London Gallery Weekend: Six Must-See Exhibitions
Exhibition view: Larry Achiampong, And I saw a new heaven, Copperfield, London (4 May–17 June 2023). Courtesy the artist and Copperfield. Photo: Reece Straw.
London Gallery Weekend (2–4 June 2023) brings together more than 150 contemporary galleries for an extended hours programme across the capital. With so much to see in so little time, Ocula Magazine whittles down the list to six unmissable shows.
Larry Achiampong: And I saw a new heaven
Copperfield, 6 Copperfield Street
4 May–17 June 2023
Expect: a deep dive into an intermingled web of religion, race, and video games, drawing from both autobiography and empire.
British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong has never shied away from the proverbial elephant in the room, instead unearthing darker dynamics at play in contemporary culture.
For his second show at Copperfield, Achiampong trains his eye towards missionary legacies that have infiltrated both video games and Catholic church congregations like those he attended as a child.
His collages feature religious posters from Ghana, however, the white faces of its icons—Jesus and other biblical characters—are completely obscured by Achiampong's signature 'Cloudface' motif, reminiscent of the racist golliwog character.
Beside these jibes on colonial whitewashing, select video games with religious narratives, like Bayonetta 2, The Binding of Isaac, and Blasphemous, are set up on Nintendo Switch consoles for visitors to play.
'For me, video games were a place to explore alternate spaces from the get-go,' says Achiampong. 'But the more I explored those spaces, the more I realised their connections with my own reality.'
Jane Dickson: Fist of Fury
Alison Jacques, 16–18 Berners Street
11 May–1 July 2023
Expect: a psychogeographic drift through New York's underworld of sleaze and vice through a series of paintings.
Showing in London for the first time in two decades, American artist Jane Dickson presents new and recent paintings depicting Times Square pre-gentrification.
Dickson arrived in New York in 1977 and quickly landed a job programming visuals for backlit billboards—a perennial motif in her work to this day. From her loft overlooking Times Square, she built a visual language using photography to capture the streets as seen from above.
Based on these photographs, the works in Fist of Fury—like those shown in last year's Whitney Biennial—render New York's casinos, peep shows and punters in a venal glow.
But there's a curveball: unlike earlier works which reflected the ongoings outside her window during the period they were made, the later works look back on the New York she once knew. Indeed, many recent paintings are based on photographs she took in the 1980s, but only developed during lockdown.
All these years later, the urban magpie continues to use the New York of yesteryear as a marker of time. As Dickson said, 'I'm in a different place, the city's in a different place, the world's in a different place. It's a set of implications that are interesting to explore'.
Amanda Moström: itsanosofadog *It's an arse of a dog
Rose Easton, 223 Cambridge Heath Road
5 May–11 June 2023
Expect: a crossover of mourning and desire that draws uncomfortable but refreshingly honest comparisons between family, sex, and care.
Swedish artist Amanda Moström never compromises on her taboo subjects, and the collage, photography, sculpture, and found imagery on show at Rose Easton is no exception.
Scrupulously archiving her late grandmother's personal photos—think clumsy selfies in transit and heart-warming snapshots of gifted flowers—Moström layers the heirlooms against Klein blue inserts.
Elsewhere, video stills of a dog disciplining her suckling pups are framed using wool shorn from sheep at Moström's farm, shaped like keyholes. The result compares erotic acts with familial care, a dichotomy the artist knows well.
'I think I've always drawn links as they've both been quite reoccurring and constant with a fair bit of discomfort and urgency,' explains Moström. 'One more chosen, and the other more needed.'
As ever with Moström, the show evokes a sentiment of naivety and play, encouraging viewers to lower their guard around otherwise sober themes.
Gary Simmons: This Must Be the Place
Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row
25 May–29 July 2023
Expect: a poetic dissection on the stains of U.S. racism that feels both subtle and prescient.
To chime with his major retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (13 June–1 October 2023), Hauser & Wirth showcase Gary Simmons' first exhibition in their London gallery. New paintings and sculptures made using bronze—a first for the New York-born artist—segue from his explorations of Black histories and silencing.
Much like his famous 'erasure' works begun in the 1990s, this new series relies on his paint-smearing technique, a gesture that alludes to attempts to wipe away racist histories.
For This Must Be the Place, however, Simmons adopts a lighter touch. Informed by the painterly techniques and approaches of German artists Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, Simmons now turns his brush to the apparently apolitical star form, smudging and wiping it across his canvas.
In the past Simmons has referenced 20th-century cartoon characters such as Bosko. This streak continues in his new sculptures, which share formal affinities with the jive-talking crows in Disney's Dumbo (1941).
No doubt, there is method in this move. As Simmons said to Ocula Magazine: 'When you confront an image directly, you begin to question the original source and even the importance of the source, because it takes on a completely new meaning.'
Florence Peake: Enactment
Richard Saltoun, 41 Dover Street
30 May–8 July 2023
Expect: energetic documents of live action with somersaulting bodily assemblages in ethereal pastels.
Hot on the heels of their mammoth Southwark Park Galleries solo show, Factual Actual: Ensemble—which continues until 2 July—London-based artist Florence Peake brings a choreographic approach to visual practice in a new exhibition spanning installation, sculpture, and painting.
While Richard Saltoun's space doesn't quite allow for the mega-scale paintings seen at Southwark Park, Enactment playfully builds upon Peake's concepts behind Factual Actual, which recognises painting and making as ultimately performative acts.
The fallible condition of inhabiting a flesh body is documented in a suite of sensual multimedia works that immortalise action and gesture, informed by the artist's background in dance. Bound with this material line of enquiry is Peake's ability to make lighthearted references to art historical tropes and identity politics, where queerness becomes a method for making.
Not to be missed during London Gallery Weekend is a walkthrough of the show with the artist and Richard Saltoun director Niamh Coghlan on 2 June—RSVP here.
Group Exhibition: Hardcore
Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly Street
25 May–5 August 2023
Expect: a frank engagement with sexuality that provokes and excites in equal measure.
Bringing together 18 artists and a gamut of practices, this exhibition hones in on the nuances of hardcore sex, embracing pleasure in every form through mediums spanning sculpture, film, and painting.
Indeed, some of the 'sex' depicted or referenced does not technically constitute coitus. Rather, it is sexual purely because it can titillate someone. Fetish, for example, is a case in point.
In a climate of cultural polarisation, where one can solicit their services on apps like OnlyFans but traditional sex work often remains a legislative grey area, Hardcore positions itself as antidote to modern puritanism.
'There's a new kind of morality that's coming, which isn't just conservative,' says Bruce LaBruce, a participating filmmaker renowned for merging arthouse cinema and gay porn. 'It's a sex-phobic kind of attitude.'
Other names to look out for include Monica Bonvicini, who is known for her sculptures focused on the sadomasochistic coding of leather belts. Cindy Sherman brings work from one of her most controversial series, 'Sex Pictures' (1992), while Monica Majoli paints found imagery of bondage and erotic magazine editorials. Hardcore celebrates a right to bodily pleasure, eschewing sophistication for perversion and indulgence. —[O]
