Where were we? Proddddddding at things? We almost certainly do need to do that five art things thing again don’t we? We probably should? Just a bit more of that glue that holds the who or what together. The art of repetition? Where were we? No one ever reads the editorial at the top so we could say anything here. We are kind of still repeating ourselves whilst under stress, the so-called lockdown is kind of lifting now isn’t? Did you even notice the repeating? Do you just cut to the chase every single time?. And well, we could do it again, we could? We could? We really could? Shall we? The Five Art Things thing? We said all this last week didn’t we? And the week before, and we really can more than almost smell open galleries now,  indeed we’ve been to quite a few, we’re not almost in Kansas, any more, we have actually been out to one or two, no actual opening nights, but real walls and art hanging on them. Indeed our in-box is bursting with press releases and galleries telling us they’re open again.

So five art things, five more art things happening somewhere around right now, or coming up any moment now, five art shows to check out in the coming days . Hey, I know we said it last time but we will try to do it most weeks and now we appear to be coming out of lockdown, and yes this admittedly rather fractured Five Art Things feature was and is intended to be a regular, almost certainly weekly, or something like something near weekly thing – an almost weekly round up of recommended art events. Five shows, exhibitions or things we rather think might be worth checking out. Mostly London things for that is where we currently operate and explore, and like we said last time (and the time before), these five recommendations come, as we already said up there, with no claims that they are “the best five” or the “Top Five”, we’re not one of those annoying art websites that ignore most things whilst claiming to be covering everything and proclaiming this or that to be the “top seven things” or the “best things this weekend”, no, this is simply a regular list of five or so art things coming up soon that we think you might find as interesting as we do, five art things coming in in the next few days in no particular order and not a selfie of any of us hanging out at the damn show next to a piece of art either…

1: Kiitan Durosinmi – Window Project Summer Edition at Gazelli Art House – 10th June to July 3rd –  “For the summer edition of the Window Project Gazelli Art House has partnered with Chelsea College of Art”

“The winner of this season’s iteration is Nigerian-British multidisciplinary artist Kiitan Durosinmi with her project Jelousy, which centres around a taboo love triangle. The panel of judges included; Gulru Arvas, Co-Chair of Tate Young Patrons, Vanessa Peterson, Associate Editor at Frieze, and Martin Newth, Fine Art Programme Director at Chelsea College of Art.

Launched to coincide with the London Olympics in 2012, the Window Project has established itself as significant platform for artists to display site-specific works on the windows of the London gallery. Willing to support the next generation of artists and curators and in the framework of its educational programme, Gazelli Art House gives a unique opportunity for MA and post-graduate students to expose a body of their work to a wide audience. Previous schools partnerships have included the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins.

The gallery offers an allocated space with street frontage as well as the windows of the first floor to display the winner’s art works. Former winners include Alexander Duncan (RCA, London), Chloe Farrar (RCA, London), Tom Pope (RCA, London) and Grey Wielebinski (Slade School of Fine Art, London). Gazelli Art House invites an external jury to name the winner, usually composed of a collector, a curator and a critic. Kate Bryan (art expert), JJ Charlesworth (art writer and art critic), Whitney Hintz (AXA Art), Fatos Ustek (Director of Liverpool Biennale), Eugenio Re Rebaudengo (Artuner, Founder) and James Putnam (curator and writer) have been part of our selection committee, among others. Last year’s jury included; Gavin Turk, Roland Cowan and Dylan Jones who selected the RCA winner as Elliot Kervyn’s ‘The Perfect Chip’ as the winning project”.

Gazelli Art House is at 39 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NN

2: Giorgio Celin – Las Olas at Eve Leibe Gallery – The opening is Thursday 10th June 2021, 5pm until 8pm and then runs from 11th June until 19th June – “Eve Leibe Gallery is pleased to present Las Olas, the first UK solo show by Colombian-born artist Giorgio Celin”.

“Las Olas recalls Celin’s fascination with the sea, a sea that divides and dissects geographical and human bonds, a sea that, for immigrants, needs to be surpassed and subdued. Waves crashing on the seashore, deleting feelings, relationships, memories. The exhibition Las Olas is a continuum of Pajaros del Atlantico, an ongoing exploration on the themes of Latinx immigration, self-discovery, queerness, gender, human relationships and acceptanceLas Olas recalls Celin’s fascination with the sea, a sea that divides and dissects geographical and human bonds, a sea that, for immigrants, needs to be surpassed and subdued. Waves crashing on the seashore, deleting feelings, relationships, memories. The exhibition Las Olas is a continuum of Pajaros del Atlantico, an ongoing exploration on the themes of Latinx immigration, self-discovery, queerness, gender, human relationships and acceptance.

