Here we go again then, on with another Five Art Things thing, on we go and never mind the bliss or the selfies in front of the art 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: Hetty Douglas, Miracle State at Haricot Gallery – 16th May until 6th June – Miracle State a solo presentation of new works by a rather exciting painter, Hetty Douglas paintings are full of energy and a lot more besides. There’s an opening on Thursday evening, 15th May, 6-8pm, “all welcome!” so says the green-doored East London gallery. Been enjoying encounters with Hetty’s paintings all year – “upstairs there’s a couple of rather big, rather ambitious, rather alive, rather exciting Hetty Douglas paintings that really do stand out”, there’s was an excellent show at one of the Bomb Factory spaces recently – ORGAN THING: Hetty Douglas and Katie Eraser’s Flesh and Time at Bomb Factory’s Shoreditch space, these are paintings alive with raw personality. Oh and a bit of Contour Fatigue at Emalin’s Clerk House space…

‘If we were born whole, but then we became fragmented in our body, mind and spirit through abandonment and shame (mortification) then we need help finding a way to return to our Miracle State.’

Shame.  An intense feeling of being faulty, ruptured, inferior at the core. A burning stomach, shrinking body, spiralling inward in the chest. Constricted throat. Difficulty in breathing and speaking, feeling glared at by others. These symptoms destroy our ability to trust. As adults we can have a mistaken sense that something is wrong with us without knowing why. Hetty Douglas’s solo show Miracle State invites you to partake in a journey of psychological renewal.

This exhibition can be described as the ‘inner drug store’. The shelves are stocked with the addiction of excitement, poison of shame, false fears, and the seduction of self-abandonment. Each work in this exhibition measures the weight of these learnt beliefs against the reforming of hope. Miracle State is an exploration of shadow, an opening to the possibility of self reclamation and what it means to trudge ‘the road to happy destiny’.

Haricot Gallery is found at 2 Blackall Street, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 4AD. The Hetty Douglas exhibition runs from 16th May until 6th June 2025, There’s an opening on Thursday evening, 15th May, 6-8pm.

2: Brittany Shepherd, Coward at Mamoth – 15th May until 28th June 2025 – Mamoth say they are “delighted to announce the opening of Coward, a solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Brittany Shepherd, on 15 May. This marks Shepherd’s second exhibition in London and her second collaboration with the gallery”.

“Brittany Shepherd’s practice spans painting, video, sculpture and writing. Her research and archiving from internet sources provides a basis for her compositions, imagery and material vocabulary. Items such as rubber bedsheets, latex masks and smeared lipstick enter a reproduced constellatory imaginary that hint at the latent visual record of personal explorations made public through photography and dissemination. This tension between photography and the artist’s hand through selection, competition and paint is made apparent through her use of photo-realist techniques”

Mamoth is found at 3 Endsleigh Street, London, WC1H 0DS. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, Midday until 5pm, (1pm to 6pm on Saturdays). Coward runs from 15th May until 28th June 2025. There is an opening on 15th, 6pm until 8pm. Brittany on Instagram

3: Ragna Bley, Move Baby, Move at Pilar Corrias – 16th May until 28th June 2025, with an opening on 15th May, 6pm until 8pm – “Pilar Corrias is pleased to present Move Baby, Move, Ragna Bley’s second solo exhibition with the gallery”.

“For this exhibition, Bley examines the unseen forces that influence us, shaping our focus and sense of self. In a time when both humanity and nature are in a state of constant flux, Bley creates a vivid, transportive universe through her paintings. Her approach is deeply personal, drawing on her own sense of place, the unpredictable power of nature and a desire to experiment with the materiality of paint.

Bley’s painterly environments encourage you towards introspection, moving you between the concreteness of paint and other worldly places. Incorporating snow gathered from just outside her studio in Oslo, Bley soaks the snow in paint and waits for this to melt, connecting to a sense of movement between transience and permanence in her work. Snow becomes a medium by which Bley constructs and directs her canvases, tying her work to the Nordics in a literal and symbolic way. The parameters of paint, canvas, water, snow and the movement of her body and time, serve as the physical portals for Bley’s abstracted world-making.

