Never mind whatever we said last time, that was then, this, once again is about this week and next and cake and yes you are right, we haven’t done this for a few weeks, has London’s art scene gone a little flat? Are the newer galleries a little too full of themselves and believing their own hype? Is it all just a little too conservative? Dare we say politely boring? Here, for what any of this is worth are 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”. This Five Things thing is simply a regular list of five or so recommended art things happening now or coming up very soon that we think you might find as interesting as we think we will…

And we should add, that entry to these recommended exhibitions and events, unless otherwise stated, is free.

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1: Sadie Hennessy – Dry Humping at Studio 1.1 – a ‘solo’ show (in a manner of speaking) – 28th November until 3rd December with a private view and book launch  on Thursday 30th November 6 – 9 pm – Sadie Hennessy is a multi-disciplinary artist whose roots lie in collage but who has expanded that idea to encompass the 3rd and 4th dimensions, creating immersive environments and events. She has recently introduced video, song, audio and neon into her work, alongside assemblage, also using performative elements in her practice all through a prism of melancholia mixed with humour that comes from the blacker end of the comedy spectrum.

“Earlier this year I was thinking about the idea of the ‘artist’s voice’ or their signature style, and wondered if I had such a thing. In order to find out I put an Open Call out, inviting people to submit work that was in the style of my own, to be considered for inclusion in a ‘solo show’ (by me!). I gave them my website address (www.sadiehennessy.co.uk) as I didn’t assume they’d be familiar with what I do. Then I waited to see what came back. There were over 70 responses which I whittled down to 45. These works have now been brought together in a beautiful publication, with essays from Dr. Lucy Hawairth, Camilla Ellingsen Webster and Professor `Matthew Worley, published by Ambitious Outsiders

The “solo” show features Tim Topple, Camilla Ellingsen Webster, Lucy Howarth, Matt Worley, C.A. Halpin, Allen Reed, Sonia McNally, Tracey Peisley, Gabriel Corcuera Zubillaga, Anna Brownsted, Richard Heslop, Conrad Butlin, Seana Wilson, Sally Anderson, Annie Taylor, Kate Murdoch, Tinsel Edwards, Rachel Megawhat, Jo Mapp, Anita Meyer, Rosa Worley, Scott Robertson, Nick Vivian, Kathryn Reilly (Artificer), Bob Chicalors, David Fryer, Dr. Andrea Hannon, Carolin Wood, Roger Payne, Kellie Hogben, Simon Lee Dicker, Angela Wool, Max Kimber, Frantic Sally, Lara Band, Emma Harrison, Shelly Grotto, Peter Henham, A.K.A. The Phantasist)

Studio 1.1 is the last gallery standing on Redchurch Street, the full address is 57a Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DJ.  The show runs from 28th November until 3rd December with a private view and book launch on Thursday 30th November 6 – 9 pm and artists’ talks on 3rd December from 3pm. The gallery is open Thursday to Sunday, Midday until 5pm (6pm on Fridays)

Read a recent Sadie interview here – 13 QUESTIONS FROM ORGAN: Ahead of the 2023 Art Car Boot Fair, Sadie Hennessy is the latest participating artist to take on those Thirteen Questions… – The countdown clock on the Art Car Boot Fair website says we’re only 18 days from this year’s live event on Saturday September 16th at London’s kings Cross. Ahead of the much anticipated event, one of the highlights of any London art year, we’re inviting participating artists to take on our Thirteen Questions and the latest Artist to respond is another Fair regular Sadie Hennessy, I could write an introduction and talk of Sadie’s games of tennis or her Boyfriend Auditions or those tempting fat balls but ChatGPT seems to have done the job for us. … Read on

2: Jenny Saville, Ekkyklema at Gagosian Gallery London (Davies Street)  from 30th November until February 10th – Have we forgiven Gagosian for those jizz paintings at Frieze yet? The gallery say they are “pleased to present Ekkyklema, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Jenny Saville, opening at the Davies Street gallery in London on November 30. The project’s title refers to a wheeled platform that was used to move interior scenes into the audience’s view during antique productions of Greek tragic drama and alludes to the artist’s search for a pictorial language with which to confront our simultaneous occupation of material and screen-based worlds. Ekkyklema is also concerned with the moment and mystery of conception—a truly universal subject.

