Diary of a London art critic: late June

Feast on a fortnight of exhibitions

Thanks to everyone who voted on the first Diary of a London Art Critic and 89% of you said you wanted more of the same so here’s the second entry. As a reminder, it’s a post where I summarise every show I’ve seen over the last few weeks, not just those I write about, and you get my honest thoughts on all of them.

Saturday 15 June

At Pangolin with a Merete Rasmussen sculpture

A lot of fine art graduate shows were on for BA students across London so I ended up visiting the shows at Chelsea and Central Saint Martins (CSM), but I didn’t get to the shows at Camberwell and Wimbledon (all now closed). It’s always interesting to see, even if they aren’t usually as interesting as the MA shows for me - the MA shows at all these places are still to come.

Chelsea was a disappointing one, not because of the quality of art - these are fresh graduates after all, but because very few works had QR codes or statements explaining what the work was about so for anything conceptual I was at a complete loss. Plus very few artists were there to talk about the work which I feel they should be, though granted this was a long 10 day graduate show and I was visiting on the final day early in the morning. The campus was also confusing with some doors open that shouldn’t be and vice versa.

In the end, the only works I liked were paintings as they often don’t need explanation, particularly the work of Lukas Leisinger, who incidentally also had a QR code.

Thankfully CSM was much buzzier and the artists did all have QR codes. Once again it was a mixed bag, as graduate shows are, but I did find myself drawn to the textured works of Georgie Crouch.

Between the two graduate shows I visited Camden Art Centre to catch the last week of the personal paintings of Matthew Krishanu whose works reference his childhood as a child of missionaries and Andrew Omoding, a neurodivergent artist who makes sculptures from found materials. Both are solid shows and glad I caught them before they closed.

I also popped into Pangolin and liked the abstract twisting sculptures of Merete Rasmussen (on until 20 July, free to visit), there’s a great texture to them that’s only evident when seen in person.

Below the paywall:

• A whole host of more exhibitions

• The best and worst of graduate exhibitions

• A couple of great arty day trips outside of London