, sexuality and queerness through the lens of two photographers and two painters living in Africa and in the West. Each artist expresses a unique take on these themes through their work, offering a refreshingly authentic take on how a new generation of Black artists view themselves.
Peruke Projects have curated the group exhibition Rituals and Rebirths in collaboration with A.I. Gallery, examining three diasporic Southeast Asian multi-disciplinary artists. Anida Yoeu Ali, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Quỳnh Lâm all live between cultures and, together, their works bring an opportunity to reflect upon experiences of displacement and otherness. During London Gallery Weekend, Rasmussen and Lam will host live performance works and the gallery are hosting a panel discussion examining Performance Art in the Southeast Asian Diaspora.
Kids can join in the London Gallery Weekend fun too—here are some of galleries putting on family-friendly events.
Berntson Bhattacharjee's The Red Room will host a play morning, with art supplies provided for kids to draw and create, inspired by the artworks and the colour red. Meanwhile, Joanne Dugan will running a masterclass at Black Box Projects to teach the whole family how to create cyanotypes like the ones she uses in her work—a type of photographic image that doesn’t use a camera. The event is suitable for children over 5 and all materials are provided.
Both events will run on Saturday 14 May, 10.00-11.00.
Finally, as part of London Craft Week, Richard Øiestad and Are Blytt from the PYTON team have curated The Country Pavilion: Norway an exhibition highlighting Norwegian art and design from the 20th century to the ultra-contemporary. Their gallery space is divided into several room typologies as a nod to the apartment it once was, using this as a catalytic idea for creating a stage for the works on show.