London Gallery Weekend is upon us again, now will it be anything more than just the galleries open pretty much as they always are only with some extra balloons. window stickers and signs outside along with some self-congratulating press releases (that they’re very selective with)?

They say “it is the world’s largest event of its kind and unique among global gallery weekend events in the breadth and diversity of its participating galleries” although we note that they do rather exclude rather a lot of London’s art spaces with their selection process; I mean nothing artist-led, nothing with dare we say an “urban” or alternative flavour or heaven-forbid a hint of a notion of that nasty street art stuff. The annual event takes place over three days, each day supposedly focusing on a different area of London. Crucially free for all to attend as most commercial galleries (rather than museum type places) are anyway whatever time of the year it is – “it provides an opportunity to discover and explore London’s world-class gallery scene” (no big deal, you can do that on any given weekend of any year, apart from when they all take to their yachts and close up for Art’s August holidays), “celebrating the city’s diverse cultural and creative communities” (although, like we already said they don’t want anything street-orientated or artist-led polluting their  establishment “contemporary” ideas. We’re promised “an extensive programme scheduled by galleries specially for the weekend includes talks, family workshops and special events” which mostly means some gallery people doing some noisy wine drinking with their mates in the corner while they mostly ignore you while judging you (they do like to look you up and down, take a look at your shoes, see if you look like you can afford the art or look cool enough to speak to, peronally I like being left aloen), but hey, it is about the art, and some of the attitudes apart. it is brilliant to just go exploring all these art galleries (as you’ll no doubt note from the hundreds of art reviews, features of said art, art gallery coverage and such on these fractured opinionated pages).

Hey, cynical smiles apart, the commercial art galleries of London, the delight of exploring places like the Cork Street galleries for free should never ever be taken for granted and I like to think we never ever do even if we do sometimes take a critical view and a sideswipe or two in terms of what they show and how they so so often ignore those artists that are often right under their noses in favour of what they see as the greener grass ftom over there, why show a London-based artist whe nyou can fly one in from New York?

London Gallery Weekend kicks off on Friday, here’s a link or two, more coverage from us as it unfolds…      

A list of participating galleries and their shows, times and dates and price of fish, the shows are all free to entee and here’s the official site for more information. I guess we could spend some time making recomendations although no, we’ll jsut go explore and report back like we did last year. Here’s some of last year’s coverage from us…

ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend pt.1 – the paint is alive at Dessy Baeva’s Portals show at Hackney’s Lot Projects, and not a Cobra in sight…

ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend pt.2 – Rosemary Cronin’s boots steal Transition’s Hard Candy show over here in Hackney…

ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend pt.3 – More of those questions at Annka Kultys Gallery, this time asked by challenging Austrian artist Christiane Peschek and a rather strong show called The Girls Club…

ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend pt.4 – Adelaide Cioni’s True Form at The Approach, Ana Viktoria Dzinic at Nicoletti’s final Vyner Street show…

ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend pt.5 – Sharon Hall’s Meeting Points at Benjamin Rhodes Arts, Dean Sameshima at Soft Opening, Marieke Bernard-Berkel and Tom Bull’s black tar at Sherbet Green, Carole Gibbons at Hales and…

ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend pt.6 – On with it all, Laurence Sturla at Project Native Informant, the Matt Bollinger show at Mother’s Tankstation is worth your time, Maureen Paley Gallery is currently exhibiting Hannah Starkey…