The gallery is at 33 Boundary St, London, E2 7JQ, The opening is Thursday 10th June 2021, 5pm until 8pm and then runs from 11th June until 19th June

3: Sam peacock – Tide at KahnGallery – 10TH JUNE UNTIL 4TH jULY – Do like the look of thse peices, another case of need ot see them in the flesh I;m sure, but they do look rather inviting on line “London-based affordable art gallery Kahn Gallery will be showing exclusive new artworks by Sussex artist Sam Peacock, his first solo show in the capital since 2017, at their North London venue.. As part of “Tide”, Peacock will be exhibiting work created during the first lockdown, a period when he felt “weirdly free to do what he wanted as the pressure to produce a constant stream of work had been removed”.

KahnGallery is at Walm Lane, London, NW2 5HT

4: Claire Partington – Britainton at James Freeman Gallery – 19th June to 3rd July – Now this one looks exciting, a solo exhibition of new sculptures by Claire Partington.

“We are pleased to present ‘Britainton’, an exhibition of new sculptures by the London-based artist Claire Partington, interweaving art history, feminism and fairytale to create a surreal and riotous vision of Britain in 2021.

Working principally in ceramics, Claire Partington’s large figures use imagery from the past to reinterpret the present. The works in ‘Britainton’ tap sources ranging from Gainsborough and Toby jugs to Marc Quinn and Puss in Boots to speak about a Britain divided on many lines, including gender, class, and questions of immigration. ‘Britainton’ reworks old motifs of Britishness to review our contemporary moment, mixing high and low culture with aesthetic relish and an acerbic sense of humour.

A number of sculptures reference Gainsborough paintings, representing the traditional British establishment and landowning classes. A pair of figures look to Gainsborough’s renowned ‘Mr & Mrs Andrews’ from c. 1750. Claire presents them as a couple detached from their bucolic landscape, with interchangeable heads that convert them into 18th century saltglaze wolves. Mr and Mrs Carter from Gainsborough’s 1747 painting also appear in the form of a Toby jug and cheese dish with cover. Separating these characters from their lands, Claire creates a kind of enforced social mobility that brings the elite down to earth as functional folk art. The respectability of the establishment is also undermined in a pair of Georgian gentlemen dressed in resplendent costumes whose interchangeable heads convert them into a pair of fighting cocks.

Set against this traditional establishment are figures of strong and defiant contemporary women. Two are large sculptures that reference Jacques Le Moyne’s ‘A Young Daughter of the Picts’ – a fanciful imagining from c. 1580 of how the native British women might have looked. In one, a ‘Pictish’ woman covered in floral tattoos stops on the return from a shopping trip. In her hand is Marc Quinn’s 1991 defrosting blood head ‘Self’, a revindication of female power in response to Quinn’s appropriation of the empty Colston plinth after the Bristol Black Lives Matter protests. Accompanying her is a similarly decorated figure taking a selfie by a wheelie bin, seeing herself as Botticelli’s Venus as her long gold hair flows down her back. Between them, two pairs of women dance as if at a carnival in colour-splattered abandon, revelling in diversity and freedom in direct defiance of the old order.

Several figures reference fairytales to look at the narratives that underpin old ideas of British nationalism. A lion symbolising the British Empire lies sleeping as if bewitched as a carpet of mushrooms grows over him, suggesting the potency of old narratives about Great Britain. A separate figure presents Puss in Boots as the cat of Dick Whittington – that legendary social climber – with a green parakeet in his mouth, and another at his feet. The parakeet is often viewed as an invasive species, but Claire uses it as shorthand for contemporary immigration, and to articulate how British culture is in fact the result of waves of immigration over the centuries. Underlining this, a medieval ship draped in maypole ribbons carries pregnant women from diverse backgrounds onto British shores. Immigration, it says, is more fundamental to British culture than anything Gainsborough ever painted, and strong women were always at its core.

‘Britainton’ opens on Thursday 10 June, 5pm – 8pm. For more details please contact the gallery”.

James Freeman Gallery is at 354 Upper Street, Islington, London, N1 0PD

5: Compost. Kathrin Böhm: Turning the Heap at The Showroom – 16th to 24th June  – “Compost is a unique collaborative exhibition that explores twenty years of artist Kathrin Böhm’s practice, taking place both onsite at The Showroom and online”

“Compost is a unique collaborative exhibition that explores 20 years of making art by Kathrin Böhm. Opening at The Showroom, London on 16 June, Compost is made up of the tangible and intangible material of Böhm’s artistic practice from the last two decades and will reveal her processes of creating, thinking and researching. In the making for many years, Compost was born out of a desire to not continue with ‘business as usual’ and just carry on producing, but to process and to carefully consider what to do next; what to continue, what to leave behind..”

The Showroom is at 63 Penfold Street, London, NW8 8PQ

More of this in a day or two, maybe?