Five art things, on we go then and never mind the bliss or whatever we said last time, although this week, after what happened in the United States last night it jsut got a little harder to just carry on with the five art things thing as well as everything else. Franckly last night’s election result was depressing, the world jsut got a little more dangerous and well, let’s hope that art is still some kind of force for good and once again this is about this week and next and needing more (just more, nothing less) and yes you are right, I guess, for that is what we do now, guess, I guess we need to post another five. 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 as we repeat ourselves. We do aim to make this 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.

1: In the Thick of Things at APT Gallery (Art in Perpetuity Trust) – On from 7th November until 1st December 2024 with an opening on 7th (6pm until 8pm) – A group show featuring artists Cash Aspeek, Leila Galloway, Deborah Gardner, Asaki Kan, Chris Marshall, Laura White and curated by Chris Marshall and Cash Aspeek.

“Baroque pasta, volcanic sourdough, jelly and ice cream, mattress dust, shoddy, clustering cables, cascading cassette tapes, exploding broom, clinical waste sacks. ‘Art Povera’ was a pivotal art movement in challenging the previous pre-conceptions of what sculpture is and how it is made. It could be said its importance laid the foundations much of the art we see now, and that nothing has equalled its radical and revolutionary ideas and artworks since. This exhibition takes much inspiration from this radical art movement.  This exhibition will bring together experimental sculpture and installations. Six artists will produce new, site-specific work, for the gallery at APT. Artworks with the focus on materials and stuff that challenges and surprises in its physicality and poetic existence.  The artists share a desire for stripping back revealing the feral, the source, the nudge into existence. They work with materials that are difficult to control, materials that are often awkward to stabilise and resist being fixed”.

APT Gallery (Art in Perpetuity Trust) is found at Harold Wharf, 6 Creekside, Deptford, SE8 4SA. The rather fine gallery is open Thursday through to Sunday, midday until 5pm. The show is on On from 7th November until 1st December  2024 with an opening on 7th (6pm until 8pm)

2: The Equal Right to Live and Blossom at Kate MacGarry Gallery – From 8th November until 14th December 2024 with an opening night on the 7th December, 6pm until 8pm) –  We never got much change out of Kate MacGarry, not as much as a nod or a smile but after last night’s depressing election, the idea of an art show called The Equal Right to Live and Blossom just appeals. Hopefully, as Sean Scully keeps insisting, art is still a force for good and this does look like an enticing line up. Really need something good right now, not sure how much longer this long running Organ thing will carry on but Kate MacGarry is “pleased to present The Equal Right to Live and Blossom, a group exhibition showing the work of seven artists whose practices converge around themes of craftsmanship, cultural difference, and the relationship between natural and constructed environments. Bringing together sculpture, painting and furniture, the artists draw on their unique heritages and multidisciplinary practices”.

Saelia Aparicio (b.1982, Spain, lives and works in London) creates a fictional world through sculpture, murals, video and installation. She blends humour and mythology to explore the impact of environment, disease, and age on the human body. Her works create a fantastical world populated by hybrid creatures inspired by ancient mythology and contemporary concerns. Recent solo exhibitions include Les Fleurs du Mal, Bold Tendencies, London (2024); Protesis para invertebrados, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2019) and Smudging Gooey Airs, Sarabande Foundation, London (2018). She was commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery for the film Green Shoots for their General Ecology symposium (2019).

Kara Chin (b.1994, Singapore, lives and works in Newcastle) works across animation, ceramics, and installation. She explores the ethical dilemmas of fast-evolving technologies, including AI and robotics. She holds a BA in Fine Art from The Slade School of Fine Art (2018). Recent solo shows include Concerned Dogs, Goldsmiths CCA, London (2023); Show Real, Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2022); Fountain of Youth, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London (2021); You Will Knead, VITRINE, London (2021) and Sentient Mecha Furniture, BALTIC39, Newcastle (2020).

Mark Corfield-Moore (b.1988, Bangkok, lives and works in Hastings) reflects on his Thai and British heritage in his practice, using textile techniques to investigate themes of transience and cultural memory. His distinctive ikat-inspired paintings, which merge hand-painted warp threads and distorted images, express the ‘fizzy heat’ of personal and collective history. Corfield-Moore graduated from the RA Schools in 2018. Recent solo shows include We Speak Chicken, CCA Goldsmiths, London (May 2024) and Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (October 2024); Volt, Eastbourne, UK (2023); Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2022), and Cob Gallery, London, UK (2021).

