Top 10 Exhibitions Opening This Week
Pam Evelyn: Built on Clay
7 April - 15 May, 2022
Preview: Wednesday, April 6th, 6-8PM
The Approach is excited to present Built on Clay, a UK debut solo exhibition of paintings by the young British painter Pam Evelyn (b.1996 UK). The show title takes its name from the geological composition of the city of London, which has a predominantly clay foundation. As a material, clay is volatile and unpredictable, it shrinks and expands depending on its water content, imbuing it with the capacity for collapse. Evelyn’s painting process shares similar qualities, the title becoming a comment on the work itself. From the moment she approaches the canvas, Evelyn begins with a problematic and challenging foundation, an untackled and incalculable terrain. Yet, through placing trust in her own intuition, following her own painterly impulses, Evelyn builds – brushstroke by brushstroke, layer by layer, ‘brick by brick’ – a densely rich and textured canvas. Thick layers of paint sediment atop one another; abstracted landscapes and figurations slowly emerge, disappear and reappear like changeable weather, a process which the artist likens to “a mist rising.”
Lost at Sea
8 April - 27 April, 2022
Private View: Thursday, April 7th, 6-8PM
The Artist Room is pleased to present Lost at Sea, a group exhibition including works by Sholto Blissett, Peter Doig, Roni Horn, Louise Lawler, Kang Seung Lee and Ding Shilun.
Caterina Silva: Summer Unknown
6 April - 15 May, 2022
Preview: Wednesday, April 6th: 5-8PM
Bosse & Baum is pleased to present Summer Unknown by Italian artist Caterina Silva, bringing together a new body of paintings from 2021 and 2022, curated by Alfredo Cramerotti. Through quick painting sessions Silva registers traces of the space in which she works, traces of her daily life, impressions, emotions as well as fragments of our collective unconscious: news, disasters, uprisings, deaths, loves, joys, despairs.
Rebecca Gould and Iwan Lewis: Radical Lethargy
8 April - 7 May, 2022
Opening: Thursday, April 7th, 6-8PM
Sid Motion Gallery is pleased to present ‘Radical Lethargy’ an exhibition of two solo presentations by Rebecca Gould and Iwan Lewis.
Rebecca Gould is an artist working with sculpture, video and textiles. Iwan Lewis is a painter exploring native mythologies.
The exhibition title refers to their shared experience of living on the island of Ynys Môn, which forces them to question their roles as artists. This island backdrop is a welcome paradox from living in London which was their home for a decade. In this serendipitous retreat to rural living, vacuums once filled by the art world are now replaced with questions on socio political structures and the capacity of language to alter perceptions. This doesn’t only feed into their work but is visible in their collaborative project; Studio Cybi, allowing them to question established ideologies.
Celia Paul: Memory and Desire
6 April - 7 May, 2022
Victoria Miro is delighted to present Memory and Desire, an exhibition of new paintings by Celia Paul.
Celia Paul’s art is founded on deep connections – familial, creative, threading back and forth across time – to people and places, and is self-assuredly quiet, contemplative and ultimately moving in its attention to detail and intensely felt spirituality. This exhibition of new paintings coincides with the publication of Letters to Gwen John, a new Jonathan Cape book by the artist which centres on a series of letters addressed to the painter Gwen John (1876–1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul. Through the epistolary form, Paul draws fruitful comparisons between John’s life and her own: their shared resolve to protect the sources of their creativity, their fierce commitment to painting, and the ways in which their associations with older male artists affected the public’s reception of their work.
Andrew Salgado: A Never-Setting Sun
10 April - 14 May, 2022
Preview: Saturday, April 9th: 1-4PM
Andrew Salgado returns to BEERS for his fifth solo show with the gallery, following both 2020’s Strange Weather and 2016’s The Snake. The new body of work, entitled A Never-Setting Sun, is both a critical look at the creative process, as well as a deep-dive into various themes of interest to the artist.
Tom Hammick: My Sister’s Garden
5 April - 6 May, 2022
Lyndsey Ingram is proud to announce an exhibition of new work by the British painter and printmaker Tom Hammick (b.1963). Entitled ‘My Sister’s Garden’, the exhibition is named for Hammick’s sister ‘Koodge’, a passionate gardener, who cared for him in her Wiltshire garden following a period of sadness. His daily drawings of life outdoors helped the artist recover and to reflect on the strong connection between gardens and wellbeing, as recently seen during the lockdowns, when access to outside space – even small balconies – became crucial. This experience inspired a new body of work which, says Hammick, ‘celebrates the quiet, beautiful and slow aspects of life and reminds us that we do have a heaven on earth, if only we’d look after it.’
Jess Valice: Human
7 April - 6 May, 2022
Preview: Wednesday, April 6th: 6-8PM
In Jess Valice’s recent paintings, it’s usually the eyes you notice first. Huge, heavy-lidded pools, resolute and weary, as if their owner had lately gone through something but was nevertheless holding on, engaging the world. But then, by contrast, there’s the ears: oversized, sometimes mismatched in colour and on occasion reddish, the artist deliberately clowning herself or her subjects. The who’s-who distinction is ambiguous; Valice’s portraits can look like near-dysmorphic caricatures of her own features, but even in double portraits, everyone she paints looks somewhat like her. Her cast of comic melancholics, then, at once shares a range of emotions—a generalised sadness, exhaustion, stoicism—while being aware that expressing uncut melancholy (and fixating on the self, even in a confessional age) can itself be a quick turnoff for others. And that, conversely, humour, self-deprecation and absurdism are ways to keep a viewer with you, as they find out that the work is relatable not just to its maker but to themselves.
Marcus Jahmal
7 April - 14 May, 2022
Opening: Thursday, April 7th, 6-8PM
Almine Rech London is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by American artist Marcus Jahmal, on view from April 7 until May 14, 2022. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in London and the fourth solo exhibition with Almine Rech.
‘In Marcus Jahmal’s new paintings, purple hurtles along the continuum of human history. The figures that populate his washy fields wear nothing at all, a self-abnegating refusal of millenia of class structure. They have become purple itself, their skin pulsating violet, as if emanating light. Jahmal’s color sense is finely tuned, taking something of the rabid passion of the Fauvists and the emotional immediacy of the Neo-Expressionists (there are other overlaps, too: a rejection of three-dimensional space, for example). On the chromatic spectrum, purple exists somewhere between the tempestuous fury of red and the calm cool of blue. It takes both humors and makes its own. Purple vibrates at the uppermost length of the visible spectrum. Travel any further and you’ve left the physical realm. You can do that in a Marcus Jahmal picture, too.’
— Max Lakin
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Oliver Clegg: Tongue-Tied
8 April - 15 May, 2022
MAMOTH is delighted to announce a solo exhibition by British-born, Costa Rica-based artist Oliver Clegg (b. 1980, Guildford). Entitled Tongue-tied, the exhibition is a homecoming of sorts, the artist’s first solo presentation in London since 2008, following several years living and showing in New York before relocating to Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. Clegg is among a generation of British artists who have helped to bring the medium of painting back into the spotlight, both nationally and on the international stage. In 2021 he was selected for inclusion in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 2, an anthology showcasing solo exhibitions by sixty of the leading British painters of today.
Exhibition Guide Membership
Out Now: April, 2022
The London Paint Club Exhibition Guide is the most comprehensive guide for Contemporary Painting Exhibitions in London. Learn more about what’s on in an easy to use digital PDF guide. By becoming a member, you will receive an updated Opening and Closing PDF every week, delivered straight to your inbox.
