Cork Street Galleries announces its summer 2024 programme

Cork Street Galleries is thrilled to announce its forthcoming programme of exhibitions and events for London Gallery Weekend 2024, which takes place on the weekend of 31 May – 2 June 2024, with John Akomfrah revealed as the artist for its Cork Street Galleries Banners Commission 2024.

Akomfrah’s new work, The Secret Life of Memorable Things (2024), follows on from the artist’s presentation at the Venice Biennale, Listening All Night To the Rain, commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion, and continues to investigate themes and motifs that explore memory and the personality (ties) of the object, in a new form. The commission, which will be unveiled on Cork Street for London Gallery Weekend, comprises five lines of double-sided banners across Cork Street, with three banners per line and a total of 30 individual artworks, creating one exhibition running from north to south of the street and another exhibition south to north.

The street’s permanent roster of galleries – including Frieze No.9 Cork Street, Alison Jacques, Alon Zakaim Fine Art, Flowers Gallery, Goodman Gallery, Holtermann Fine Art, MASSIMODECARLO, Messums London, Nahmad Projects, The Redfern Gallery, Stephen Friedman, Tiwani Contemporary and Waddington Custot – together present twenty exciting exhibitions for the coming months.

FRIEZE NO.9 CORK STREET (9 Cork Street) presents a number of exciting summer exhibitions for 2024. Opening to the public from 3 May at No.9 Cork Street, are exhibitions by Carvalho Park, Gathering, Window Project and an independent exhibition of works by photographer Adam Rouhana, curated by Amah-Rose Abrams, running concurrently through 18 May 2024.

In Gallery One, Gathering and Window Project collaborate on Sports Illustrated, a dual exhibition of Tamara K.E. and Gia Edzgveradze, both key figures in the emergence of Georgia’s contemporary art scene. In an ironic parallel with the eponymous magazine, known for its celebration of athletic prowess and infamous annual swimsuit edition, Sports Illustrated addresses the patterns of desire and power that underpin the world of sports. Fittingly, these dynamics are also essential to the maintenance of close relationships; K.E. and Edzgveradze are life partners. Positioning their work side by side, Sports Illustrated prompts reflection on the competition and play within eros, ambition and interpersonal relationships.

Adam Rouhana has practised photography since he was a child, reflecting Palestinian life from the vantage point of its people beyond news cycles and photojournalism. A selection from his Before Freedom series is presented in Gallery Two, curated by Amah-Rose Abrams, marking Rouhana’s first solo exhibition, following coverage in the New York Times, Aperture and Dazed.

In Gallery Three, Carvalho Park brings three artists on their roster into dialogue about the eternal processes of growth and decay that underlie our world: Copenhagen-based Kristian Touborg, London-based Yulia Iosilzon, and New York and Seoul-based Se Yoon Park. United by their cross-disciplinary approach, these artists combine sculpture, painting, assemblage and collage to explore life and its renewal. Park’s sculptures stress the eternal becoming of the selves, Iosilzon hints at narratives of human-animal metamorphosis, while Touborg’s paintings build worlds in which fluidity reigns.

To coincide with London Gallery Weekend, bringing together over 130 galleries across the city, No.9 Cork Street will open three diverse shows on 31 May, running through 15 June. Vadehra Art Gallery, hailing from New Delhi, will return to the Mayfair space with a recent work by Rameshwar Broota, the artist’s first solo exhibition in London. Featuring both paintings and resin sculptures bearing calligraphic texts and found objects, the show will demonstrate the range of Broota’s postmodern investigation into the human condition.

Upstairs, in Gallery 2, John Swarbrooke Fine Art will present Macabre, an exhibition inspired by Sussex artist Edward Burra’s lifetime fascination with the gruesome. The otherworldliness of Burra’s pictures provides a launching point for the exhibition, which will additionally include paintings, works on paper and sculpture by John Minton, Graham Sutherland, Paula Rego, Elizabeth Frink, Grayson Perry and Damien Hirst, among others.

Completing the June shows, The Sunderland Collection will inaugurate its Art Programme at No.9 Cork Street with Shifting Sands, an exhibition by Cairo-born, Edinburgh-based artist Fathi Hassan. Created in response to items from The Sunderland Collection, a private collection of rare antique world and celestial maps, the exhibition will engage with the experience of migration, dislocation, diasporic identity and shifting notions of heritage. Hassan uses maps as a lens, incorporating motifs and images that have recurred throughout his practice and drawing in new influences such as thinkers and creatives who have had a global influence on science or culture across borders.