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck’s (b.1990, France, lives and works in Oxfordshire) transdisciplinary practice is rooted in ecological awareness, engaging with painting, sculpture, horticulture, and participatory projects. Her works express care and tenderness, reflecting on the fragility and beauty of life. Recent solo exhibitions include Dreaming About Tomorrow, Nidi Gallery, Tokyo (2022). Group shows include One Foot in The Sky, Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, UK (2023) and Edge Effects, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2024). She is also founder of the collaborative deep-ecology-informed initiative Poetic Pastel Press and The Gardening Drawing Club.

Rio Kobayashi (b.1989, Japan, lives and works in London) grew up in the pottery town of Mashiko, Japan. His design practice draws from his multicultural background, blending traditional crafts with modern sensibilities. His eclectic work takes a collaborative and playful approach to fine craftsmanship. Before setting up his own studio and workshop he worked with international design studios in Milan, Berlin, Innsbruck and Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include Manus Manum Lavit (One Hand Washes the Other), Cromwell Place, London Design Festival (2024).

Grace Ndiritu (b.1982, lives and works in London) is a British-Kenyan artist. Concerned with the transformation of our contemporary world, Ndiritu works across film, painting, textiles, performance and social practice. In 2012, she began creating a new body of work under the title Healing The Museum, which sets out to re-introduce non-rational healing methodologies such as shamanism to re-activate the ‘sacredness’ of art spaces. Recent solo exhibitions include Labour, Kate MacGarry, London (2023); The Healing Pavilion, Wellcome Collection, London (2023) and Healing The Museum, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium (2023). Ndiritu is included in the 17th Lyon Biennale at Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (2024-25).

Sola Olulode (b.1996, lives and works in London) is a British-Nigerian artist whose vibrant and textural works celebrate the fluidity of identities, depicting joyful Black bodies in intimate settings. Her practice incorporates traditional Nigerian Yoruba adire textile techniques, using natural dyes and resist processes along with dye, batik, wax, ink, pastel and oil bar. Recent solo exhibitions include Islands of the Blessed, Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery, London (2024); Burning Like the Star That Showed Us to Our Love, Ed Cross, London (2023) and Could You Be Love, Sapar Contemporary, New York (2022). Olulode’s work First Kiss (2022) features on the Hayward Gallery Billboard space until April 2025.

Kate MacGarry Gallery is found at 27 Old Nichol Street, London, E2 7HR. The gallery is open Tuesday through to Saturday, 11am until 5pm. The exhbition runs from 8th November until 14th December 2024 with an opening night on the 7th December, 6pm until 8pm)

3: Katie King, Half Bambi, Half Cow at Wilton Way Gallery – 7 November – 19 December, 2024 – “We are delighted to present Katie King’s first solo show Half Bambi, Half Cow. The exhibition will open with a preview from 6:30-8:30pm on the 6th of November, we hope to see you there”.

We’re told King’s practice “examines contemporary feminine identity and the tensions between what is aesthetically pleasing but morally suspect. As the artist notes of the woman she is examining across her work: “This has been an opportunity to imagine the female character I am fascinated with. She is not wholly Bambi or cow, but somewhere in that ironic gap in-between; she is ‘Half-Bambi, Half-Cow.’”

“Wilton Way Gallery presents Half-Bambi Half-Cow, the first solo presentation of work by Katie King. Working exclusively with textiles in her practice as a methodology for image making, King experiments with various fibre manipulations in order to create animated films and still life pieces. Techniques in this show include broomstick pleating, freehand quilting and embroidery on silk, as well as printed cut-out collage.

The exhibition features two film works alongside a series of embroidered silks and textile drawings. Made For Duty Overseas (2023) is a noir centred around a packet of menthol vogue cigarettes, in which the protagonist and narrator is intrigued by the allure of a mysterious woman and talk of political espionage. The film, created using cut-out animation style on a multiplane built by the artist, features an original 16 piece orchestral score by Oran Johnson.

Wolf (2024) takes the form of a large textile sculpture containing a film projection. Viewers peer through openings in the structure to observe the patterning of a pearl created using fabrics animated. The installation is a first step toward the making of a hybrid documentary titled Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into The Future which takes on classical themes of cinematic gangster films through the subject of motherhood.