Saville’s new work was inspired in part by the giant digital display screens employed at stadiums and other major event venues, the scale and visual power of which generate an overwhelming, almost religious spectacle. Throughout the exhibition, the artist compartmentalizes body parts into angular screenlike panels whose hard edges and clustered arrangements recall desktop computing’s windows and menus and the boxed-in talking heads of news broadcasts. The artist evolved this pictorial system over the past year, focusing on our intersecting physical and electronic realities by combining figuration and abstraction. “I gave myself the challenge of feeling the ancient and digital worlds simultaneously,” she writes.

The reclining figures in Saville’s new paintings allude to the Greek mythological character of Danaë, whose child, it was prophesied, would kill his grandfather, Acrisius. Zeus visited the imprisoned Danaë in the form of a shower of gold, and from their union, Perseus was born—who later fulfilled the prediction. Rembrandt famously produced a monumentally scaled depiction of Danaë reclining on a bed and many other artists, including Titian, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Gustav Klimt, have also painted her. Saville drew the works’ palette from watercolor studies, produced over the past two years, of the changing light and colors of the Greek sky at sunset.

Finally, the works in Ekkyklema recall fragmented portraits by Pablo Picasso. The connection is an appropriate one since Saville made numerous studies in preparing the paintings—as Picasso did before working on paintings such as Guernica (1937). Her subjects are further complicated by active lines of intense colour (we had to add a u to color just then!) that suggest frenzied motion, while the compositions’ overlaid “screens” evoke the multiple perspectives characteristic of Cubism, interrupting her images of single and plural nude figures with partial views that offer fragmented glimpses of past, future, or alternative realities.

Gagosian is found at 17-19 Davies Street, London, W1K 3DE. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am until 6pm. The show runs from 30th November until February 10th with a Opening reception: Thursday, November 30, 6–8pm 

3: Pauline Boty, A Portrait at Gazelli Art House – 1st Dec 2023 until 24th Feb 2024 – Rather looking forward to this one, Pauline Boty, British 60’s pop artist pretty much written out of history until recently – “Join us in celebrating the life and legacy of trailblazing British painter Pauline Boty in her first posthumous solo exhibition in a decade”. There’s a half decent Guardian piece here

“Pauline Boty: A Portrait presents a remarkable opportunity to view Boty’s coveted paintings in unison, alongside a plethora of profound, archival materials. Marking the artist’s third showing at Gazelli Art House, this exhibition continues the gallery’s explorations of Boty’s pivotal and enduring artistic impact. Pauline Boty: A Portrait marks over twenty years since Pauline Boty – The Only Blonde in the World (The Mayor Gallery and Whitford Fine Art, London), and ten years since Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman (Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK, touring to Pallant House Gallery) curated by Boty specialist and author, Dr Sue Tate. Pauline Boty: A Portrait will be accompanied by a talk and a brand new Gazelli publication, featuring commentaries from leading Boty experts.

A prominent figure in the British Pop Art movement of the 1960s, Boty waylaid convention with her fearless exploration of femininity, societal norms, politics, and popular culture. Eschewed the esteem of her male contemporaries, and customarily eclipsed by preoccupations with her beauty and the tragedy of her untimely passing, Boty’s artworks are today venerated as climacteric within the cultural discourse surrounding the period”.

Gazelli Art House is at 39 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NN. The Gallery is open Monday to Saturday, 10am until 6pm, the show runs from 1st Dec 2023 until 24th Feb 2024 with an  opening on Thursday 30th November, 6pm until 8pm

4: Catherine Repko, a new season’s dawning at Huxley-Parlour Gallery (Maddox Street) – 1st Dec 2023 until 13th Jan 2024 with an opening night on Thursday 30th November, 6pm until 8pm – This will be the second solo exhibition by London-based artist Catherine Repko with this gallery. a new season’s dawning consists of a group of new large-scale canvases developed over the past year, exploring social rituals and symbolic moments of change and transition.