ALISON JACQUES (22 Cork Street) is delighted to announce Angel with a Gun, an exhibition showcasing rarely-seen works from the private collection of pioneering British critic, writer and curator Guy Brett (1942-2021). The exhibition’s title is taken from art historian Yve-Alain Bois’ preface to Carnival of Perception (2004), a book of selected writings by Guy Brett. With reference to Brett’s curiosity towards an ambiguous, 18th-century Latin American image of an angel holding a gun, Bois explains Brett’s ‘personal obsession’ with the struggle between opposites. The exhibition pays homage to Brett’s passion for Latin American art. A distinctive voice in art criticism since the 1960s, Guy Brett followed an independent path in mapping and interpreting contemporary art. Through Brett’s collection, we encounter his constant curiosity and insight accompanied by a disinterest in a market-led view. In this exhibition, we can experience Brett’s hope and belief in the ability of art to let us begin again.

Works by Sérgio Camargo, Lygia Clark, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Eugenio Dittborn, Jac Leirner, Cildo Meireles, Hélio Oiticica, Alejandro Otero, Lygia Pape, Mira Schendel, Jesús Rafael Soto and Regina Vater will be displayed in the exhibition.

The exhibition runs 10 May – 15 June 2024

ALON ZAKAIM FINE ART (27 Cork Street) presents the highly anticipated exhibition Art Through Time: Contemporary Reflections, curated by contemporary art specialist Virginia Damtsa. The exhibition will run from 3 April to 31 May 2024, and promises to captivate the public with its thought-provoking juxtapositions of contemporary and modern artworks, inviting viewers to witness the evolution of art through time. This exhibition showcases an exceptional selection of works by established contemporary and modern artists, each contributing their unique perspectives to the conversation.

The exhibition runs until 31 May 2024

FLOWERS GALLERY (21 Cork Street) is pleased to present Mixed Emotions, a solo exhibition by NPG Portrait Prize winner Tai Shan Schierenberg, opening on 15 May 2024. This exhibition marks a profound exploration of Schierenberg’s German and Chinese Malaysian heritage, offering a series of self-portraits and landscapes that navigate the intricacies of identity and belonging.

Simultaneously, the gallery presents a solo exhibition by the British multidisciplinary photographer and filmmaker Lisa Jahovic titled The Third Drawer. The exhibition marks the artist’s first solo show and will incorporate all different media presented in the artist’s work – video, photography and sculpture .

Both exhibitions run 15 May – 22 June 2024

GOODMAN GALLERY (26 Cork Street) is delighted to present Atta Kwami’s first posthumous exhibition, following the announcement of representation of the estate in partnership with Beardsmore Gallery. This exhibition presents a selection of important works made over a period of twenty years, showing the breadth of Kwami’s practice and highlighting the artist as one of the most important African abstract painters of the 20th century. Belatedly recognised, Kwami was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize in 2021 – honouring artists deserving of greater visibility. The prize resulted in a public art commission – a mural at the Serpentine Gallery on view until September 2024 and the publication of the artist’s first monograph which will be published by Serpentine and Verlag König concurrently with the exhibition at Goodman Gallery.

On the occasion of London Gallery Weekend, discover more about the artist’s practice in Goodman Gallery’s conversation with Melissa Blanchflower, Senior Curator at Turner Contemporary and Editor of the forthcoming monograph, Atta Kwami, published by Serpentine with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln supported by The Maria Lassnig Foundation and marking the first publication dedicated to examining the breadth of Kwami’s singular practice.

The exhibition runs 16 May – 29 June 2024

HOLTERMANN FINE ART (30 Cork Street) presents, for London Gallery Weekend, Neil Gall: Painting and Plinths. This new exhibition focusses on Neil Gall’s imaginative explorations of two and three-dimensional objects – hybrid objects that live between sculpture and painting, made and found, assembled and cast.

The exhibition runs 31 May – 19 July 2024

MASSIMODECARLO (16 Clifford Street), is delighted to present Bulge, a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of American artist Hannah Levy. This marks her debut solo show with the gallery and in the UK. Bulge unveils a new series of works that epitomise Levy’s artistic language. Initially, common objects – a chair, a light fixture, and even vegetables – appear discernible, however, upon closer inspection, Levy’s works reveal themselves to be uncanny, otherworldly creatures.

With Bulge, Levy manipulates the gallery’s space, creating a unique contrast between her sleek sculptures and the highbrow historical accents of MASSIMODECARLO’s building, dating back to 1723. This contrast is further accentuated by the carpet covering the wooden gallery floor, imbuing the entire space with a domestic ambience while hosting these sensuous yet poisonous inhabitants.

The exhibition runs 23 May – 22 June 2024

MESSUMS LONDON presents an exhibition of work by Laurence Edwards, whose practice has long been preoccupied by the entwining of man, nature and time. One of the few sculptors who casts his own work, he is fascinated by human anatomy and the metamorphosis of form and matter that governs the lost-wax process. The driving force behind his work is bronze, an alloy that physically and metaphorically illustrates entropy, the natural tendency of any system in time to tend towards disorder and chaos. His sculptures express the raw liquid power of bronze, its versatility, mass and evolution, and the variety of process marks he retains tell the story of how and why each work came to be.

