Tabish Khan, the @LondonArtCritic, picks his top exhibitions to see across London in July. If you are looking for more exhibitions, check out his previous top 5.
Drawing parallels between the Victorian era of invention and today’s proliferation of AI slop, Rachel Maclean takes on the topic through her typically satirical and humorous lens. Fairies learn to speak by ingesting and vomiting words in a feature film, alongside paintings and 3D-printed elements. Like all her work, the production values are excellent. Until 1st August.
The Atacama Desert is one of the driest and emptiest places on Earth, making it ideal for some of the most powerful space telescopes. Santillan has used this desert’s sand to make a new lens and taken imperfect photographs with it to create his own eye on the desert. He has also taken a motherboard and a pair of trainers and subjected them to many years of decay to comment on humanity’s impact through the Anthropocene. Until 1st August.
Oliver Beer walked through Palaeolithic caves and found resonant frequencies that amplify within the spaces. Using the red and black pigments used in cave painting, he has created paintings that make these sounds visible, alongside a soundtrack, in a contemplative exhibition. Until 31st July.
These personal paintings document the late artist’s own struggles with mental health, including a dream where she turned into a foetus and a vision of her as a young girl undergoing electroconvulsive therapy. These works may look surreal, but they’re all based on visions she experienced, and it’s a revelatory exhibition celebrating the work of an artist I hadn’t come across until now. Until 6th August.
These serene, reflective works capture the subtle changes of colour in the skies as the year passes, and they are based on the Japanese calendar, which is carefully split into 72 micro-seasons. However, these are no longer aligned thanks to climate change, and we can see this as a commentary on the delicate balance of nature that we are disrupting. It’s also a great first solo show for the gallery’s new London space. Until 8th August.
All images are copyrighted and courtesy of the respective artists and galleries. Ropac photo: Eva Herzog. Yvonne Mabs Francis photo: Alexander Christie.
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Art Critic for both FAD and Londonist. See as many exhibitions as possible and write reviews, opinion pieces and a weekly top 5 for FAD.