Five more art things. five art things, five more art things happening somewhere around right now or any moment now. Five art shows to check out in the coming days. 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, these five recommendations come 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 recommended things coming up soon that we think you might find as interesting as we do.

And while we’re here, working out which galleries to go to this week, galleries in Ukraine are being destoyed, artists are carrying guns to defend themselves, lives are being destroyed. and like we said last week, it seems wrong to be thinking of going to an art gallery, then again it feels more important tha never,

Five art things happening now and coming up in the next few days in no particular order, just five art things happening around about now

1: Last week to see somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond, at NiCOLLETTi Contemporary –  The show ends on Saturday 26th March –  A rather beautiful two person show of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Swedish artist Evelina Hägglund (1992, lives and works between London and Stockholm) and French-Vietnamese painter Minh Lan Tran (1997, lives and works in London). Titled after a poem by E.E Cummings, in which the American poet evokes a journey towards the silent eyes of a lover – a territory beyond experience, where words are no longer sufficient to convey the intensity of his feelings –, the conversation between the two artists reflects upon the nature and limits of language, unfolding within a space where materiality and sensation become the primary means of communication.

NiCOLLETTi Contemporary is open Tuesday until Saturday 11am until 6pm. You find it at 12a Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG. You can find an Organ review here, we hadn’t recommended this show before hand but now we’ve seent it we most certainly do recommend you try and catch it bore it closed at 6pm on Saturday.

2: All the same age at different times at Fitzrovia Gallery, 22 – 27 March, 2022 – ‘All the same age at different times’ brings together 36 painters currently studying on the Turps Off Site painting programme. Previously strangers, they are brought together by their decision to join a community and share a material focus. In the spirit of Turps, this exhibition provides a window into the concerns of contemporary painters, curated in a way where unique voices and shared concerns each find a place.   Artists  – Melissa Alley, Kate Bland, Claire Brewster, Stephen Buckeridge, Kate Burnett, Chris Burns, Deborah Burnstone, Julia Burton, Ethan Caflisch, David Caines, Raoul Coombes, Hannah Delahay, Mari Fujii-Pratt, Lucy Jagger, Sam King, Chloe Le Tissier, Catherine Lette, Jasminka Letzas, Anna Levy, Katrina Lyne-Watt, Lindsay Mapes, Duncan McAfee, Sue McQueen, Jane Morgan, Tom Morgan, Jennifer Morrison, Fay Nicolson, Syd, Vesna Parchet, Veronika Peat, Kathryn Pentecost, Ingrid Petersen, Rosey Prince, Angela Prudom, Anastasia Russa, Caroline Thomson, Mia Vallance

The Fitzrovia Gallery is at 139 Whitfield Street, London, W1T 5EN. The show is open until the 27th – 9.30am until 6pm.

3: WombRiver at hARTslane – 26th March until 2nd Apr 2022  – Now information is a little thin on the ground for this rather interesting looking event, best to click on those flyers up there and enlarge them, most of what there is there on the three flyers. Here’s a little more from whoever offered this rather intriguing description – “Prayer of remembrance, music dance film; Accompanied by multimedia works, weaving mythology, biology & ecology in celebration of female physiology & menstruation”

hARTslane is at 17 Harts Lane, New Cross Gate, London, SE14 5UP. There’s an opening night on March 25th, 6.00pm until 9pm. The Gallery opening times are all over the place, open every day but Thursday (wonder what Thursday did wrong?), the hours are different each day Saturday, Sunday and Monday is 1pm until 9pm, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday is 5pm until 9pm.

“hARTslane is a socially engaged art organisation with a focus on community and participation. This is a place where artists and local people come together to share ideas, explore contemporary issues and be inspired. We believe that art is a way and not a thing”. We rather like that, I’s maybe argue it was a way as well as a thing through, many things.

4: Ivan Michael Blackstock’s TRAPLORD at The Store, 180 The Strand  – 26th March until 16th April 2022 – 180 Studios x Sadler’s Wells, a co-production with The Factory and ALTRUVIOLET. From award-winning dance artist and cultural innovator Ivan Michael Blackstock comes TRAPLORD, a dance performance meditating on life, death and rebirth. Wandering between dreams and reality, TRAPLORD takes us on a new heroic journey to self-actualisation. Using dance, theatre and spoken word to explore raw and confrontational themes of mental health and masculinity, TRAPLORD is an invitation to question the stereotyping of Black men in contemporary western society; an attempt to escape from the mental state of being condemned before having lived.

The Store is at 180 the Strand, London, WC2R 1EA. Tickets are £25 (although there may be concessions). We don’t usually list art events you have to pay to get into, we are more about the less commercial events, but this does look rather good.

5: Suhaylah H –  Apparitions at 4 Garden Walk –  24th until 28th March 2022 – “Suhaylah H’s first London solo show concludes her Apparitions series, exploring the cycles of life in naturalistic scenes through drawing, painting, film, and musical composition”.

“Apparitions not only refers to the ghostly figures and birds within Suhaylah’s paintings, but the mystical environments they inhabit. Existence flourishes in the space between the spiritual and the corporeal, anchored in naturalistic scenes laden with merging trees, pools, brush and waterfalls. Her vastly changing palettes, spectral figures and leading titles conjure the cycles ever-present within her beautifully harmonious renditions of natural order.

Suhaylah presents a visceral exploration into the seasonal journeys of this life and the next. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter; birth, play, seeking, death, entombment, resurrection. These journeys are universally levelling, no matter their perceived grandeur. Growing stronger, wilting, returning.  The seasons of life and death have a strong relationship with elements of the natural world. Clay, in many mythologies, being the substance from which human life was formed; the practice of lowering the deceased body into the ground and covering it with soil as if planting a seed; the planting of trees, flowers, gardens to memorialise those departed who now continue their journeys in another world.

Suhaylah suggests ideas of the physical form being laid to rest while the spirit travels on. The corporeal disintegrating and reintegrating with the earth, the soil, the plants. Meanwhile, the spirit continues its pathway into another pool of life. The exhibition is supported by a film – abstractly comprising footage of Suhaylah’s nature walks and exhibition evolution – backed by an original composition for an intensely immersive journey through the space, intended to compel viewers to engage Apparitions in a multi-sensory, spiritually inquisitive manner.

Apparitions concludes with a three-panelled Triptych, ‘To Whom We Belong’, living beyond its limits with a houseplant installation by Elm London. Evocative of Lovelock’s Gaia Theory and as with most of this body of work, the significance of rich, natural life in this triptych is about illuminating the irrevocable ties between our mortality and our spirituality with nature. Our physical forms sustained by it, eventually becoming it. Our spirits moved and compelled by it, often calling us back to something distant, but essentially part of us”.

4 Garden Walk, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3EQ. opening 9am until 9pm

And while we’re here, ony 50 days until the Art Car Boot Fair returns to Kings Cross, it was 51 days when we took that screen shot yesterday. More details