Tabish Khan, the @LondonArtCritic, picks his top exhibitions to see across London in August. If you are looking for more exhibitions, check out his previous top 5.
Prepare for some serious 90s nostalgia, including the posters on the outside wall, the BMX bikes parked inside and a soundtrack that includes the Fresh Prince of Bel Air soundtrack and Cyndi Lauper. It’s not all a sunny look back, as the piles of white powder reference the crack cocaine epidemic that impacted the Black community, alongside the Timberland boots and mannequin heads featuring the popular hairstyles. Until 15th August.
I love the idea of Christie’s giving its vast space to a collection to showcase their works over the quiet of Summer. This time it’s the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and its excellent collection of modern and contemporary South Asian art. There are artists I recognise, and plenty that were new to me. I was particularly drawn to Kulpreet Singh’s clothing made of ash and Bani Abidi’s enlarged letters written by Indian soldiers who served in the First World War. Until 21st August.
This mural commission features the grid pattern you see in El-Sayegh’s paintings, with embedded art-history books relevant to her and a keffiyeh reflecting her Palestinian heritage. My favourite element is an England flag with ‘England’ written in Arabic. That’s the right way to reappropriate the England flag, reflecting that this is a country of many different peoples who all identify as English. Until 15th August.
This exhibition hits a lot harder because he died shortly after completing these recent paintings. It includes many of his trademark upside-down figures, and I particularly like the works in gold and those that seem to show multi-limbed figures as if they were human-insect hybrids. White Cube is also a rare gallery that can truly give these massive works the space they need to make the impact they were designed to. Until 30th August.
He may be best known for his large-scale paintings, but here’s a chance to focus on his smaller-scale, subtler drawings. It includes studies for his famous map pieces that show outlines of countries, but there’s a lot more variety in his practice, and we get to see that all in this show that spans six decades of his career. Until 22nd August.
All images are copyrighted and courtesy of the respective gallery and artists. Frank Bowling Photo © David Levene.
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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.