Rendered in Repko’s distinct restrained and muted palette, this latest body of work continues the artist’s interest in memory, ancestry and nostalgia. Repko’s compositions depict entanglements of figures at human-scale, fingers intertwined and bodies coalescing, each rendered in shades of ochre, terracotta and indigo. The figures seem at once connected to each other and yet isolated, each submerged in thick and visceral negative space. The female figures become proxies or symbolic ciphers for, or perhaps even phantoms of, sororal relationships.

Emptied of almost all reference points, the bodies in Repko’s paintings are articulated in minimal silhouette. The singular ear, however, has become a recurring motif in Repko’s work, and is woven throughout the canvases of a new season’s dawning. In otherwise featureless figures, the ear remains – shell-like – a talisman of remembrance replete with anticipation of intimacy.

In this new body of work, Repko has returned once again to mixing powdered marble dust with her oil paint. The resulting surfaces appear densely textural, recalling the faded, stone-like surface of a fresco. In this exhibition, Repko simultaneously withholds and reveals, working to solidify the slippery surfaces of memory and make tangible the ephemeral nature of time, space and human connection.

Huxley-Parlour Gallery is at 45 Maddox Street, London, W1S 2PE. The show runs from st Dec 2023 until 13th Jan 2024 with an opening night on Thursday 30th November, 6pm until 8pm. The gallery is open Nondat to Saturday, 10am until 5,30pm (1.30pm on Saturdays)

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5: Vignettes: Interpreting Nostalgia at BSMT Space – 30th Nov 2023 until 14th Jan 2024 with an opening night on Thursday 30th.  A group show and a whole load of identically sized square from a group of artists, wonder where the BSMT team got that one from? Not seen them BSMT faces since they came down to a Cultivate Nothing is Square group show of identically sized square canvas pieces of art from a group of artists and gave us a lecture about unity and how artists and galleries needed to support each other, not said a word to us since that lecture mind you, just took all that support for granted, here’s what they’re doing –   “BSMT will be closing 2023 with a group show set to peel back the layers of time through a collection of nostalgic ‘snap shot’ paintings by a collection of 38 artists across Urban and Contemporary art, a space for memory and artistic expression to converge. Mirroring our collective and individual experiences,‘Vignettes’ seeks to echo past decades through a series of  40 x 40cm works, each a unique narrative fragment capturing the essence of a period of time through diverse artistic lenses. With over 40 works available from both established and emerging artists, this capsule collection is a perfect opportunity for collectors to begin or diversify their collection by discovering new artists at affordable prices.  With drinks supplied by our good friends at 3AM Brewery and Debo on decks for the opening night, ‘Vignettes’ promises to take us on a whimsical and evocative journey between past and present, a collage of ‘remember when’ or ‘back in the day’ memories that are definitely worth revisiting!”Vignettes will be featuring work from the following artists: Ben Eine, Blond Truluv, David Shillinglaw, Dotmasters, Eloise Dorr, Errol Theunissen, Eyesaw, Gokcen Yuksek, Himbad, Inkie, Jaune, Jimmer Wilmott, Jo Peel, Joe Sangre, Joseph Loughborough, KMG, Lucie Flynn, Manuel Zamudio, Max Solca, Medea, Mighty Monkey, Motel seven, Mr Cenz, Myne and yours, Nerone, Perspicere, Pez Barcelona, Populuxe, Real Hackney Dave, Richard Berner, Run, Russell Herron, Simon Hennessey, Skeleton Cardboard, Sweet Toof, Timothy Gatenby, Tizer, Xenz

BSMT Space these days is at 529 Kingsland Road, Dalston, London, E8 4AR. The gallery is open Wednesday until Sunday, 10am until 5pm (6pm on Saturday).

5 and a bit:

Meanwhile, Mixtape No.6 is still open and reaching out beyond those London bubbles, and over in a tunnel near Waterloo someone thinks that can just throw around 43s.