Robert Nava, Night and Day Separator, 2021
(Picture: © Robert Nava. Courtesy Pace Gallery)The sun is finally out and London is in full swing. And as if things couldn’t get any better, now Mayfair Art Weekend is just around the corner. For art lovers it’s been marked in the diary for weeks: The annual art celebration sees dozens of galleries – both small and big – showcase their incredible offerings over one packed weekend.
This year 30 galleries including Hauser & Wirth, BASTIAN, Royal Academy of Arts and Richard Saltoun Gallery will present painting, photography, sculpture and more, plus there will be talks, performances and events going on across the weekend – and it’s all completely free. There are also new galleries including Pace, No. 9 Cork Street, Frieze, Carl Kostyál and Sapling joining the roster for the first time.
Highlights include a new exhibition by English pop artist Sir Peter Blake (celebrating the artist’s 90th birthday), Billy Apple’s Rainbows exhibition and Romina De Novellis’ performative exhibition. And the weekend - which coincides with the first week of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the RA Schools Summer Show - will start on the Friday night at Gallery HOP! from 6-8 pm – perfect for those who enjoy attending late-night exhibitions.
The Mayfair Sculpture Trail, which runs for six weeks from June 20 to July 31, will also be open to enjoy. It will feature an interactive outdoor exhibition of temporary sculptures, public art and permanent sculptures. Start seeing David Breuer-Weil at Berkeley Square, then to Maurice Blik’s Dancing in Grosvenor Square and to New Bond Street to see Kojo Marfo’s new work.
So we don’t blame you if you feel the need to clear the entire weekend of Friday 24 to Sunday 26 June. Here is our breakdown of some of the highlights.
BASTIAN
BASTIAN’s show Emil Nolde: Anatomy of Light and Water will present 15 never before-seen seascapes on paper. The painter was one of the first artists using oil painting and watercolour to explore colour, making this exhibition a real treat for lovers of the expressionists.
Cardi Gallery
German painter Wolf Vostell was one of the first adopters of video art and installation art. In Wolf Vostell: Destruction is Life we get to see a selection of work that the artist made in the last two decades of his life - including videos, painting, sculptures and installations.
Clarendon Fine Art
British photographer John Swannell is best known for working for the major fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harpers and Tatler. He’s had an incredible career which has included a one-man show at the National Portrait Gallery in 1996, and Princess Diana personally commissioning him to photograph her together with her sons in 1994.
Now some of the photographs taken by the prize-winning photographer for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar can be seen in John Swannell: Forty Years On.
Mazzoleni
Italian visual artist Marinella Senatore makes work that is characterised by public participation. In Marinella Senatore: Afterglow attendees can look forward to an “installation of site-specific light sculptures dotted across the city”. Intruiguing to say the least.
The Mayor Gallery
Billy Apple®: Rainbows 1965 is a re-imagining of Apple’s first solo exhibition which took place at Bianchini Gallery in New York in 1965. The rainbow runs through the entire exhibition as a central motif, and usues electric light as a sculptural medium. Billy Apple® was one of the first using the medium back in the day and so it’s a real boon to have his work in London now, nearly 60 years later.
Browse & Darby
45 Years on Cork Street promises to be a huge retrospective of many of the artists they have worked with or exhibited over the years. The list incudes Elizabeth Blackadder, Edgar Degas, Lucian Freud, Harold Gilman, Gwen John, William Nicholson, Walter Richard Sickert, Matthew Smith and Euan Uglow, to name a few!
Hauser & Wirth
There are two major artists showing at Hauser & Wirth. The first is Larry Bell, who is showing new work in the exhibition Deconstructed Cube Series. Bell was a major player in California’s ‘Light and Space’ movement and it’s always a treat to see his work on this side of the pond (his last London show wasin 2017 at White Cube).
There’ll also be previously unseen works by Luchita Hurtado - the Venezuelan painter known for investigating universality and transcendence in her work.
Waddington Custot
There are also two exhibitions being shown at Waddington Custot: Hans Hartung: Painter • Photographer and Peter Blake: Under Milk Wood. Hans Hartung was best known for his paintings, but this exhibition shows audiences just how important phtography was to the artist too. Approximately 30,000 photographic negatives are held by the Hartung-Bergman Foundation – this will be the first time that some of them are publicly exhibited.
The second, will see Sir Peter Blake’s work in a pop-up exhibition space opposite the main gallery at 22 Cork Street. There will be over 150 watercolours, collages and drawings and some new pieces too. And the show is coinciding with the artist’s 90th birthday.
45 Park Lane
A 90th birthday is no small feat, and is worth celebrating at least twice. 45 Park Lane will also have an exhibition of some of Sir Peter Blake’s work. Joseph Cornell’s Holiday imagines the American artist, who was one of Blake’s heroes, travelling to different locations around the world.
Other galleries taking part over the weekend include David Zwirner, D Contemporary, E & R Cyzer, Grosvenor Chapel, Holtermann Fine Art, Illuminate Productions, JD Malat Gallery, John Martin Gallery, Opera Gallery, Richard Saltoun Gallery, Robilant+Voena and Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair.
