Don't miss the following exhibitions on view at Cromwell Place this week:
Tabari Artspace present INT. The Body – Sunrise, a solo exhibition by Emirati visual artist, Maitha Abdalla. Her multidisciplinary practice crosses photography, film, performance, works on canvas and installation. In which she interrogates dualities of right / wrong, sin / righteousness to expose the fragility of social constructs. Abdalla creates theatrical scenes cast with characters that represent various facets of the self and the exhibition’s title draws from theatrical codes and script writing; ‘INT’ signifying the internal.
Caribbean Cosmos at Lehmann Maupin is an exhibition of new work by Teresita Fernández. The New York-based artist is known for her expansive practice characterised by an interest in materiality, conceptual wayfinding and reflective engagement. She creates immersive work that critically rethinks landscape and place. The exhibition includes a charcoal sculpture; a large-scale, glazed ceramic panel; and a new series of seascape dissolves rendered on copper.
For their first exhibition at Cromwell Place, The Showroom present Adam Shield: Resonance State, 2022 and Navine G. Dossos: TINA-XXX, 2020. Utilising drawing and collage to explore interior worlds and wider structural conditions, Shield’s imagery includes references to post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi; dystopian dream projectors; 17th century alchemy. For her series of gouaches, Dossos has overlaid original stencils created for her 2019 exhibition, There Is No Alternative, with new logos collected in 2020, to explore similarities between the Prevent policy and Covid-19 pandemic.
Ingleby Gallery celebrates the 80th birthday of painter and sculptor, Craig Murray-Orr, with New Paintings & Old Sculpture. Murray-Orr's tiny, postcard-sized paintings on wooden panels are steeped in memory and personal meaning. Whilst appearing as landscapes, they act as a vehicle for the artist’s depictions of his emotional state. Rather than topography or geography, they are tiny poems. His paintings are joined by a series of sculptures from found wooden objects – faces from chair seats and sinuous body forms from a discarded crutch and a bentwood chair frame.
Black Box Projects hosts Apparitions, a solo exhibition of unique photographic works by Liz Nielsen, coinciding with the release of the artist's first monograph of the same title. Nielsen’s ‘light paintings’ are a contemporary application of the photogram method of camera-less photography, first mastered by Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, which reduces the medium to its most essential elements: light and photosensitive paper. Using traditional chemicals in the colour darkroom, Nielsen creates sublime depictions of otherworldly realms and forms.
20 / 20: Chris Killip / Graham Smith, Augusta Edwards Fine Art are reuniting the work of the two photographers for the first time in nearly 40 years. In part known for documenting the people and places affected by industrial decline in North East England from the late-1970s to mid-1980s, their last two-artist exhibition was The Serpentine Gallery’s Another Country (1985). Conceived in 2019 in collaboration with the photographers, before Killip’s death in 2020, but delayed by the pandemic, the exhibition is presented now as a tribute to their work and enduring friendship.
Tiwani Contemporary, in collaboration with Stevenson Gallery, South Africa, present For Dear Life, a solo exhibition by multi-disciplinary artist, Penny Siopsis, whose practice encompasses painting, film / video, photography and installation. The exhibition features the latest works from her ongoing series, Viscous Words (2017-), Atlas (2020-) and solo canvases exploring her theme of ‘the poetics of vulnerability’, a philosophically materialist and choreographic confluence of gesture, thought and response to cultural and environmental phenomena both globally and specifically in South Africa.
DADA Gallery celebrates the launch of DADA Magazine with a group show, Issue 001, including Bunmi Agusto, Okiki Akinfe, Remi Ajani, Emily Moore and Cameron Ugbodu. The exhibition elaborates on the magazine’s themes and interrogations – the spirit of radicalism and counterculture present in the word DADA, across art history and as a spiritual and societal concept -- particularly through the lens of a new generation of African artists. Both focus on contemporary image making, free of restrictions on what can and cannot be expressed and visualised.
Circle Gallery present East African Masters an exhibition focusing on a group of artists born in the 1940 and 1950s, who came to their visual practice in newly independent countries in their own ways. Geoffrey Mukasa fled the Idi Amin regime to study Fine Art in India; Theresa Musoke left Uganda to study at the Royal College of Art in London; Mohamed Otaybi was part of the debate about Sudanese cultural and heritage as a member or the Khartoum School and Sane Wadu gave up being a schoolteacher to become a self-taught artist.
