We still surely don’t need an editorial here do we? Another week, another Five London Art Things thing and on with all this endless art coverage? Years of it. Actually this week we probably do need an editorial, or a repeat, we won’t though, there’s no time, on with it…
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: Imogen Stidworthy, Skydde at Matt’s Gallery – Now this looks rather intriguing, there’s an opening on 27th September, 2pm until 5pm and then the exhibition runs from 30th September until 22nd November – “Imogen Stidworthy’s solo exhibition exploring communication and embodied presence through a therapeutic group practice called Primary Work”.
“Matt’s Gallery is pleased to announce Skydde, Imogen Stidworthy’s forthcoming solo exhibition, co-commissioned with Chapter, Cardiff. Her newly devised installation is the second part of a two-stage project initiated at Chapter in spring 2026 with In a thread of air.
What is at stake in being between ‘I’ and ‘we’? The installation engages with different forms of communication with self and others through a therapeutic group practice, Primary Work, developed by Swedish practitioner Iris Johannson. Her practice is shaped by her autistic perception and lifelong sense of connection with ‘the primary’ dimension of existence, beyond conventional therapeutic or neurotypical frameworks.
Stidworthy filmed and participated in Primary Work sessions between 2023–2026. From this she has created an installation in which built structures, sound, video projections and sculptural forms organise the gallery space into distinct but porous zones. A spatialised soundtrack is carried through airborne and embodied sound resonating through the material environment and burnout bronze casts, listening is with the whole body. Signs of communication in words, cries, bodies prone or in motion, hint at what might be happening intangibly in the communication field between people in the group – changes of energy, exchange, connection; psychic movements.
As a child Johansson had no sense of inner life or social connection. ‘I am not into feelings, you are into feelings, but I have to rely on my inner sight.’ She recalls moving fluidly between physical and immaterial being, between the ‘ordinary reality’ and the ‘real reality’, where she would play with two friends – boys, who appeared as pieces of silk flowing in the air. Skydde, the title of this exhibition, is a Swedish word and also the name of one of the boys.
Accompanying the exhibition are six responses to the installation given by artists Immanuel Adelowo, Saja Altamimi, Louis Caseley, James Heath, Sonny Nwachukwu and Delson Weekes, developed through Radical Audio Guides, a co-creative project evolved through a series of workshops held at Matt’s Gallery with the artists over 2026. Their responses are voiced through word, non-verbal utterance, gesture, mark-making, dance and music. They are shaped by different ways of being and sense-making and are presented in different forms, embracing the multitude of ways of communicating embodied by the group. Each response is offered as a guide along a unique path into the work….”
Matt’s Gallery is at 6 Charles Clowes Walk, London SW11 7AN. Gallery hours Wednesday – Sunday, Midday until 6pm
2: Emrys Williams, What seas what shores what grey rocks at Benjamin Rhodes Arts – 24th Sept until 21st November 2026 – A show of new paintings that date from 2022 until 2026, the show is accompanied by the gallery’s usual rather excellent exhibition booklet and as essay from Dr John Gillett who writes:
“……Having explained his commitment to Proust, Emrys sent me quotations to help my thinking along: “From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.” And: “Each artist seems thus to be the native of an unknown country, which he himself has forgotten”. This is helpful indeed, because one might imagine Proust to have wholly anticipated this body of work and its unattainable setting. The compelling thing here is that Emrys knows. He knows that he is ‘dragging things forth’, that they remain a mystery to the rest of us, and only just within his own reach, as passing from memory, like dreams on waking, endlessly reconfigured….”
Previously on these pages – A two artist show, Luminous, two painters, two properly proper painters and the anticipation of light, colour and imagination. Richard Kenton Webb and Emrys Williams at Benjamin Rhodes Arts, East London…
Benjamin Rhodes Arts is at 62 Old Nichol Street, London E2 7HP. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday Midday until 6pm. The Emrys Williams exhibition runs until 21st November 2026.
3: Daichi Takagi, Suchness at David Zwirner Gallery – 24th September until 31st October 2026 – “An exhibition of new paintings by Japanese artist Daichi Takagi, blurring figuration and abstraction through works focused on everyday perception”.
“David Zwirner is pleased to announce Suchness, an exhibition of new paintings by Japanese artist Daichi Takagi, on view in The Upper Room at the gallery’s London location. This is the first solo presentation of Takagi’s work in the United Kingdom.
Blurring the boundary between figuration and abstraction, Takagi’s recent work is introspective and reflective, focusing on phenomena observable in his everyday environment. Motifs such as trees, stones, rain, and the moon recur across compositions, alluding to the natural world but more powerfully to the fleeting nature of perception.
