“The day when curiosity disappears there’s nothing left but to lie down and wait for our last breath.” – French film director Jacques Rivette.
And it is thankfully almost impossible to pass an art gallery without needing to go in and there’s no time to catch breath after that very rewarding Jaune Quick-To-See Smith show at Stephen Friedman Gallery for we are still in the West End and Cork Street and about to embark on Part Four of our epic London Gallery Weekend adventure. By the end of the weekend something like sixty to seventy galleries will have been explored and not all of them part of this London Gallery Weekend hype. It is just a case of a short walk across the street to the small in size but always very big in terms of rewarding gallery that is Holtermann Fine Art.
In through the glass door where there’s a three piece three artist show just opening; “Balancing Acts is an in-focus exhibition – comprising two sculptures and one painting – that showcases the work of three contemporary artists: Neil Gall (b. 1967), Michel Pérez Pollo (b. 1981) and Olivia Bax (b. 1988).” – There’s always a bit of an attitude in this small space, a bit of a positive challenge when so many of the Cork Street spaces play it all a little too safe. I like this space, I like the talk in here as well as the walk, there’s an identity here, once again this show feels like a Holtermann show, it is almost a respite in the middle of it all and the three pieces in this new show work so so well together. Hey, we can’t just have a few throwaway lines in the middle of this Gallery Weekend piece, this is another show to go back to and explore some more, to consider properly, to go to without going to another twenty galleries first. This is an excellent three piece show, a classic three piece encounter in the manner of Cream or early Motorhead; “Balancing Acts is an invitation to consider the ways in which three different artists brilliantly juggle abstract form and colour to create bold, well-balanced imbalances that tap into our fascination with asymmetry and counterpoise….”. Yes, need to go back and explore all three artists and not have my head full for other shows, just in and out, just straight in, see this show then go again, avoid art for the rest of the day (not that it is ever possible to avoid art of course, art is everywhere you look, there pecking at you, demanding of you.)
…and I’m going to respectfully leave the Tom Waugh exhibition at Messum‘s Cork Street gallery for this week, not to be taken as a negative comment on Waugh’s practice and his exploration of materiality and trompe l’œil, but you can maybe go into too many galleries in a couple of days and I do want to take my time with the Tom Waugh show so on past Messum’s big front window for now and on to the current exhibition at Goodman Gallery’s London space (yes, we’re still here in Cork Street, smack bang in the middle of Cork Street now actually, pretty much every building on the street is a gallery, it is very easy to spend a whole day on this street – now if only someone had thought of putting a pub in the middle of it all).
There’s a Leonardo Drew exhibition taking up the main body of the Goodman space, I do like the theatre of that walk down that wide staircase away from the sunlight and down into the main gallery in the basement area. Goodman have one of those blue stickers on the door as well, another gallery taking part in the hype of London Gallery Week. Besides the fancy event website that no one seems to know much about, besides the stickers on the doors of the participating galleries and the plush car parked in the middle of the street waiting to ferry the chosen ones from wherever to wherever – I did ask for a ride to a show in Peckham, the request was met with short shrift – besides that I’m really not sure, besides the self-congratulation, how different this weekend is to any given weekend? A lot of self-congratulation, a few of the spaces open on Sunday when normally they wouldn’t be and no doubt some rather exaggerated claims in terms of visitor numbers at the end of it all when really the galleries I’ve been in so far and will go in to during the rest on the weekend have been no busier than they usually are on any given weekend. Actually most people I’ve spoken to outside of the immediate contemporary art bubble seem to have absolutely no idea that the weekend is a thing. Enough of that and on with the Leonardo Drew exhibition down there in the dramatic basement of Goodman Gallery…
In my mind Goodman Gallery is run by Boss Goodman but that’s going to be lost on anyone besides disciples of those Pink Fairies and a few deviants. No Boss, but Goodman Gallery is a very interesting space that originated in South Africa; “For 57 years, Goodman Gallery has championed a leading community of artists who inspire social change and provided a platform for dialogue and healing. In 1966, during South Africa’s apartheid years, the gallery opened its doors to artists of all races, refusing to discriminate against artists of colour and becoming one of the first spaces in the world to exhibit artists who are beginning to gain global recognition as pioneers of 20th Century African Art”. They’ve had an international foot in Mayfair since 2019 and always have something interesting to offer smack bang in the middle of the gallery-rich street
Right now “Goodman Gallery London is pleased to present an exhibition by Leonardo Drew, featuring a striking new series of eight recently created wall sculptures and six new works on paper, collectively crafted from wood, glass and painted plaster.” more of the artist’s engagement with material, “Drew continues his exploration of form, texture and spatial dialogue.” – it is mostly about the texture, the thrusting out from the space, the pieces of the piece coming to meet you and yes, a tension between destruction and regeneration, order in the disorder, calm after some kind of storm maybe, the putting back together on things perhaps?