The large, sweeping brushstrokes that define much of Bley’s recent work, are developed using spatulas and custom-made tools, rather than traditional brushes. This method induces a mechanical aspect which is controlled, but not fully, and allows for painterly gestures to be disguised. The paint absorbs into the canvas through the application of pressure and the passage of time. This process, and collaboration with the materials and their interactions, results in a dynamic tension between intention and unpredictability, giving the paintings a life of their own. The careful balance of technique and spontaneity speaks to Bley’s dedication to both the technical and emotional dimensions of her work, reinforcing her ability to navigate the forces she seeks to embody and explore”.

Pilar Corrias is at 2 Savile Row, London London W1S 3PA. The gallery is open Tuesday–Friday: 10am–6pm and Saturday: 11am–6pm.

previously – ORGAN THING: And still the around about way to Break The Glass, this time via Pierre Knop’s opening of Fireflies Under Fever Sky at Pilar Corrias Gallery just around the corner (on a corner) and a little bit up the road…

4: Michelle Williams Gamaker, Strange Evidence at Matt’s Gallery – 14th May – 21st July 2025 –  Matt’s Gallery is pleased to announce Strange Evidence, a new film and installation by Michelle Williams Gamaker”.

“Strange Evidence focuses on 1930s screen star and Academy Award nominee Merle Oberon, who kept her mixed Sri Lankan, Indian and British heritage secret to protect her industry status, passing as white until her death in 1979. Under the aegis of Alexander Korda’s London Films, as a contracted star she became its resident so-called “exotic” playing stereotypical roles. Together with the Studios, Merle falsified her past claiming she was born in Tasmania to British parents. She also controlled how she was photographed, relying on make-up, lighting, dermabrasion and skin-bleaching procedures, which caused cosmetic poisoning and allergic reactions.

Williams Gamaker’s project sensitively approaches Oberon’s story, exploring self-censorship, racial stigma and trauma, looking with nuance at complex decisions shaped by racial prejudice and restrictive conditions of labour, which still impact screen artists today.

Included in the exhibition is the artist’s BFI-commissioned short Oberon (2023), which revisits the potential casting of the actor for British Directors Powell and Pressburger’s film The Red Shoes (1951). Strange Evidence extends this project and sees Williams Gamaker expand her growing cast of fictional allies of 20th Century film.

A new moving image work is being developed in phases. During this exhibition the gallery will become a hybrid installation/working film studio, with the set of this new film serving as focal point of the exhibition. The installation will feature sections of the film already produced. These colour sequences explore the painful dermabrasion treatments Oberon underwent to minimise facial scars. Drawing on Body Horror genre films these scenes reveal graphic transformations of the physical body. In counterpoint to this in scenes filmed in a Film Noir-aesthetic during the exhibition, to be graded black and white in post-production, Williams Gamaker will attempt to psychoanalyse Oberon. In the privacy of the Analyst’s consulting room, anxieties, fantasies and the symbolic can be voiced. The capacity for protagonists to speak back is an integral part of the artist’s practice. The exhibition will close for filming to take place between 11 and 17 June.

The finished film will be shown as part of a new installation at Offline, Glasgow in 2026 and will tour to cinemas, venues and film festivals. Strange Evidence is the first part in a new phase of Williams Gamaker’s work in Fictional Healing, following her previous series in Fictional Activism and Fictional Revenge. It will complete Williams Gamaker’s Critical Affection trilogy (2021–2026), which includes The Bang Straws (2021) and Thieves (2023). An accompanying programme of screenings and talks will soon be announced. Strange Evidence is commissioned and produced by Matt’s Gallery, London and Offline, Glasgow”.

