Diary of a London Art Critic: Late March

Grayson Perry, Mexican landscapes and a whole lot of me

In this post, I summarise every exhibition I’ve seen over the last few weeks, not just those I write about in other publications, and you get my honest thoughts on them.

Saturday 15 March

My Saturday rounds focused on South London, with a stop-off in East London at the end.

The installation at Gasworks

Tanat Teeradakorn: National Opera Complex at Gasworks (until 30 March, free) is a wild and fun installation with a souvenir stall covered in hanging t-shirts and jumpers. It’s a show where I would have liked a lot more context as there are lots of references to Thai culture within it that I wasn’t able to grasp fully.

I like the concept of Outhouse Gallery; as the name suggests, it’s in old toilets in Brunswick Park. I caught the final weekend of Mina Fouladi’s exhibition (now closed), where works were directly painted on the walls, so they only lasted the length of the show. They were immortalised in postcards, so I snapped up three of them.

I looked forward to Christina Kimeze's exhibition at South London Gallery (until 11 May, free). The dreamy figurative paintings are impressive, and I felt that the textile work in the fire station building was the strongest.

My next stop was Eleni Papazoglou at Soup Gallery (until 12 March, free), who uses the idea of grammatical symbols to create framing devices for her works. I wasn’t sold on the works, but it’s always worth stopping into Soup as they have a great programme, and the founder, Hector Campbell (Campbell’s Soup - get it?), has his finger on the pulse of the London art scene.

My first visit to 8 Vine Yard was to see the group show Face to Face (until 29 March, free) - curated by Josephine May Bailey. It’s very close to Borough station, but it’s a hard to find space as you have to wander down an alley and look for a door marked ‘film video umbrella’, and there’s very little online presence on the show. However, once you get there, it’s a great space, and I enjoyed the main installation by Georgina Odell and the smaller works by Scarlett Budden and Harriet Gillett.

Anne Desmet at Eames Fine Art (until 30 March, free) combines traditional London cityscapes with more fractal-like works, and the latter left a stronger impression on me.

Theaster Gates at White Cube, Bermondsey, is another show getting a lot of hype (until 6 April, free), and it was busy when I visited. It’s full of big ideas about racism and Black history, his inspiration from Japanese art history, and lots of impressive large-scale installations. However, these never quite come together into a coherent narrative; it all feels too disparate.

The Fall of the Roman Empire at Kristin Hjellegjerde, London Bridge (until 19 April, free) is a two-person show, and they are a couple. I loved Christina Nicodema’s paintings of hyper-real tableaus, which reminded me of Raqib Shaw’s work, but Ted Lawson’s abstract minimal works didn’t appeal.

I finished the day by dashing to East London to visit TondoCosmic, a gallery I’ve been meaning to visit. The current show, Popular Bestiary (until 12 April, free), features a mix of artworks, some of which I liked and others less so. Aberfledy Street itself is worth checking out, as all the shops have colourful frontages.

Below the paywall:

• Discover what I consider the most enjoyable exhibition currently on display.

• My thoughts on major exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, Serpentine, Design Museum, The National Gallery and National Maritime Museum

• My curatorial debut and dozens more exhibitions