The Hayward Gallery’s eagerly anticipated reopening became even more so when they announced that Andreas Gursky would be inaugurating it. Having been closed for refurbishment for two years, the major exhibition falls in the Hayward’s 50th year, and is intended to sum up everything that the pioneering gallery stands for. Known for his large-scale photographs that portray emblematic sites and scenes of the global economy, ‘he’s a true innovator engaged in thinking about and picturing the times in which we live in,’ says gallery director Ralph Rugoff. The exhibition will feature approximately 60 of the German artist’s works – sweeping landscapes that both depict and allegorise modern life – from the 1980s through to his most recent, which continue to push the boundaries of the medium.
Pictured, Pyongyang VII, 2007/2012, by Andreas Gursky
‘Andreas Gursky’ is on view until 22 April; Hayward Gallery, The Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX; www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Writer: Elly Parsons
Pictured, Les Meés, 2016, by Andreas Gursky
‘Andreas Gursky’ is on view until 22 April; Hayward Gallery, The Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX; www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Two heads are better than one – and six legs are better than two, or at least, that’s what art collective Superflex think. The Danish trio have filled the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern with rows of three-seater swings, the latest Hyundai Commission unveiled at the London gallery last October. The interactive, giant playground – ‘One Two Three Swing!’ – which also features a monumental pendulum, estimates it will swing in more than three million visitors until its conclusion in April.
‘One Two Three Swing!’ is on view until 2 April; Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG; www.tate.org
Writer: Elly Parsons
Ninety-one colourful new works by David Shrigley adorn the Millennial-pink walls of the perennially instagramable Mayfair restaurant Sketch, replacing 239 black and white drawings that have been in place since 2014. Straddling, as he does, the gulf between tragedy and comedy with enviable ease, Shrigley has created new works that comment of the banality of every day life in a way which both undercuts and complements the bubble-hum popping mood evoked by India Mahdavi’s dreamy pink interiors. The exhibition continues on the restaurant ’s tables – a space Shrigley understands as an auxiliary platform for the presentation of new work, by himself and master chef, Pierre Gagnaire: think scribbled on coffee cups and illustrated condiment pots. Enjoy your eggs with a side of Shrigley.
Sketch, 9 Conduit Street, London W1S 2XG; www.sketch.london
Writer: Elly Parsons
Pictured, Left Foot, 2018, by David Shrigley. Courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery
Sketch, 9 Conduit Street, London W1S 2XG; www.sketch.london
Last September, Phaidon pulled back the curtain on North Korea’s graphic design ethos, with the publication of Made in North Korea: Everyday Graphics from the DPRK, the imagery from which forms the basis of a new exhibition at House of Illustration, opening this month. Thousands of items, from tinned food labels to invitations for state performances, many striking in design, will fill the bijou gallery, ready to be oggled by our western-purview lens. The UK’s first ever exhibition of graphic design from North Korea, it reveals a style honed over decades, untouched by outsider influence.
‘Made in North Korea: Everyday Graphics from the DPRK’ is on view 23 February –13 May; House of Illustration, 2 Granary Square, London NC1 4BH; www.houseofillustration.org.uk
Writer: Elly Parsons
‘Made in North Korea: Everyday Graphics from the DPRK’ is on view 23 February –13 May; House of Illustration, 2 Granary Square, London NC1 4BH; www.houseofillustration.org.uk
Art editor, historian and a serious Russophile David King passed away last year, aged 73, and his collection of Soviet-era design ephemera was bought by Tate. Last October, to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Tate Modern opened a major exhibition, drawing on just some of King’s 250,000-piece strong Soviet stockpile. The exhibition pulls in art and design from Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Klutsis and Nina Vatolina. It also covers the Bolshevik ‘agitprop’ trains, mural-splashed travelling PR machines aimed at explaining the goals and means of the new government. And more broadly at how much public art, from propaganda posters to monumental sculptures to street performance, was a feature of Soviet life in its first optimistic flush.
Pictured, USSR in Construction, no. 8, 1936, spread designed by Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova
‘Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55’ is on view until 18 February; Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG; www.tate.org
Writer: Elly Parsons
Philip King returns for a second show at Thomas Dane Gallery with the dual-split ‘Colour on Fire’ and ‘Ceramics 1995-2017’, in which he explores his relationship between materials and their physicality. At the 3 Duke Street location, King breaks apart geometric shapes, abstracting them so to investigate colour and volume. Meanwhile, at 11 Duke Street, King looks to his lifelong relationship with clay to produce a crowd of unglazed ceramic vessels. Lack of a reliance on medium is key to the fluidity of the shows, permitting King the challenge of providing new readings of sculpture and materiality.
Pictured, installation view of Colour On Fire, 2017, by Phillip King
‘Colour on Fire’ is on view until 17 February; Thomas Dane Gallery, 3 & 11 Duke Street, London, SW1Y 6BN; www.thomasdanegallery.com
Writer: Luke Halls
Japanese artist Setsuko Ono, Yoko Ono’s younger sister, exhibits two solo exhibitions for the first time in London. Setsuko says she works in real-time, meaning not planning too much and going with the flow. Her inspiration comes from memories of being ‘brainwashed’ as a teenager by silent performance 4’33” and meeting John Cage, who wrote ‘ideas are one thing and what happens another’. Setsuko’s sculptures experiment with various materials, but it is steel which gives the flexibility, freedom and light to create a wonderful sense of movement. Delicate in style and subject, she explores evocative themes including dancing, nature, migrants and ‘political stands’. Her works include the dramatic Dancing Peasant and Migrants sculptures, and the emotionally provocative paintings Aleppo and Children. In her work, Setsuko expresses great sadness at the way displaced people are treated by the world. Visitors can also view Setsuko’s permanent exhibits in Japan, using virtual reality.
