Has London’s Art Scene Hit a Saturation Point?

Dark clouds and drizzle didn’t dampen the energy at this year’s London Gallery Weekend, which drew art enthusiasts into a three-day city-wide celebration from June 6 through 8. Even short a few trendy galleries, the event once again spotlighted the British capital’s expansive art scene, where cutting-edge performances, digital experiments, and bold textile art vied for attention across 126 participating spaces.

Now in its fifth edition, LGW has become a highlight of London’s annual art offerings. The appeal comes from a genuine sense of camaraderie between galleries big and small in what is one of the largest and most competitive art centers in the world. But can everyone expect their moment in the spotlight given the increasingly crowded London arts calendar?

To wit: A modest number of trendy, younger galleries from last year’s program chose not to participate this time around, including Union Pacific, Guts Gallery, The Sunday Painter, and Xxijra Hii. Word on the street is that an ever-busier events calendar, often not shared in advance, has led to scheduling conflicts that typically give priority to high-profile events organized by well-known galleries in more central locations.

Calendar Clash?

Speaking of high-profile events, this year’s gallery weekend overlapped with the debut London edition of South By Southwest (SXSW), the famed tech and arts conference out of Austin, Texas. Backed by Penske Media and the investment firm Panarae, the event marks an ambitious effort to globalize the SXSW brand and bring a new “experience economy” to the U.K. via talks, music, and film across 34 venues in east London. The inaugural edition brought in 20,505 pass-holders from 77 countries and over 50 different industries, among them King Charles III.

Visual art offerings included LDN LAB, a tech-forward show at Protein Studios curated by Alex Poots of New York’s The Shed, which featured works by Andy Warhol and Beeple, as well as an A.I.-generated audio installation from Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst‘s recent Serpentine show, “The Call.” Also included was a new video work, commissioned by Poots, featuring Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with Marina Ambramović and the artist’s A.I. alter ego—and by conversation I mean all three entities awkwardly talking over and past each other, but never really one another.

Meanwhile, 15 minutes away at Christchurch Spitalfields, “Beautiful Collisions”  highlighted artists of the Caribbean diaspora and, unlike LDN LAB, attracted the usual suspects of London’s art world on its opening night. Organized by curator and advisor Beth Greenacre, it featured works by Alberta Whittle, Denzil Forrester, Tavares Strachan, and commissioned stained glass works by Alvaro Barrington, among others.

Still, it seemed like there was little coordination between SXSW organizers and the LGW team despite the opportunity their coincidence presented to highlight London’s massive art scene—although there was talk of a hastily planned SXSW VIP gallery tour on Thursday, before LGW officially kicked off.

Small Galleries Deliver

Some teething issues are likely to continue as LGW strives to strike a balance between its community-minded ethos and an embarrassment of art riches scattered across London’s vast sprawl. The venture is certainly a worthy one as, even in the face of significant stresses post Brexit, the city’s young galleries remain resilient and deserve championing.

The outer reaches of north-west London had no gallery scene to speak of until 2020, when Harlesden High Street set up shop. It remains relatively isolated but is very much preceded by its reputation so I’d long been meaning to visit by the time LGW provided a reason to swing by and catch the much-discussed endurance art performance piece “Cell 72: The Cost of Confinement.” While I peered through the glass storefront into a messy mock prison cell inhabited by Allen-Golder Carpenter, I felt self-conscious of my voyeurism. The artist, who appeared bored and despondent, was coming up to the end of his 72-hour sentence, devised by fellow American artist Emmanuel Massillon to draw attention to the humiliating, psychologically-punishing effects of incarceration. The installation remains on view through July 13.

Soon after a small group of collectors had pulled up in a car, a constantly-evolving cast of curious passersby began stopping outside the gallery to glimpse the artwork and confer about its possible meanings. At one point, ex-convict-turned-motivational speaker Leroy Smith turned up, moved by the show, and began handing out free copies of his memoir to interested onlookers. It was an unusual but convivial gathering unlike any I’ve witnessed on the streets of Mayfair.

