A handy guide to the best gallery shows in town

Cleo Roberts-Komireddi

What to see in London this week

‘Tyler Mitchell: Chrysalis’ Gagosian Through November 6, 2022Photographer Tyler Mitchell’s first solo show in London with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1123/Gagosian" target="_blank">Gagosian</a> presents a spectrum of utopic visions of Black beauty that exhibit the fullness of human desire, aspiration, and belonging. Contemplating and reworking the traditions of photography associated with the American South, Mitchell’s subjects languish in nature, both real and staged. While many pieces are whimsical and capture surreal moments of reverie syncopated with their environment, smaller works detail the sharper side of the elements. In one of them, swelling muddy waters overwhelm Mitchell’s figures as a reflection of the long struggle against racial prejudice.

Teresita Fernández, ‘Caribbean Cosmos’ Lehmann Maupin Through November 5, 2022<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10008/Teresita-Fernandez" target="_blank">Teresita Fernández</a>&nbsp;delves into the politics of landscape and territory, exposing the violence that often shapes geographies. ‘Caribbean Cosmos’ homes in on the titular archipelago and considers the area as a concept, loosened and liberated from its physical landmass. The exhibition’s eponymous work, a 12-foot stretch of small ceramic tiles coated with mineral glazes fired at volcanic temperatures, has the hybrid appearance of a churning pool of lava intersected by spiral galaxies. Up close, the piece intensifies, creating an enveloping universe that impresses the dynamism, volatility, and, ultimately, interdependence of the material world.&nbsp;

‘Carolee Schneemann: 1955–1959’ Hales Gallery Through October 29, 2022Pioneering feminist artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/23464/Carolee-Schneemann" target="_blank">Carolee Schneemann</a>&nbsp;forged a career that was grounded in painting but extended into experimental performances, assemblage works, and films. The range of her oeuvre is on view in ‘Body Politics’ at the Barbican Centre (marking Schneemann’s first major survey in the UK), while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1379/Hales-Gallery" target="_blank">Hales Gallery</a>&nbsp;is hosting an intimate showcase of the artist’s figurative paintings and drawings made between 1955–1959. Spanning her final years at Bard College and Columbia University, the pieces articulate the frustrations Schneemann encountered as a woman studying at and navigating these institutions. When denied access to life models, for example, she responded with nude self-portraits that resulted in her temporary expulsion. Regarded as a precursor to her later paintings, these works are early examples of her lifelong exploration of the social construction of the female body and its politics.

Olivia Pender, ‘Our Bodies are Not the Problem’ Maureen Paley Through October 30, 2022Olivia Pender’s research-oriented practice interrogates social, political, and education movements associated predominantly with the 19th and 20th centuries. This exhibition, her second at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1607/Maureen-Paley" target="_blank">Maureen Paley</a>, focuses on her most recent bodies of work, which specifically investigate feminist histories. The series ‘Neither Strivers Nor Skivers, They Will Not Define Us’ (2020), for instance, departs from the play Liberty and Death (c. 1913) by Sylvia Pankhurst, a socialist feminist and anti-fascist and campaigner for the suffragette movement. Her script prompted Plender to meet with activists in women’s centers and community spaces around London, resulting in, among other things, posters, drawings, a wall painting, and a sound piece, all exhibited here. In the latter, one hears women from Plender’s encounters describe their living conditions in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and rising anti-immigration sentiments – unnervingly reminiscent of Victorian London.

Amy Sherald, ‘The World We Make’ Hauser and Wirth October 12 – December 23, 2022Amy Sherald is renowned for painted portraits that portray Black figures with elegance and strength. Laying claim to a genre traditionally exclusionary of such figures, ‘The World We Make’, her first solo show in Europe, features a range of works that oscillate between small and monumental in scale. The figures depicted are unanimously expressive, personable, and often caught in moments of joy and leisure that at times take cues from historically iconic references: For love, and for country (2022), with its two Black male sailors, recalibrates Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famed post-war image V-J Day in Times Square (1945). Accompanying the show is the first widely available monograph on Sherald’s practice, offering a historically rooted contextualization of her work and its place within the realm of the ‘Black ordinary’ – that is, the understanding of Black life as neither dramatic nor defiant but rather quiet and un-sensationalized.

