We don’t need an editorial here do we? Another week, another Five Art Things thing and on with all this endless art coverage? Years of it. Should it all just knocked on the head, just get back to the dog eat dog world of being an artist? Is there really much point in all this art coverage and all this clapping with one hand? Answers on a postcard to somewhere ot other….
Actually this week we probably do need an editorial, or a repeat, the art coverage on these pages really has fallen of a cliff in recent times, we have been saying for weeks that we’re just not feeling that excited by the various branches of the London art scene right now. We’re looking at listings and gallery mailouts, at press releases and the annoyance of artists who clearly think it all starts and finishes with a bloody Instagram story, that and just showing their art to each other and really not wanting to engage with anyone outside of their immediate peer group. I really am wondering if I’m that bothered about any of it right now? It isn’t that we haven’t been going to shows, checking out shows, searching for shows, far from it. The London Art Scene really isn’t inspiring anything much right now and…
Enough of this, shut up, get one with it. Five art things then, 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: Louise Howard, Slipping Through Skin at General Assembly – 18th May until 24th May 2026 – “Following a successful solo exhibition, In Catfood and Wine, and a series of shows throughout 2025, London-based contemporary artist Louise Howard returns with a new body of work, Slipping Through Skin, opening at General Assembly this May”.
“The exhibition features eight large-scale figurative paintings exploring the tension between visibility and psychological depth. Howard’s figures (always women) appear emotionally present but inwardly guarded, occupying space without fully revealing themselves. While In Catfood and Wine expanded Howard’s palette and introduced new motifs such as hyperrealistic hands, Slipping Through Skin focuses on scale, layered textures and composition. The paintings consider how identity and emotion can remain intact even under public gaze. In a cultural moment often defined by constant exposure and self-disclosure, Howard’s work proposes an alternative stance. Her subjects are visible and present, yet they maintain a sense of autonomy and opacity, suggesting that it is possible to be seen without surrendering personal depth. Howard examines how painting can hold vulnerability and authority simultaneously. The figures command attention while maintaining a sense of opacity, present but not fully accessible.
General Assembly is at 12 Saint George Street, London, W1S 2FB, The space is open Tuesday until Saturday, 10am until 6pm (11am until 5pm Saturday)
2: Urban Perspectives at Stolen Space – 15th May until 14th June 2026 – Says here that “StolenSpace Gallery is pleased to present Urban Perspectives group show, exploring the city as both canvas and catalyst. This exhibition looks at how artists absorb and respond to its rhythms, architecture, and inhabitants, and how the city, as a living system of overlapping experiences, feeds directly into the work it inspires, each artist offers a different lens on how this built environment influences expression”. The exhibition features a number of artists who have featured on these pages over the years, the full list reads like this: Andrew Torr, Bianca McCall, Camille Theodet, Cevo SS, César Goce, CHN0, Dan Kitchener, Eloise Dorr, Harry Jones London, Haus of Lucy, Jen Orpin, Jo Peel, Mandy Payne, Marie Lenclos, Matthew House, Nao Yoshida, P.Kim, Rueben Dangoor, RoWdY, Ryan Everson, Scott Listfield, Sean Sweeney, The London Police, Tom Gerrard, William Darkdrac and Yutaro Inagaki
Stolen Space is at 17 Osborn Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 6TD. The gallery is open Thursday and Friday: 11 – 5pm and Saturday and Sunday : 12 – 4pm.
3: Joanne Duckett, This is the Life at Findings Gallery – 16th May until 7th June 2026 – “The first solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and collages by visionary artist Joanne Duckett” so it says here and well, we know nothing of Joanne other than what we see on line in terms of this show, what we see has us curious though and we do like art on scraps of cereal cartons and recycled fragments of older works…
“Here is a world, perhaps a parallel universe, inhabited by enigmatic visitors and presences — sometimes expressions of the artist’s own internal states, sometimes creatures possessed of questioning innocence or unsettling anxieties, sometimes just pure, dancing forms. There are vibrating fields of unreadable scripts, networks of energy — a landscape of singing colours and the doubts and joys of life.
