London Gallery Weekend 2022 at Cork Street

Cork Street readies itself for the return of London Gallery Weekend, a celebration of culture and creativity in the capital with over 150 galleries taking part city-wide.

From Friday 13 to Sunday 15 May 2022, the street, the spiritual and cultural home of the global art world which has launched the careers of some of the greatest artists of our time, is an epicentre of activity with guided walk-throughs, workshops and a number of artists present.

Start your weekend in Mayfair: Friday’s gallery hours are extended until 20:00.

Yuichi Hirako, Apothanasia 02, 2021, acrylic paint, metal, 103 x 75 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Baton, Seoul.

Frieze No.9 Cork Street takes part in London Gallery Weekend with group shows presented by Gallery Baton (Seoul) and Galerie Poggi (Paris).

Gallery Baton presents Indexing the Nature: From Near and Far Away, a group show featuring selected works of 11 artists including Liam Gillick, Koh San Keum, Kim Bohie, Song Burnsoo, Bae Yoon Hwan, Hoh Woo Jung, Yuichi Hikaro, Koen van der Broek, Bin Woo Hyuk, Choi Soojung, Max Frisinger, and Sejin Kim. The exhibition can be regarded as the artists’ hymn to “nature”, which is the source of all inspiration and the eternal object of ‘Mimesis’. Artists acknowledge that closely observing nature can have a great impact on their practice.

Galerie Poggi presents The Territories of Abstraction, the gallery’s first appearance in London since 2015. Bringing together the works of several artists, exploring the question of landscape and how its abstraction can help us better understand the political, sociological, and cultural issues that underpin it. At a time when the links between territory and identity, both national and individual, are particularly pressing, the artists provide varying viewpoints and historical perspectives. Featuring Kapwani Kiwanga, Sidival Fila, artist duo Ittah Yoda, Sophie Ristelhueber, Vera Pagava and Nikita Kadan, one of the most important contemporary Ukrainian artists, currently sheltered in Ukraine.

No.9 Cork Street is open from 10:00–20:00 on both Friday 13 and Saturday 14 May.

An exhibition walkthrough with Gallery Baton (Seoul) takes place on Friday at 17:30; followed by an exhibition walkthrough at 18:00 with Galerie Poggi (Paris) and artist duo Ittah Yoda, focusing on Sophie Ristelhueber. A drinks reception follows until 20:00.

Gallery Baton (Seoul) hosts another exhibition walkthrough on Saturday at 15:00; followed by Galerie Poggi (Paris) and Ittah Yoda at 15:30. The exhibitions continue until 23 May 2022.

Ghada Amer, My body my choice, 2021 / Resin planters, soil, plants / Variable Dimensions / Edition of 3. Courtesy and copyright the artist and Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, Cape Town, London.

Goodman Gallery (26 Cork Street) presents two exhibitions side by side. My Body My Choice is Ghada Amer’s first solo show in London in twenty years, while Fault Lines*, an exhibition of new work by Remy Jungerman, marks the Dutch artist’s first solo presentation in the UK.

My Body My Choice brings together a new body of work, including Amer’s signature thread and canvas paintings as well as sculptures and a garden installation. The artist’s work addresses the ambiguous, transitory nature of the paradox that arises when searching for concrete definitions of East and West, feminine and masculine, art and craft. Through her paintings, sculptures and public garden projects, Amer takes traditional notions of cultural identity, abstraction, and religious fundamentalism and turns them on their head.

Remy Jungerman, Pimba AGIDA MADAFO IX, 2021 / Cotton textile, kaolin (pimba) on wood and panel (plywood) / Work: 82 x 82 cm. Courtesy and copyright the artist and Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, Cape Town, London.

Fault Lines* directly follows a major survey exhibition at The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for Jungerman, who is widely recognised as one of the Netherlands’ most important having co-represented his country at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. The artist is part of a generation of Afro-Dutch artists whose practice challenges and destabilises Western art historical narratives. By initiating a dialogue between abstract geometric patterns drawn from a multiplicity of visual traditions, the artist presents a peripheral vision that can inform and enrich perspectives on art history.

The exhibitions continue until 28 May.

Peter Buggenhout, On Hold #21, 2022 / Plaster, synthetic plaster, iron, inflatable, textile, wood, PET / 270 x 140 x 162 cm / 106 1/4 x 55 1/8 x 63 3/4 in. Courtesy and copyright the artist and Holtermann Fine Art.

Holtermann Fine Art (30 Cork Street) presents On Hold, Peter Buggenhout’s first solo exhibition in the UK, coinciding with the opening of London Gallery Weekend.

Buggenhout’s sculptures consist of accumulations, recontextualisations and compositions of found and discarded objects and waste. Carefully constructed to exclude any form of symbolism, representation, or narrative meaning, the resulting objects are evocations of the complexity and unpredictability of existence. Influenced by George Bataille’s description of the abject object – in Buggenhout’s sculpture the deliberate melding together of materials that repulse and attract create a psychological tension pointing to the sublime – a wordless sensation.

The gallery will host a reception in the presence of the artist on Friday 13 May between 18:00–20:00. The artist will also be present on Saturday 14 May between 11:30–13:00. The exhibition continues until 23 July 2022.

Kotti Paloma, Palagonia, 2019, Acrylic on canvas. Copyright The Artist, Courtesy of Saatchi Yates.

