Lauren Cuthbertson

In preparation for performing in Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s award winning ballet based on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf, I immersed myself in the world of the Bloomsbury Group. This early twentieth-century community of artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals did not distinguish between the different art forms. Instead, they lived completely by “the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge". 

It is in the same spirit that I have curated this route for London Gallery Weekend. The exhibitions and artists I highlight each approach their craft in their own way but, in their diversity, are a reminder of the creative vitality we have right here on our doorsteps. 

I’ve chosen a handful of galleries in Cork St, Mayfair, and nearby. Within a square mile radius, you can see exhibitions that will transport you around the world—at Vadehra Art Gallery (hosted by No 9 Cork St), A. Ramachandran’s works attest to the enduring significance of Rajasthan in the artist’s life and artistic imagination, whilst Alison Jacques is showing works by Argentinian-British surrealist Eileen Agar, who cast a curious, travelled eye on the world.

At Waddington Custot, paintings from the final ten years of Jean Dubuffet’s life will be on view. Dubuffet’s concept of Art Brut (raw art) saw the artist reject hierarchies of high and low culture, asserting art as the raw expression of a vision or emotions, untrammelled by convention. He too, like Virginia and the people around her, lived his life for his art and beliefs. 

Just next door, Anna Freeman-Bentley is presenting Conduits at Lehmann Maupin. Freeman-Bentley’s paintings explore reality, artifice and layers of meaning in staged and assembled environments, often featuring drapery, veils and coverings. These psychogeographic explorations of the built environment—from baroque interiors to industrial sites—might just as well feature a ballet stage, revealing the mechanisms by which space is always actively constructed to structure meaning and perception. 

Leaving Cork St, the next stop is to Sprüth Magers for Anne Imhof’s latest exhibition, Citizen. Through an accumulative form of mark making, Imhof’s works interrogate the moving body, giving form to that which does not keep still. There’s an art historical reference to the danse macabre that I’m excited to see! 

Our gallery tour ends at Lyndsay Ingram. There, Phoebe Cummings, who works predominantly with raw clay to create time-based sculptures and environments, is creating a new site-specific installation. The exhibition is open from June 2, a little earlier than London Gallery Weekend’s opening date of June 5, where you can see Cummings making her new work in situ. The long and laboured act of making these delicate objects sits in direct opposition to the transience of the sculptures as drip, dry, shrink, and, ultimately, crack.

One final stop—this time for a well deserved sweet treat. Just up the road, down Brooks Mews, you will find the Claridge’s Bakery. End a day of art with one of their delicious jammy dodgers.