Here we go then, on well into the new art year already, we’ve explored Condo, we’ve been to the monster that is the London Art Fair, there’s been some good art shows already, especially Taylor Silk’s Soft Domme opening night at East London’s Wilton Way Gallery, that was so much more than just playful fun… On with another Five Art Things thing, on we go and never mind the bliss or whatever we said last time. 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: Lilly Fenichel, Against the Grain at Gazelli Art House – “Gazelli Art House will open their 2025 programme with Lilly Fenichel’s first UK solo exhibition, titled, Against the Grain“. – “Lilly Fenichel’s work is imbued with her own powerful rebel persona and defiance, a career defined by resistance to the art market’s pressures and an unwavering commitment to her own vision. Her expressive canvases, haunting drawings, and layered sculptures stand as a tribute to an artist who didn’t follow trends but set her own creative path, embodying the spirit of independence that fueled mid-century abstraction.  Lilly Fenichel’s work is refreshingly varied, revealing her relentless curiosity and the range of her creative expression. Her diverse body of work speaks to an artist unafraid to explore different media, forms, and techniques.

Susan Landauer, in the catalogue essay for Denver Art Museum’s eponymous exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism (2016), wrote “Among the few women admitted into the male-dominated abstract expressionist movement, Lilly Fenichel produced formidable paintings with a range of compositional strategies and a gritty elegance all their own.”

Reflecting on her career, Juri Koll, Director of the Venice Institute of Contemporary Art, remarks, “She is one of the true rebels and is an extremely important, if somewhat under-recognized artist in art history.” In a landscape where artists often bent to the demands of galleries and markets, Fenichel was steadfast, and her legacy is now seen as one of quiet but unyielding impact.

As an artist, Fenichel moved in circles with notable peers like Richard Diebenkorn, Hassel Smith and Frank Lobdell, yet she chose a path uniquely her own. Her creative journey was marked by resistance to external pressures, and each piece carries an unmistakable sense of liberation. Lilly Fenichel’s work is a timeless reminder of what art can achieve when it is true to itself, uncompromising, and passionately free.

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 24th January until 15th March 2025

2: Jim Hodges, It Only Takes a Minute at Stephen Friedman Gallery – Opening Thursday 23 January, 6-8pm, and then the show runs from 24th January until 1st March 2025 – “Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present It only takes a minute, a new UK solo exhibition by Jim Hodges. This is the American artist’s fourth exhibition at the gallery”.

“Through materials, images, forms and gestures, reflecting on intimacy, history, values and causality, Hodges invites an enquiry into our relationship to time, its measures, and meanings. Extending through the gallery, composed of found materials, carved marble and oil painting, in varied ranges of scale and tonality, this new body of work resonates with whimsy, humility, foreboding and mystery to highlight themes of beauty, fragility and impermanence.

Rendered in white marble and painted bronze, the familiar, modest gathering of intimate belongings to be discovered in Craig’s closet have been captured in time. Even as they speak of the specific world, and the specific life in which these objects – clothing, keepsakes, closed forever containers – were brought together, they seem to now transcend their temporal materiality.

Of this work, Hodges writes: “For those of us with the good fortune to have a place to hang our things, a closet is a magical container, a collection of materials, arranged by each of us, that can, at a glance, reveal our cares, desires and even our deepest secrets. Within a closet time is frozen, and in what is kept there fragmented into contrasting visual and conceptual rhythms, meters and durations. Things accumulated and arranged, carefully stacked and aligned are juxtaposed with the quickly thrown down or casually abandoned to be taken care of later or simply forgotten. Out of this dense setting narratives blossom and come alive – looking in we’re reminded of who we are, where we’ve been, the hopes, treasures and dreams we hold. It’s there in boxes concealing our heart’s contours, scribbled messages on folded notes and cards, photos, records, files – all the stuff we’ve saved for reasons each item embodies, and all the choices made are there as well in this often hidden holding space, the closet.”

Shifting from playful contrasting weights and tempos, from light reflections in polished marble to the twinkling wings of a butterfly night light, the exhibition moves next to a darker terrain where we are met with shadows and suggestions of memories and times long past. It only takes a minute draws the viewer along a path that concludes in the dimming light of the last gallery where we come upon a mysterious, looming garage space. This murky, sensual apparition, rescued from the Louisiana bayou, is a musky and erotic threshold for the senses and our imaginations to cross. There we encounter an archive of materials in a spectrum of patinas that build to create a double portrait of a father and his son.

Throughout his evolving mixed-media practice, Hodges invites his audience to join him in the co-creation of living art – of experiences that resist mechanical reproduction and defy simple categorisation. Over decades Hodges’ work with common and familiar forms has mined psychological, emotional, spiritual and social terrains that spark potent connections.

For Hodges “…joy and inquiry are entwined in the connections and relationships that art can bring into being, transcending cultures, differences, divisions, binaries, and barriers. Valuing the common and every day we meet, to co-create the art where our shared humanity may be felt, and in feeling we can find affirmation and reminders of the delicacy, fragility and preciousness that is our human materiality. And in this materiality of site specificity, each of us shines with one another across the field of art’s infinity.”