Many works are small, made on humble materials with a lost life and history — scraps of cereal cartons, the backs of postcards, breaking free from neat rectangular outlines. Then there are larger accumulations of repetitive printed units and recycled fragments of older works, like Basquiat’s pasting down of photocopies to activate the blankness of the canvas. And, figuring more frequently in recent work, abstract fields of marks and impulses — musical, improvisatory, reminiscent of the ‘automatic’ drawing of Masson, Dubuffet and Michaux, or the meditative, spiritual patternings of First Nation artists who fascinated Canadian painter Emily Carr.
The large selection of pictures on show have a surprising, expansive resonance that pulls the eye in and starts fires in the mind. They seem to emerge unstoppably from profound and unknowable depths, full of confidence and uncanny life, and we are very excited to introduce this wonderful artist to a wider audience for the first time.
Findings Gallery is at The Factory, 85 Clifden Road, London, E5 0LW. The space is open Midday until 6pm Tuesday through to Sunday
4: T. Venkanna at Studio Voltaire – 17th May until 23rd August 2026 – “T. Venkanna’s first institutional solo features expansive egg tempera paintings exploring sexual imagination, power, and societal norms by blending Renaissance and South Asian visual traditions”.
“A major exhibition of new paintings by T. Venkanna (b.1980, Gajwel, India), the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition. T. Venkanna persistently questions sexual imagination and its entanglements with societal norms, freedom and repression. For his new commission at Studio Voltaire, Venkanna is creating an expansive series of paintings on board using egg tempera and natural pigments. Inspired by the artist’s recent travels in Europe, the use of this traditional medium references Venkanna’s encounters with Early Renaissance devotional panel paintings. These new works represent a significant evolution in both scale and form for the artist, with individual paintings reaching across multiple panels.
Informed by the shifting socio-political contexts of India, the artist’s symbolic landscapes, populated by humans, animals and mythical figures, blur the boundaries between private desire and public crisis. Repeating motifs that have appeared in Venkanna’s work over several years, such as the image of Adam and Eve, these new works expand the artist’s reflections on power, desire, obedience and transgression, as well as connect with recent works that specifically address the politicisation and weaponisation of sex as a tool of power and coercion.
Emerging from a daily practice of painting and drawing in his studio in Hyderabad, the fantastical and at times unsettling aesthetic of Venkanna’s paintings detail abominable landscapes, with visions that blend the sacred with the scatological, and combine hidden moments of intimacy with disconcerting public spectacles. Amongst palm trees and freshly trimmed topiary, the boundaries between public and private, real and imaginary, object and subject dissolve and reform.
Each composition in the exhibition draws together histories of image-making across Western and South Asian visual traditions. Renaissance imagery, such as Correggio’s Leda and the Swan or Michelangelo’s David, features alongside references to the gilded manuscripts of the Mughal Empire, Indian miniature paintings and the compositions of temple reliefs. By underscoring enduring cycles of desire, destruction and domination, the artist complicates our understanding of a contemporary moment shaped by nationalism, hyperconsumerism, and environmental decay”.
Studio Voltaire is found at 1A Nelsons Row, London, SW4 7JR. The space is open 11am until 6pm Wednesdays to Sundays.
5: Bomb Factory open studios – Not so much an exhibition but hey, as we’ve said a number of times over the many years of art coverage on these pages, open studios often afford a better idea about an artist than a formal show does. Bomb Facory say: “We are pleased to announce our summer Open Studios at Holborn, offering visitors the opportunity to meet resident artists and explore works in progress across the site. A group exhibition of Holborn-based artists will also be on view in the gallery, running until the 27th of May” – is it Summer now then? Bom Factory say so, pretty sure I;m taking part in a Spring group show in the same week, who knows, the weather is all over the place. “Open Studios provide a chance to step inside artists’ working environments, learn more about their practices, and engage directly with the community that shapes The Bomb Factory Art Foundation. Studios will be open from 12–6pm, followed by a drinks reception in the gallery from 6–7pm. Visitors are welcome to drop in throughout the day”
BOMB FACTORY LOCATION: 99 Kingsway, WC2B 6QX, DATE: Saturday 23rd May. TIMES: 12-6pm. DRINKS RECEPTION: 6-7pm, with talk by Bomb Factory founder Pallas Citroen. Says on the Bomb Factory website that you need to RSVP (via the website) but hey, they’re not going to turn you away and if they do then sue them for suggesting Mr Haring might be part of it, can’t say I;m expecting him to be there…
More art on these pages (there is years of it)
THE ORGAN 