Drawing influence from historical figures and artists such as Lorina Bulwer, Louise Bourgeois and Cindy Sherman, King’s practice examines contemporary feminine identity and the tensions between what is aesthetically pleasing but morally suspect. As the artist notes of the woman she is examining across her work: “This has been an opportunity to imagine the female character I am fascinated with. She is not wholly Bambi or cow, but somewhere in that ironic gap in-between; she is ‘Half-Bambi, Half-Cow.’”

Wilton Way Gallery is found at 61 Wilton Way, Hackney, London E8 1BG. The show runs from 7 November – 19 December, 2024, opening times and days are nowhere to be found on the gallery website or their social media. There is an opening night view on November 6th, 6pm until 8pm. Hang on, we’ve been to the show now, in a small basement of a dressmakers shop that’s open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am until 5pm.

4: Core Sway – Ageless at Kingston Cass Art’s Art Space –  well just as it says on the tin, a solo show from mixed media street art flavoured artist Core Sway who is “displaying brand new work on canvas inspired by graffiti, punk and recycled materials”

Kingston Cass Art’s Art Space is found at 103 Clarence Street, Kingston, London, KT1 1QY The space is open Tuesday through to Sunday, 10am until 6pm, the show runs from 9th November until 22nd November 2024

5: Fitzrovia Lates – there is another Fitzrovia Lates things going on this Thursday. A Collective late opening of galleries across twelve spaces across the district on Thursday November 7th, 6-8pm with a further two shows happening outside the official programme (we’ll thank our friend Seb for that one, here’s a list he made…), you can go do the exploring this time,,,

Brooke Benington – Alan Stanners: Wild Life
Night Café – Johannes Bosisio & Sian Fan: Another Self*
Gillian Jason – Megan Baker & Eleanor Johnson: Time is Always New
Edel Assanti – The Stars Fell on Alabama: Southern Black Renaissance 6-8pm –
Rhodes – Cat Spilman: Make It Blue*
Workplace – Pei Wang: The Enneagram Mask
Niru Ratnam – Lydia Blakeley: Hold On For Dear Life
Albion Jeune – Su Yu-Xin: Precious
Maximillian William – Seven Artist Group Show: 5 Years

Des Bains – Roger Muñoz: Haunted Germs
Josh Lilley – Tom Anholt: Rising Tide
Pi Artworks – Alya Hatta: A Soft Place to Land
Hurst Contemporary – Jack Otway & Zach Zono: The Longest Time

Seb’s Art List is a weekly e.mail list of London shows, opening, art events, it is quite a comprehensive as he like to tell us it is but it is a very useful informative and rather recommended list to subscribe to and often tell us about things that aren’t listed anywhere else (although he still hasn’t manage to list a Cultivate show, we’re on number 197 now, we he manage before we make 200? He doesn’t respond to e.mails that well, but hey, these things as we know well are a kind of thankless thing, we like Seb’s list). And seeing as Fitrovia Lates don’t do websites or social media, Seb is yer man…

We did mention the David Tress opening in last week’s five, it is only just opening this week though and a week is a long time in art, a day is these days, yesterday’s click bait is today’s been there done that…. Last week’s five looked like this – ORGAN: Five Recommended Art Shows – Jen Orpin at Union Gallery, Carol Robertson and Trevor Sutton at The Grey Gallery, David Tress at David Messum Fine Art, Uncovered Collective at Peckham Safehouse, Gathering Mythologies Closing Celebration and Performances at Netil House, London E8 and…

David Tress, 2024 at David Messum Fine Art – 6th November until 29th Nov 2024 – “The paintings and drawings in this exhibition are firmly grounded in the landscape of the area in which David Tress lives, Pembrokeshire in West Wales, but they are also a testament to the delight and fascination that he finds in exploring other landscapes throughout Britain”.

“On the walls of the gallery will be found subjects from Dartmoor, Exmoor and Bodmin Moor rubbing shoulders with paintings resulting from trips to Teesdale, Settle and the Western Highlands of Scotland. Buildings also find their place in the show, from the ruins of Dugall’s Chapel set in its far western landscape on South Uist to the eighteenth century sophistication of classically designed temples in the parkland of Stourhead in Wiltshire”.

David Messum Fine Art is found at 12 Bury Street, St. James’s, London, SW1Y 6AB. The gallery is open Tuesday until Sunday, 10am until 6pm