Stephen Friedman Gallery is at 5–6 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LQ. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am until 6pm (11am to 5pm on Saturdays)

Previous Stephen Friedman Gallery coverage on these pages

3: California at Timothy Taylor Gallery – “Timothy Taylor is pleased to announce California, a group exhibition featuring new work by multigenerational artists with deep connections to the American West Coast. Opening on 23rd January in London, this presentation centres on paintings and sculptures that find resonance and inspiration in California’s sun-drenched landscapes, cultures, and histories. 

Distinctly shaped by multiculturalism and counterculture, histories of migration and enterprise, and above all, its sublime light and natural splendour, California cultivated some of the most significant contributions to twentieth-century American visual culture—from landscape photography and mural painting to… read more

California runs from 23rd January until 1st March 2025 with an opening Reception on 23rd January, 6 – 8pm. Timothy Taylor Gallery is found at 15 Bolton Street London W1J 8BG. The space is open Tuesday to Friday 10am – 6pm and Saturday 11am – 5pm.

Proceeds from the exhibition will benefit artists who lost their homes and studios in the Los Angeles fires.

4: Now Filming: Art, Documentary and Resistance in 1930s at Four Corners Gallery – an exhibition and documentary screening that focuses on resistance in 1930s East London that explores the fascinating story of the Workers Film and Photo League (WFPL).

“The WFPL employed the camera as ‘a weapon in the struggle’ to represent working-class people’s lives and their campaigns against poverty, exploitation, and the rise of fascism. NOW FILMING focuses on this unexplored moment of cultural resistance during the social conflicts of 1930s Britain.  The League countered the capitalist press barons that dominated the media by creating images produced by and for working people themselves. Films such as Bread (1934), employ Soviet-inspired montage sequences to show the desperation of hunger and unemployment, while Workers Newsreel No. 3 (1935) captures mass demonstrations in London against the hated Means Test for unemployment relief. Photographs document protests in working-class Bermondsey against Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in 1937 – one year after the infamous Battle of Cable Street in the East End”.

Now Filming brings together newly discovered archival material, workers’ film newsreels, photographs and agitprop, exploring their use in campaigns against the inter-war realities of hunger, fascism and unemployment. The exhibition will also feature a series of short films, made by participants of the Workers Newsreel East End Stories project

Four Corners is at 121 Roman Road, London, E2 0QN. The space is open Tuesday through to Saturday, 10am to 6pm

5: 31 years of Piece of Paper Press: artists’ books, artworks and ephemera, 1994–2025 at Matt’s Gallery –  on from 29th January until 23rd March 2025 – “Matt’s Gallery is pleased to present an archival display of artists’ books, artworks and ephemera from Piece of Paper Press, dating from 1994 to the present day”.

“Piece of Paper Press is an ongoing artists’ book series founded by author Tony White in 1994. The project was designed to address the economic conditions of the period, but has continued unchanged: a lo-fi, sustainable format used to commission, publish and distribute limited editions of new writings and visual works by artists and writers. Each book is made from a single A4 sheet, printed both sides then folded, stapled and trimmed by hand. Piece of Paper Press editions are always given away free.

For Matt’s Gallery, White presents a vitrine-based display of all Piece of Paper Press titles to date alongside a wealth of artwork, ephemera and clippings from the project’s archive. Contributors include Ian Bourn, Pavel Büchler, Peter Bunting, Barbara Campbell, Mikey Cuddihy, Stevie Deas, Joolz Denby, Tim Etchells, Stephanie Fawbert, Rose Frain, Jane Gifford, Bruce Gilchrist, Halford + Beard, M John Harrison, David Hayden, Christopher Hewitt, Steven Hull, Sharon Kivland. Liliane Lijn, Elizabeth Magill, Andrea Mason, Penny McCarthy, Susana Medina, Katharine Meynell, Michael Moorcock, Andrew Mottershead, Courttia Newland, James Pyman, Borivoj Radaković, Sheena Rose, Pete Smith, Gordana Stanišić, Selina Thompson, Suzanne Treister, Alison Turnbull, Joanna Walsh and Tony White.  The forty-sixth title from Piece of Paper Press, Tones by Andrew Mottershead, will be released during the exhibition run.

Matt’s Gallery is at Nine Elms, 6 Charles Clowes Walk, London, SW11 7AN. The gallery is open Wednesday through to Sunday, Midday until 6pm

More about Piece of Paper Press

Previously on these pages

ORGAN THING: Cherry picking at the 2025 London Art Fair, the highlights – Antonio Sergio Moreira, that Annka Kultys installation, Abigail Norris, Myles Richmond, John Virtue, a Marton Nemes piece, John R. Grabach, Perdita Sinclair, Nancy Delouis and more…

And this is still on… ORGAN PREVIEW: Black Subjective will open next weekend, a solo show from London-based painter Yasmin Grant and her powerful paintings built with lusciously painted golds, rich dark browns and yellows, deep dark blues that are almost but not quite the blackest of black…