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

5: Mary Herbert, Careful Not To Fill An Emptiness at Moskowitz Bayse | Cambridge Heath Road – “The experience of the body can’t be measured in feet or by the length of its limbs. But as a changing and  curious instrument, the body knows space as something foreclosing – an abrupt cul-de-sac in a dream – and sometimes so blown open it can feel like sensory deprivation, extending past any textured surface or distance in time.

The artworks in Careful not to fill an Emptiness move into spaces which have held – and been held by – the  body. Here, these spaces are loosely described by paint or in dry materials on paper. They are shared and  solitary at once: a group of figures stand together with their heads bowed, someone holds out a flower to  another who is angled away and appears not to see them but is still supported by bodies on either side.  

When an object or body is depicted, a surrounding space forms by default. Around the bodies of natural  elements, Mary Herbert paints a kind of default landscape that doesn’t need to be clearly defined to be  occupied. It is a not-quite place that exists despite the body’s vulnerability.

Although this place isn’t quite real or definite, we still recognise it: it is a rapidly changing space, accruing  shared bodily actions, marked by structures of financialization, platform capitalism and social reproduction.  We know something, even if we try not to, of those ways in which the body of the global majority is being  excluded and exposed.  

In these paintings, the body knows its vulnerability in a new way, like the body of a tree hosting life in its trunk. As though recognising this, there are places in which Herbert’s paintings and works on paper appear  to cut off and away from something, holding and then breaking a temporal pact. But there is an insistence  that feels bodily. She stays with the coordinates of the painted place, willing into being a space in time.  

A prism is an instrument moved through by light: the body is a prism moved through by spaces, ones it  has occupied and ones it hasn’t, at least not physically. As they travel in and out of the body, the body itself  travels, day by day, through those spaces, forming a mobius strip of inversions. As an external plane, a  painting or drawing seems to refuse space – a flat barrier against a wall – yet the expansiveness of space has been one of the core convictions of painting because of the unbounded body and its role in making an  image with paint.  

Within this body of work you stand before a compression of colour, its low fidelity testing what you hold  onto when you move further away. This is the clarity you come closer to when you loosen the body’s grip. What does it feel like to stand in a place that will be there after your body, everybody, has gone?  

There is an unwillingness to state an answer but a resistance to leaving. There is a tug backwards as the  paintings push forwards into the space they occupy. You construct an experience, by default, through a  combination of handling and material. This is as true in life as in painting”.   Text by Aisha Farr

Moskowitz Bayse is found at 223 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 0EL. The space is open Tuesday until Sunday, 10am until 6pm

8th May 2025 – ORGAN: Five Recommended Art Shows – The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, Richard Pendry at Atom Gallery, Evangeline Armstrong and Diana Olifirova at Bomb Factory, Shoreditch, Jonathan Lasker at Timothy Taylor, Pinkie Maclure and Medieval Eyes at James Freeman Gallery and…

1st May 2025 – ORGAN: Five Recommended Art Shows – Zemba Luzamba at Kristin Hjellegjerde, The Four Elements at hARTslane with Cristina Calvache, Hugh Mendes, Louise Reynolds and Harry Pye, Sweet Toof gets Back On Track at Images In Frames, Philip Michael Martin back at JM Gallery, Katy Moran at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery and…

24th April 2025 – ORGAN: Five Recommended Art Shows – Blink’s Room Share 7 at Peckham Safehouse, Ripley Fletcher at Filet, Penge Rooftop Gallery viewing days, Agriel Ness at A Mini Bar in Hackney, Derek Boshier and the Sixties at Gazelli Art House and Steven Appleby’s Dragman as well….

17th April 2025 – ORGAN: Five Recommended Art Shows – Jai Chuhan at The Approach, A Gesture, An Action, Touching at APT Gallery, Future Ritual: Ceremony, a festival of performance at Copeland Gallery, In Black and White at Tower Gallery, Rita Says and the Jerico Orchestra at The Horse Hospital and…