As Takagi describes, his practice begins with seeing and perceiving objects as pure experience. In his work, the distinction between subject and object, inside and outside, is not fully resolved, and the world emerges as a raw and immediate presence. The exhibition’s title, Suchness (真如), describes a state in which things simply are as they are. Rather than interpreting or controlling his subjects, Takagi attempts to give form to their presence, the space that arises around them, and the essence of experience. Underlying this approach is an affinity with modern Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida’s notion of ‘pure experience’, as well as Eastern philosophical ideas of non-duality in which the divisions between self and world are understood as fluid rather than fixed”.
David Zwirner Gallery is at 24 Grafton Street, London W1S 4EZ. The gallery is open Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat: 10am until 6pm. Thu: 10am until-8pm
4: Ha Chong-Hyun at Lisson Gallery – just opened and on until November 7th – “A major retrospective of one of the world’s foremost abstract painters, surveying Ha Chong-Hyun’s experimentation and mastery over six decades of pioneering work…”
“This autumn in London, Lisson is honoured to present an exhibition of one of the world’s foremost abstract painters, Ha Chong-Hyun, surveying his experimentation and mastery over the past six decades of pioneering work. The Korean artist’s inaugural show with the gallery and his first in London since 2020 amounts to a wide-ranging yet succinct survey of Ha’s practice from some of his earliest extant works up to the present day.
The display begins with a geometric composition featuring woven, painted strips from the early Naissance series and an equally colourful folded and rippled canvas, dating to the late 1960s. These both signify his early positioning of painting firmly within the realm of objecthood – exploring it three-dimensionally and in the round – although he never claimed them as sculptural in intent, preferring to simply question where the painting’s surfaces and supports might really begin and end. Further pushing the possibilities of material and action within the now contested field of painting, Ha began burning his impasto surfaces and adding coiled springs or barbed wire directly to works made in the 1970s, reflecting South Korea’s protracted periods of martial law and military dictatorship, as well as the paucity of materials available to artists at the time.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Ha alighted upon his signature method of pushing paint through the reverse of coarse hemp canvas – literally turning the painting process inside out. Rather than applying paint onto an image plane, Ha forces pigment through the woven structure of the canvas, allowing pressure and material resistance to shape the final form. The resulting surface is determined less by expressive mark-making than by compression and persistence. This innovation, known collectively as the Conjunction series, continues to this day, with an array of different textures, gestures, tones and techniques that also vary in terms of orientation from vertical and horizontal, to perpendicular, radiant and freeform in gesture.
Over subsequent years, Ha has expanded and refined this inquiry, showing a sustained commitment to experimentation that has significantly shaped broader discussions of postwar abstraction. In the 2000s, his practice evolved into what has been described as the Post Conjunction series, extending his exploration of colour, scale, and spatial rhythm while maintaining the foundational principle of pressure and surface.
Ha Chong-Hyun has gained international recognition for combining elements of monochromatic, minimalist and gestural abstraction with the conceptual, performative and material aspects and possibilities of painting. He is best known for developing a distinctive approach to painting in the early 1970s with the initiation of Conjunction, a series in which he pushes dense oil paint from the reverse side of coarse hemp canvas to its surface. Through this technique, often referred to as the reverse pressure painting method or linked to the Buddhist use of colouring or staining the reverse of images to produce transparency (known as baechaebeop), Ha altered the conventional relationship between front and back, surface and support, allowing material resistance to generate structure.
For over five decades, he has continued to refine this method, exploring variations in density, rhythm, and scale. Through sustained repetition and restraint, Ha has emphasized painting as a physical act grounded in labour and material presence rather than illusion or narrative.
Ha Chong-Hyun (b. 1935, Sancheong, South Korea) graduated from Hongik University in 1959 and has lived and worked in Seoul throughout his career. During the 1960s, he engaged in experimental practices that extended beyond conventional painting, exploring material assemblage, abstraction, and spatial construction in response to rapid postwar transformation. These early investigations established his enduring interest in structure, surface, and the physical conditions of form. After a period of painting loosely referred to as his informel period, in 1969 Ha became a founding member and Chairman of the Korean Avant-Garde Association (AG) and was later also regarded as one of the key figures associated with the Dansaekhwa movement of Korean monochrome painting, despite never being entirely convinced by its definition.”