The Sky News exhibition, Women at War: Afghanistan, was initiated by an interview that special correspondent, Alex Crawford, conducted with a talented artist as part of her forthcoming Women at War series. The documentaries look at the continuing fight for women’s rights in some of the world’s most hostile environments. The artist, whose identity is being protected for fear of persecution, is part of an underground, non-violent women’s resistance movement against the Taliban. Against the odds, she has managed to get her work from Kabul to London to be exhibited at Cromwell Place for two weeks.
Coexistence, presented by Janet Rady Fine Art, is the first solo exhibition in London of acclaimed Iranian-born artist, Masoud Akhavanjam. Using his in-depth knowledge of the scientific properties, of metal, particularly stainless steel, his artworks range in scale from intimate domestic pieces to monumental works. The eleven mesmerising metallic sculptures selected for Coexistence comment on the relationship between abstraction and form, the constant struggle for harmony, and the psychological and physical battle between the mind and brute force.
Sonia Balassanian: Five Decades in the Making, is a landmark survey exhibition of the iconic Iranian Armenian American artist’s art, presented by AB-ANBAR and curated in close dialogue with author, curator, broadcaster, Dr. Omar Kholeif. Renowned for her work on identity and human rights, the exhibition shows two sides of her practice: video works interrogating chains of endurance, trauma and the anonymity of the human condition; and drawings and paintings which demonstrate a more lyrical aspect, referencing the vast landscapes of her Iranian birthplace and her practice as a writer and poet.
TAFETA present Architecture of Tropical Spaces an exhibition of works from Martinique-based painter, Alan Joséphine, and Nigerian British sculptor, Niyi Olagunju, exploring the power and conflict between natural elements, environmental structures and notions of value. Joséphine’s vibrant abstract paintings celebrate the topography of the island’s landscape while also positioning tropical life as a daily confrontation with the power of nature. Olagunji’s sculptures are from his Baga Nimba series, a collection which explores the cultural legacies of African artefacts within the global art market.
Events
11 October:
11am – 12pm: Lehmann Maupin host an in conversation with artist, Teresita Fernández, and architect, Sir David Adjaye OBE. The event takes place in the Lavery Studio and complements the exhibition, Caribbean Cosmos.
5pm – 6pm: AB-ANBAR host, Imagining Otherwise: The Re-Birth of an Artist, a panel discussion with artist, Sonia Balassanian, author, curator, broadcaster, Dr. Omar Kholeif, and Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, Hans Ulrich Obrist. The event takes place in the Pavilion Gallery and complements the exhibition, Sonia Balassanian: Five Decades in the Making.
5.30pm – 6.30pm: ArtNet host, Tipping the Balance of Power, a panel discussion marking the launch of the ArtNet Intelligence Report, exploring how new innovations can help artists and dealers better benefit from skyrocketing auction prices. Chaired by ArtNet’s executive editor, Julia Halerin, with a panel of entrepreneurs: Max Kendrick, Co-founder and CEO, Fairchain; Lucien Smith, artist, founder of Serving the People and Director of Cultural Innovation, Lobus; Rachel Uffner, owner and director, Rachel Uffner Gallery. The event takes place in the Lavery Studio.
13 October:
4.30 – 5.30pm: Talk Art Live Recording. Russel Tovey and Robert Diament in discussion with visual artist, Jeppe Hein. The artist will share insight into his Ruinart Carte Blanche artist’s residency, including his Right Here, Right Now installation and also how he approached the creative interpretation of Ruinart’s history as patron of contemporary art and his invitation for us to embrace the moment through words and drawings.
6.30 – 8.30pm: Black Box Projects host a book launch, reception and artist talk between exhibiting artist, Liz Nielsen and Sarah Allen, Programme Director of the South London Gallery, celebrating the publication of Nielsen’s first monograph, Apparitions. The event takes place in the Arc Gallery and complements the exhibition, Apparitions.
14 October:
5pm – 6pm: TAFETA host, The Aesthetic Menu, a panel discussion on the aesthetics of dining, moderated by Christina Makris, author of Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World (Cutureshock, 2021), joined by TAFETA director, Ayo Adeyinka, artist, Cherry Truluck and curator and writer, Caroline Hobkinson. The event takes place in the Dining Room and complements the exhibition, Architecture of Tropical Spaces.