Party at the Pavilion

Worry not, there were plenty of the usual faces in the usual places throughout the weekend. A veritable who’s who of the London art world descended on Kensington Gardens to celebrate the launch of LGW at this year’s Serpentine Pavilion commission, an impressive glass-walled, moveable structure by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum. Only Hans Ulrich Obrist‘s voice streaming out from speakers across the lawn could bring a brief pause to champagne-fueled chatter.

When guests were ushered out, one group of artists, curators, and writers jumped into a fleet of taxis headed to an afterparty at Palmer Gallery near Edgware Road. There, raucous conversation evaded serious matters but attendees didn’t skip “Handful of Dust,” the impressive group show installed downstairs until June 14.

A.I. on Trend

Galleries are coming up with increasingly inventive ways to lure in visitors, as even the most well-intentioned will likely manage to see only a fraction of what they’d planned. Amid the bustle, themes have emerged. For one thing, technology is proving to be a tantalizing means for well-established artists to keep innovating a decades-old practice. For Thaddaeus Ropac, 72-year-old David Salle continued developing his experiments with A.I. to inform collaged compositions painted on a grand scale. It has, among other things, freed him from the rules of real life to achieve a weightlessness that had long proved elusive.

“For decades, I had this idea of bodies in space that were not held to the laws of gravity,” he told me during a recent walkthrough.

Similarly, 84-year-old French conceptualist Bernar Venet is known for monumental steel structures of repeated lines, angles, or arcs created via the chance effects of an intentional, controlled collapse. For his latest series of computer-generated compositions, on view at Waddington Custot until July 19, the artist followed in the footsteps of generative artists like Vera Molnar by using carefully parametered code to invite new forms of randomness into flat, wall-hanging works, again without relying on gravity. Meanwhile, at South Parade, one of a growing cluster of galleries near Farringdon, Judith Dean has pivoted away from sculpture to make paintings that take as their starting point a word or idea used to search, or sift, through the glut of decontextualized imagery that makes up Wikimedia. Its form is echoed in Dean’s patchworking of seemingly unrelated found material into otherwise impossible compositions.

Darker ruminations on our digital world come courtesy of artist Simon Lehner at Edel Assanti, until August 22, who pulls viewers into his creepy interpretation of the manosphere. The star of the show is an incel hunched over a peep show as he delights in the bright, blinding attractions of Reddit forums and YouTube rabbit holes. Appearing in your peripheral vision, he has an uncannily human presence, but the rise and fall of his grey silicone chest is achieved by a sleep apnea machine.

The present moment isn’t all that much easier for women, if a sold-out performance by Nora Turato at the Institute of Contemporary Arts is to be believed. In a humorous, half hour monologue, the artist, bare foot in a loose white dress, was fearless in using her body—convulsing, wretching, hyperventilating, or teeth chattering—to communicate her growing existential dread. The frenzy is brought on by all manner of modern day evils, including noise cancelling headphones, meditation apps, smart watches, productivity, cloying therapy speak, and oversized accessories for infantilizing adults.

Textile Takeover

Another theme was an enduring appetite for ambitious textile work. Notable examples include four of Tau Lewis‘s magnificent masks produced from recycled strips of shimmering fabrics, on view at Sadie Coles in Bury Street until July 19. At Richard Saltoun, meanwhile, Anna Perach‘s towering feminized monsters made by the labor-intensive technique of tufting were activated on Friday afternoon by a performance in which they bow and gesture towards each other as though trapped in a bizarre, robotic courting ritual. Videos circulating online showed the artist Cecilia Fiona inhabiting a similarly elaborate, all-body costume to incorporate dance into her presentation of paintings at Niru Ratnam.

The remaining must-see show is Derek Jarman‘s black paintings at Amanda Wilkinson, another Farringdon Gallery, until July 11. The artist is best known for his extensive filmography, culminating in the highly personal (1993) about the latter stages of living with HIV/AIDS. The strange, angry assemblages at Amanda Wilkinson, filled with driftwood, metal trinkets, smashed glass, and crushed cans, are from around the time of his diagnosis, in 1986, but have an enduring immediacy.

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com