This is at Lisson‘s Bell Street Gallery, 27 Bell Street, London NW1 5BY. The space is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am until 6pm. The Ha Chong-Hyun retrospective is on until November 7th 2026
And while we’re here, we did mention these two last week, however, seeing as both happening in the next couple of days (if you’re reading this on the day it was posted)
5: Configurations at Ken Artspace – “Configurations is a ten artist group exhibition featuring ten artists whose practices engage with themes of assembly and perception, that is, the act of seeing beyond the direct line of sight: focusing on the edges, the initially unseen, and the subtleties of the act of looking and discovery. Curated by Linda Khatri and Jo Lewis, the exhibition includes works that continue to reveal themselves as the viewer shifts their line of vision. The works together celebrate the joy of looking in their elements of surprise, subversion, and revelation. Exploring how this awareness manifests across diverse practices lies at the heart of the exhibition and defines its spirit”. Well we’re curious. we’ll go taste the pudding, the proof is always in the eating and we do note both Ruth Philo and Dillwyn Smith in the line up of artists.
Full artist line up: Paul Ashurst, Vincent Hawkins, Lee Johnson, Linda Khatri, Jo Lewis, Emily Motto, Darren O’Brien, Ruth Philo, John Robertson and Dillwyn Smith
Ken Artspace is found at 16 Windmill Row, London SE11 5DW. There’s a preview on Friday 25th September, 6 to 8pm. The exhibition then runs from Saturday 26 September until Saturday 24 October 2026. Opening times: Thursday, 11am – 5pm / Friday, 11am – 5pm / Saturday 11 – 4pm or by appointment. More details are available on the website: www.kenart.space
Previously…
5 and a bit: Al Diaz, Samo:Transatlantication at D’Stassi Art – The UK debut exhibition of pioneering New York artist and SAMO© co-creator Al Diaz, opening night, 25th September – “Join us in London on Friday 25 September for the opening night of this landmark exhibition” say the gallery. Once again it appears to be all about the opening night at the Shoreditch Gallery and no real indication how long the show goes on for? They never seem to see beyond the opening at D’Stassi Art…
“Born and raised in New York, Diaz emerged from the city’s graffiti scene in the 1970s and became one of the defining voices of its downtown cultural movement. Alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, he co-created Samo, the enigmatic series of poetic, satirical and often confrontational statements that began appearing across Lower Manhattan in the late 1970s. Written on walls throughout SoHo and the East Village, Samo became part artwork, part social commentary and part anonymous mythology. Its language challenged art, commerce, politics, conformity and the culture surrounding them, leaving a lasting mark on the visual history of New York. Diaz has continued to develop that language over the decades, bringing together text, typography, found materials, collage and the visual vocabulary of the city. For his first UK exhibition, Samo:Transatlantication brings that story across the Atlantic. A new body of work connects the streets and cultural histories of New York and London, revisiting the spirit of Samo while placing Diaz’s own voice firmly at the centre of the story. Join us at D’Stassi Art in Shoreditch for the opening night…”
D’Stassi Art is found around a corner in Shoreditch, the gallery entrance is found on Drysdale St, the actual address is 12-18 Hoxton St, Drysdale St, London N1 6NG, The launch thing is on Friday 25 September 2026, 6pm until late, for this one you do have to do the RSVP thing and get on the list
5 and a bit: Martin O’Brien & Sheree Rose, Greatest Hits at Iklectik – “The proverbial cat is out of the bag! We’ve hatched a plan for my mom Sheree, @msrosebush, and her longtime collaborator, and brilliant artist, @martinobrienart to do a performance, Greatest Hits, next month in London, Saturday, 26th of September at @iklectikartlab in Peckham, to celebrate their 15 years of collaboration together, as well as my mom’s very special, 85th birthday” so said someone at dommomthemovie
“As the world falls apart, in a night club in London, two zombie rock stars attempt to keep on going. Sickly and falling apart, their bodies remember the decadence of the past and try to continue what they used to do. Part lecture-demonstration/part attempt to roll back the years, ‘The Greatest Hits’ is a performance that re-enacts moments from the work Rose and O’Brien have done together. It marks 15 years of collaboration between them and is a special celebration of Rose’s 85th birthday. Featuring special guest appearances from other artists, ‘The Greatest Hits’ will be a tongue in cheek and poignant exploration of friendship, ageing, memory, and loss. It is a tribute to history and a dedication to continuing. Come and celebrate the 85th birthday of one of performance arts biggest icons, at Iklectik….”
Iklectik is at Peckham Levels, SE15 4ST. This one does demand you buy a ticket, the details, times and more are via this link
Previously…