Saatchi Yates (6 Cork Street) presents a solo exhibition of paintings by American artist Kottie Paloma. Having lived and worked for several years in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Berlin, Paloma currently lives in Alzenau, Germany with his wife and two young children. Paloma’s paintings explore the darker side of society in a humorous yet poignant and gritty manner. Heavily inspired by cave paintings and other archetypal symbols, Paloma creates works which look to act as fossils of contemporary life tackling subjects such as politics and human behaviour, to unpick the failings of modern society.

The exhibition continues until 22 May 2022.

Caroline Walker, Spritz for Bitz, 2022. Oil on linen. Copyright Caroline Walker. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photo by Peter Mallet.

Stephen Friedman Gallery (25-28 Old Burlington Street) presents Lisa, its first solo exhibition with Caroline Walker. The British artist shows a new body of work that traces the daily life of her sister-in-law Lisa as she becomes a mother. Walker’s cinematic paintings and works on paper reveal the diverse experiences of women living in contemporary society. Drawing on photographic source material, her paintings blur the boundary between objective documentary and personal experience.

An exhibition walkthrough and artist-led talk by Walker takes place on Friday 13 May at 12:00. The exhibition continues until 28 May 2022.

Waddington Custot (11-12 Cork Street), in collaboration with the Hartung-Bergman Foundation presents Hans Hartung: Painter • Photographer, a museum-quality exhibition that illuminates the importance of photography to the development of the painter’s work. Today, approximately 30,000 photographic negatives are held by the Foundation, and yet Hartung’s photographs – a vital yet rarely explored aspect of his practice – have never before been exhibited in London; this will be the first time that some have been publicly shown. While many are familiar with the abstract paintings of German-French artist Hans Hartung (b.1904, Leipzig,Germany; d.1989, Antibes, France), few know of their connection to his photography.

The gallery is closed to the general public on Saturday 14 May, offering a Creative Family Workshop in various sessions from 10:00 to 16:30, reservation essential. Suitable for ages 3-7 years, join Miss Mark-Making for a playful, hands-on experience inventing tools and creating gestural abstract forms, inspired by the mark making of painter Hans Hartung. Book your place.

The exhibition continues until 1 July 2022.

Alon Zakaim Fine Art (27 Cork Street) presents Michel Ghatan: From Kilimanjaro to The Virunga Mountains, a solo exhibition showcasing the majestic wildlife photography captured by Ghatan. Curated by Helen Ho, this exhibition will span the photographer’s career to date, from his most celebrated image of the late big Tusker, Tim, to his most recent portraits of the Nyakagezi gorilla family in The Virunga Mountains. The exhibition continues until 21 May 2022, and will also be available to view as an immersive 360º virtual reality tour.

Browse & Darby (19 Cork Street) presents an exhibition of works by Duncan Wood, consisting of small scale landscapes and still lifes worked on over the last ten years. Wood has been recognised as a subtle colourist of landscape, the figure and still life. He uses elements of figuration and abstraction together, to pay a particular homage to Nature. The exhibition continues until 20 May 2022.

Flowers Gallery (21 Cork Street) presents an exhibition by acclaimed artist Victoria Crowe, newly represented by the gallery. The exhibition Resonance of Time continues Crowe’s long-running investigation into the metaphysical landscape, and our relationship to nature, real and transmuted. Crowe is widely known for her winter landscapes in which observations of everyday experience are transformed into the strikingly unfamiliar through symbolic associations with dream and memory. The exhibition continues until 9 June 2022.

Galerie kreo (24 Cork Street) presents chez soi. It is now more visible than ever that the home needs to be a space that reflects oneself, a space for comfort and familiarity yet continuous interest and conversation. This group show re-evaluates the idea of what our homes might look like should their separate spaces interact with one another. Through the use of warm colour and both contemporary and vintage design pieces, the gallery space has been divided into six mini scenes that all flow together as one. The exhibition continues until 28 May 2022.

Messums London (28 Cork Street) presents Hunter, Gatherer, an exhibition of works by Francesco Poiana. As the title suggests there is a bifold narrative to Poiana’s work. It has these references to the past, suggested in both subject and in elements of painterly application. There are the crepuscular tones of Symbolist painters like Edvard Munch and the fluid lines of Honoré Daumier. Poiana has an innate flair for making art with the smallest gestures. His method is neither assertive nor submerged and like Luc Tuymans or Peter Doig his pictures have a stillness and opacity to them that hints at a narrative but keeps it hidden. And yet, at the same time his work is innately of today’s concerns. The exhibition continues until 27 May 2022.

Nahmad Projects (2 Cork Street), a modern and contemporary art gallery, upholds a commitment to developing exhibitions that enhance our perspectives on art of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Projects are concept-driven, ranging from showcasing contemporary art, opening new dialogues on modern masterpieces, and provoking new conversations on artists rarely exhibited together.

The Redfern Gallery (20 Cork Street) presents Desmond Morris: The Last Surrealist, an exhibition celebrating the prolific career of Desmond Morris. Now known as the last surviving artist from The British Surrealist Group, this exhibition comprises several oil paintings and works on paper made by the artist over the past decade.

A famous zoologist and best-selling author, it was whilst studying for his degree in zoology at the University of Birmingham that Morris began making drawings, under the microscope, of biological organisms. The exhibition continues until 10 June 2022.

For further information on this year’s edition, visit London Gallery Weekend.