• Route

    Our route takes us down Mayfair’s historic Cork Street
  • Our Curated Route for London Gallery Weekend takes us down Mayfair’s historic Cork Street.
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    Our Curated Route for London Gallery Weekend takes us down Mayfair’s historic Cork Street, acclaimed as a hot art-hub in the 1930s, with legends such as Peggy Guggenheim and Fred Mayor mounting important shows.

    Over the last few years, thanks to The Pollen Estate, Cork Street has been revived as a hub for contemporary galleries and key to discovering world-class exhibitions by both storied artists and emerging voices. Here are our favourites to catch there from twenty incredible exhibitions on view during London Gallery Weekend.

    Fresh off of his critically acclaimed British Pavilion at this years Venice Biennale, Sir John Akomfrah’s Cork Street Galleries Banners Commission is the first thing you’ll encounter as you begin our route down the street. Akomfrah has created five lines of double-sided banners that incorporate themes integral to his work: memory, objecthood and colonialism.

    Gaze up and take them in. 

     

    We’re starting out route down the southern end of Cork Street at Alison Jacques, a gallery newer to Cork Street. On view is ‘Angel with a Gun: Homage to Guy Brett’, a group show of works selected by Signals Gallery tastemaker Guy Brett. Brett was integral for scores of international artists, often inviting them to Europe for the first time and showing them before they were commercially successful: think Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica and Sérgio Camargo. And now here they are on Cork Street, vindicated.

    Head across the road to Waddington Custot for another fantastic group presentation exploring the relationship between Surrealism and contemporary artists. Don’t miss a gobsmacking work by Max Ernst from 1927, ‘La carmagnole’, and key later works by fabled artists such as Bill Woodrow, Barry Flanagan and Patrick Caulfield in this ins Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Sérgio Camargo institutional level exhibition. 

     

    Next up, back over the road to Tiwani Contemporary to catch Zimbabwean artist Gareth Nyandoro’s presentation of recent works ‘Pfumvudza’, showcasing his lush, life-sized collaged paper works. ‘Pfumvudza’ is Zimbabwean slang for the blooming of new leaves, and here they are: vibrant and radiating as London enters summer. These works also integrate ideas surrounding agricultural self-sufficiency, making them essential viewing at this important space.

     

    We love Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street – it is a mini-hub now known for granting temporary exhibition space to galleries that don’t have permanent locations in town. Be sure to swing by to catch a plethora of exhibitions as you follow this route.

     

    Be sure to also catch Goodman Gallery’s first solo presentation of African painter Atta Kwami: featured are large-scale paintings filled with deep soul and dainty smaller sculptures, maquettes for Kwami’s take on a painted kiosk, first seen at the Folkstone Triennial in 2020. As a special surprise, Goodman have also reconstructed one of the Folkstone kiosks for the first time: from Folkstone to Mayfair!

    Next, head to Stephen Friedman Gallery to immerse yourself in American artist and Talk Art favourite Kenturah Davis’s new show ‘clouds’. Davis creates beautiful works on paper that are formed via her rigorous collaborations with black women choreographers and models, whose gestures are then translated into her lyrical and affecting drawings. Make sure to seek out her lenticular print and the new sculptures, too.

    Our route ends at Holtermann Fine Art where Marianne Holtermann has a presentation of new works by Scottish artist Neill Gall that we very much enjoy. Notice the transformations in scale that Gall makes: from small totem-like sculptures through to larger related paintings.


    There are also many galleries to visit here that we haven’t mentioned above: Messums London at 28 Cork Street have a presentation of new sculptures by Laurence Edwards; curator Virginia Damtsa’s group show ‘Art Through Time: Contemporary Reflections’ at Alon Zakaim, 27 Cork Street; The Redfern Gallery’s survey of the iconic Eileen Agar RA at 20 Cork Street; recent paintings by Tai Shan Schierenberg at Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street; works by British painter Ben Henriques at Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street; Nahmad Projects’s pairing of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi and Alexis Ralaivao at 2 Cork Street and don’t forget to head up to Clifford Street to visit Sam Fogg and MASSIMODECARLO.