Leonardo Drew (b. 1961, Tallahassee, Florida) is a New York-based artist who, over three decades, has become known for creating contemplative abstract sculptural works. I’m not sure how much I really want to contemplate them? I am enjoying these works, especially the bigger pieces down in the main body of the gallery, the pieces back upstairs at street level aren’t quite so exciting simply because they’ve been put behind glass and that glass does kind of weaken their power as pieces of art somehow. It is all shiny bits of material, you sense a pack of magpies would be in heaven down here, I do like them, I’m just not sure I’m going to be thinking about them anywhere near as much as I shall be thinking some of the art I’ve encountered in the last couple of days. Enjoyable, interesting but, it isn’t you, it really is me…
Into the Alison Jacques Gallery, and in the immortal words of Sir John Peel introducing a Bastard Kestrel session or was it a Doctor And The Crippings set? Whoever it was he was introducing Mr Peel said with great delight, “now we’re motoring!” and indeed we are motoring as we swing into our next Cork Street stop that is the Alison Jacques gallery and hang on, haven’t we seen this solo exhibition of work by Italian artist Bona de Mandiargues already? Pretty sure I’ve written about it? What’s that you say, nothing on the website? Let me dig it out, there’s probably a half digested review around here somewhere, there are so many of them that never get finished! I distinctly remember drinking very welcome cans of cold gin on a very hot evening at the opening of this show a couple of weeks ago. Let me get back to you about Bona de Mandiargues, actually, is it time to end Part Four of this London Gallery Weekend adventure and think about Part Five? We’re still only midway through Friday afternoon, we have quite some way to go yet, the weekend has barely begun, we are just about to walk into the Virginia Chihota exhibition at the always welcoming Tiwani Contemporary gallery. Motoring, what’s your price for flight? Now Mr. Peel would not have gone within a million miles of that one…
“Introspective in nature, Virginia Chihota’s work is deeply influenced by personal experiences – landmark and everyday. In a reflection on intimacy and the human figure, she has addressed themes such as childbearing, childrearing, marriage, kinship, bereavement and faith. At once mundane and transcendental, rife with allusions to everyday life, and religious and folkloric symbolism, her large works on paper display a raw, expressionist verve and a striking grace in the elaborate use of patterns, textures and layers.” She trained as a print maker, her use of screen-printing is rather intriguing, she’s doing things in a slightly different way. She mixes printing techniques with drawing to produce unique works that are indeed of “striking formal complexity”. These once again are bold pieces, especially the really big pieces in the street level part of the gallery.
As an artist Virginia Chicota has form; born in 1983 in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe, she currently lives and works in New York. She graduated in Fine Arts from the National Art Gallery Studios in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2006. “Chihota represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and was awarded the Prix Canson in the same year. In 2021, her works were commissioned by the Opéra National de Paris, France for a performance of Verdi’s Aida.” And once again there’s an energy to these pieces, a sense of an urgent need to make them, a feeling of the artist’s movement, her need to communicate, a need to say something but thankfully not to be obvious too about it, I like the movement here, the different techniques and the resulting marks made, the composition, the coming together of it all here in this gallery in the West End of London for me to just stand in front of and not only enjoy but also to question, to try and read, to absorb, to be excited by, to listen to, to quietly debate with maybe? I have little faith but these big pieces are rather fine. Munoonei kana makaditarisa nhai Mwari?/What do you see when you look at me ohh God? is on at the Cork Street space until September 20th and as the shows often are at Tiwani Contemporary, it is well worth your time…
And then it was on to the latest show at the Flowers Cork Street space, that and the old school of Redfern Gallery and the revolving door of the Frieze space that is No.9 and the big Waddington Custot space where nothing has really grabbed me since that excellent Peter Blake show a couple of years ago and the day and the whole London Gallery Weekend is still young, Part Five will be along in a minute and probably part six, seven and how long can this go on for? Can’t I just go trainspotting instead? How much art is too much art? I wonder if anyone actually got a ride in one of those cars or like rather a lot of this London Gallery Weekend. was it just parked there talking it rather than walking it, did anyone get a ride? On we go…
Holtermann Fine Art is found at 30 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG. The space is open Tuesday to Friday 11:00-18:00, Saturday 11:00-17:00. The highly recommended current show, Balancing Acts is on until 26th July 2025.
Leonardo Drew is at Goodman Gallery, Cork Street until 28th June
Virginia Chihota is at Tiwani Contemporary until 20th September 2025
As always. do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show
THE ORGAN 
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[…] in the middle of the afternoon straight after the delight and the rather rewarding challenge of the Virginia Chihota exhibition at the always welcoming Tiwani Contemporary gallery, alas, the silence of Flowers is totally ruined by a very (very) loud Gallerina complaining (very) […]
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