‘Setsuko Ono’ is on view 16 February – 9 March; Daiwu Foundation; 3/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent’s Park), London NW1 4QP; www.dajf.org.uk
Writer: David Cowan
Oscar nominated filmmaker Wim Wenders took many thousands of Polaroid photographs, both on and off location, between the early 1970s and mid 80s. It’s said that Polaroids operated as a visual notebook – a way of testing out frames and ideas. Though they formed a crucial part of his photographic experimentation, they've never really been given the artistic prominence they perhaps deserve. Until last October, when many of the unseen works wound up in The Photographers’ Gallery. Catch ‘Instant Stories’ before it vanishes in February.
Pictured, Valley Of The Gods Utah 1977, by Wim Wenders. © The artist. Courtesy of Deutsches Filminstitut Frankfurt aM
‘Wim Wenders: Instant Stories’ is on view until 11 February; The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, Soho, London W1F 7LW; www.tpg.org.uk
Writer: Elly Parsons
At Almine Rech Gallery’s London outpost is an extensive exhibition of work by the late German artist Günther Förg, whose 30-year practice is hard to define, given his polyamorous relationship with medium (his eclectic oeuvre includes large format photographs of architecture, bronze masks, bas-reliefs, and gestural wall paintings in colour and monochrome). All aspects of 20th-century art were inspiration to Förg—be it Bauhaus buildings or the brushstrokes of Klee and Mondrian. Förg’s is art on art—modernism once removed. Presenting architecture through photography, or painting through sculpture, the artist created a compendium of the contemporary visual world. This is shown in a series of five large-scale photographs of Italian rational architecture, taken at the campus of the Citta Universitaria, Rome, in the 1990s. The buildings, designed by Marcello Piacentini, were an example of the prevalent fascist style under Mussolini—yet in Forg’s pictures they stand still and silent, shot in a straightforward, simplistic way, their structure once political purposeful. It’s just one of the ways Förg makes us look, and re-look, at the recent history of art.
‘Günther Förg’ is on view until 24 March; Grosvenor Hill, Broadbent House, London W1K 3JH; www.alminerech.com
Writer: Charlotte Jansen
‘Günther Förg’ is on view until 24 March; Grosvenor Hill, Broadbent House, London W1K 3JH; www.alminerech.com
Inaugurating Richard Saltoun’s new gallery space in Mayfair, ‘Women look at Women’ is a timely exploration of feminine identity, as seen through the work of 13 internationally renowned women artists. From images of Eleanor Antin’s staged drag performance as her fictional character in The King of Solana Beach, to Renate Bertlmann’s Transformations (1969/2013) where 53 staged self-portraits represent different female character types (the free spirit, the demure girl, the mad eccentric, and so forth) – this is a bodily, visceral show that interrogates what it is to be a ‘female’ today.
Pictured, Elisabetta Catalano, 1969, by Florinda Bolkan
‘Women look at Women’ is on view from 15 February -– 31 March; Richard Saltoun, 41 Dover Street, London W1S 4NS; www.richardsaltoun.com
Writer: Elly Parsons
Highly technical architecture, computer algorithms, and lots of lots of light combine in Pardo’s ethereal exhibition at Victoria Miro. The Cuban-American artist has made a new collection of chandeliers for the show, each up to 1.7 metres tall, suspended at various heights throughout the Wharf Road gallery. Throughout, Pardo asks us to engage in the material quality of the works, some of which are made from materials foraged from the gallery’s canalside garden, and the verdant jungle landscape of Mérida, Mexico, where the artist lives and works. In addition, Pardo has created new paintings from layers of laser-cut birch wood and MDF, perforated and painted to give an indication of landscapes partially veiled by moiré-like patterns.
‘Jorge Pardo’ is on view 2 February – 24 March; Victoria Miro Gallery, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW; www.victoria-miro.com
Writer: Elly Parsons
‘Jorge Pardo’ is on view 2 February – 24 March; Victoria Miro Gallery, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW; www.victoria-miro.com
‘Merrie Albion – Landscape Studies of a Small Island’ by Simon Roberts, now on view at Flowers Gallery, looks at the collective British identity as witnessed in social environments. Roberts’ large format photography documents community gatherings across the UK with a detached perspective and deadpan aesthetic. The showcase features photographs considering topical British current affairs, such as Grenfell Tower, North Kensington, London, 19 June 2017, and provides pastoral and urban readings of the treatment of British history in leisure-based contexts.
Pictured, Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, Shoreham Air Show, West Sussex, 15 September 2007, by Simon Roberts. © Simon Roberts. Courtesy of Flowers Gallery London and New York
‘Merrie Albion – Landscape Studies of a Small Island’ is on view until 10 March; Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP; www.flowersgallery.com
Writer: Elly Parsons