The exhibition runs 29 May – 29 June 2024

NAHMAD PROJECTS (2 Cork Street) presents Layers of Time: Giorgio Morandi and Alexis Ralaivao, opening on Thursday 30 May. The exhibition invites viewers on a contemplative journey through the nuanced exploration of temporality in art. Born almost a century apart, Alexis Ralaivao has been working in Morandi’s hometown of Bologna, surrounded by the same landscape that Morandi loved so dearly and dedicated his life to. Giorgio Morandi’s canvases reveal a profound engagement with the passage of time. Each artwork delicately captures the subtle shifts of light and shadow from dawn to dusk, serving as windows into moments suspended in time. Similarly, Alexis Ralaivao’s meticulous attention to detail unveils snapshots of a larger narrative. Each brushstroke echoes layers and passing moments within a composition. Together, Morandi and Ralaivao weave a narrative around the meditation of time. Through objects, colours, and the stillness of their chosen subjects, they reveal the timeless beauty of simplicity.

The exhibition runs from 30 May 2024

THE REDFERN GALLERY (20 Cork Street) presents Eileen Agar RA: A Look at My Life. An exhibition to celebrate the new edition of Eileen Agar’s autobiography, including previously unseen works. Back in print for the first time in 30 years, Eileen Agar – A Look at My Life is the engrossing memoir of the pioneering and convention-defying Surrealist artist, featuring an introduction by Andrew Lambirth and foreword by Olivia Fraser.

The exhibition runs 15 May – 7 June 2024

STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY (25-28 Old Burlington Street) is pleased to present clouds, Kenturah Davis’ debut solo exhibition in the UK. The drawing series that comprise this show are united by a common text – an essay penned by Davis that explores perception as an expressive and existential state. The artist’s writing flows through themes of dance, African diaspora, musical notation, literature, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and theoretical physics, invoking the guiding voices of the choreographer Katherine Dunham, composer Florence B. Price, theorist Saidiya Hartman, author Toni Morrison, and physicist Carlo Rovelli. Each of Davis’ bodies of work is a study in movement that translates photographs taken by the artist. Though composed on a flat page, Davis recognises her drawings as dimensional vessels, planes where she charts, layers, and reimagines significance.

The exhibition runs 31 May – 20 July 2024

TIWANI CONTEMPORARY (24 Cork Street) presents Gareth Nyandoro: Pfumvudza, the second solo show of the artist with Tiwani Contemporary, in which the artist presents a series of new works from 2023/4.

Living in Ruwa, a town 30 minutes’ drive from Harare, Nyandoro has been observing and documenting the everyday lives, and informal entrepreneurship of its residents in small to large-scale mixed-media drawings and installations, in his inimitable kuchecka-cheka style influenced by etching techniques, paper-cutting, assemblage, and props.

The exhibition presents Nyandoro’s personal engagement with the concept of pfumvudza meaning early shoots, to bloom or thrive, and the name of the 2020 Zimbabwean government-sanctioned programme funded by the UN, advocating citizen self-sufficiency, to help mobilise, train and support families and small crop growers to implement conservation agriculture to restore, and renew the fertility of soil, to grow plots of maize, millet, and wheat to mitigate food insecurity and the decline of large-scale industrial production.

The exhibition runs 23 April – 15 June 2024

Tiwani Contemporary are also pleased to present, In Focus: Heloisa Hariadne, which marks the artist’s first UK solo presentation. Heloisa Hariadne is an early career artist who has established a botanical and philosophically driven visual language pursuing existential questions around will and self-determination, and the impact of personal and historical past events, and memories in relation to her subject-hood. By removing herself from a daily circuit of chasing the conventions of contemporary daily life, the artist steps back in isolation, and allows herself to have a meditative breathing space, where she can reach the answers to these questions through her practice, transforming the canvas into a visual memoir.

The exhibition runs 30 May – 15 June 2024

WADDINGTON CUSTOT (11-12 Cork Street) presents Beyond Surrealism, opening on 29 April. The exhibition is filled with unexpected juxtapositions and clever visual puns, bringing together works by a range of artists whose work shares Surrealist aesthetic strategies or conceptual concerns: Clive Barker, Patrick Caulfield, George Condo, Allan D’Arcangelo, Barry Flanagan, Mimmo Paladino, Lucas Samaras, John Wesley and Bill Woodrow among others. Anchoring each room in the exhibition are works by some of the key names connected to the first wave of Surrealism: Jean Arp, Giorgio De Chirico, Max Ernst and Joan Miró. These works delve into the recesses of the unconscious, challenge perceptions of reality, orchestrate metamorphosis and surprise, and conjure intricate, occasionally paradoxical, juxtapositions. Seen together they attest to the profound and far-reaching influence of Surrealism. The exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Surrealist Manifesto, written by poet André Breton in 1924.

The exhibition runs 29 April – 15 June 2024