It’s sometimes hard to know who London Gallery Weekend is really for. Lovers of shoestring group-shows? Artworld bigwigs looking for an Art Basel amuse-bouche? Lay-Londoners who have always wanted to know what that new, frequently empty unit on their block actually is? Ângela Ferreira’s Slits are Girls at nonprofit The Showroom off Edgware Road explores the patterns and visual languages of agitatory cultures by connecting the stories of punk movements in late 1970s South Africa and the UK. The tones of punk as we know it are there – minimalism, thrift, anger – but the key ingredient, Ferreira makes clear, is inevitably missing from the exhibition: people. A short walk away, arts charity and studio space The Bomb Factory has gathered work from art collectives, studios and groups across disciplines – presenting both their work but also documentation of the interrelational networks made necessary by grassroots artmaking in the UK’s emaciated cultural economy. Offerings that speak to and stem directly from the real world and communities from which art draws. Both spaces are also part of a new initiative for ‘Lisson Grove Galleries’, where you might visit Palmer Gallery and Carolina Aguirre’s post-Land art installation (think Anselm Kiefer if he took T-blockers). Elsewhere there’s Ted Le Swer’s Muybridgean games at Soup in Kennington; Carmela De Falco’s deep nonlistening at Des Bains in Fitzrovia; or if you’re feeling brave, ask ahead to visit Pivot (a gallery hosted in the kitchen of someone’s flat) and David Muenzer’s hilarious, globe-headed figurative drawings – picture Mr Melancholy from I Saw the TV Glow (2024), but charming.