Olga de Amaral Lisson Gallery Through October 29, 2022Glistening and ethereal textiles are central to the practice of Olga de Amaral, whose works have been described by Susan Aberth, a curator and professor at Bard College, as ‘roving chapels of meditative and solemn beauty’. This solo exhibition at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1188/Lisson-Gallery" target="_blank">Lisson Gallery</a>&nbsp;– the artist’s first in London in nearly a decade – features her tireless experimentation from the past two decades. Cascading strands of acrylic, knotted linen adorned with gold leaf, and small-scale paintings are among the artworks that, combining the functions of painting, weaving, and sculpture, defy easy categorization.<section></section>

‘Ghosts of Empires II’ Ben Brown Fine Arts Through October 22, 2022Excavating the histories of exchange across the Black Atlantic and Asia Imperial trade routes, curator Larry Ossei-Mensah’s group show delicately details how colonial power relations haunt the present. Taking the 2011 book Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World, written by Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s current Chancellor of the Exchequer, as the starting point for the exhibition, many of the featured artists expand on themes of the colonial sediments left across the world long after the British Empire – as well as French and Dutch – collapsed. Artists including Adam de Boer,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9868/Theaster-Gates" target="_blank">Theaster Gates</a>, Tidawhitney Lek, and Fadekemi Ogunsanya draw out both the connections and disparities between these experiences of postcolonialism and diasporic communities, building on the first iteration of this show, which was presented at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1342/Ben-Brown-Fine-Arts" target="_blank">Ben Brown Fine Arts</a>&nbsp;in Hong Kong earlier this year.

Sonia Boyce, ‘Just for the Record’ Simon Lee October 12 – December 16, 20222022 has been a landmark year for Sonia Boyce, who made history as the first Black woman to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale – and went on to win the Golden Lion award for Best National Participation. Her first solo show with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1273/Simon-Lee-Gallery" target="_blank">Simon Lee</a>&nbsp;now marks something of a homecoming, presenting work rooted in her ‘Devotional’ project. Since 1999, Boyce has been working with the public to collect the names of Black British women in music along with associated memorabilia. In the gallery, plastered across kaleidoscopic geometric wallpaper created from her own archive of found digital images, are parts of this crowd-sourced archive presented as prints and wrapped around sculptures. Images of record sleeves, concert flyers, and posters for festivals and albums monumentalize the contributions of these women who might otherwise – as history has shown – become casualties of historical amnesia.

Oliver Osborne, ‘Mantegna’s Dead Christ’ Union Pacific Through November 5, 2022Andrea Mantegna’s 1480 painting The Lamentation over the Dead Christ is a proportionally awry depiction of Christ. For the works on view at his exhibition at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/20803/Union-Pacific" target="_blank">Union Pacific</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10567/Oliver-Osborne" target="_blank">Oliver Osborne</a> exhumes this work along with other historic paintings, including a portrait of Elisabeth of Palatine, to focus on painting itself as a subject. Described as a ‘new Old Master’, Osborne renders his canvases with a precise, labor-intensive process, using gesso repeatedly layered and sanded down on linen. The works propose a reflection on the act of looking and making in an era saturated by images – and firmly position Osborne as an artist to watch.

Dr. Cleo Roberts-Komireddi speaks and writes on contemporary art, often with a focus on art from South and Southeast Asia. She has written for The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Times, among others, and contributed to books published by Phaidon and Thames and Hudson. Top image: Teresita Fernández, Caribbean Cosmos, 2022 (detail). Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London.

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