London Gallery Weekend Reflections

London Gallery Weekend Reflections
Brogan Bertie and Amelia Von Christ

BB:
It was energising to attend London Gallery Weekend. Experiencing so many shows in quick succession gave me a clearer impression of the scale and diversity within this corner of the UK’s art world. It lends itself to comparison, which is so different from how I usually encounter exhibitions- as singular events where you immerse yourself in one artist’s or collective’s perspective. Seeing so much back-to-back allowed me to get a sense of the scene as a whole.

AVC:
Seeing a lot of work in a short space of time really focuses the mind. You become aware, almost immediately, of what pulls you towards certain pieces, and why others take longer to unfold. The work that resonated most with me over the weekend was work that felt necessary and intentional- where I could feel the artist’s urge to communicate something and their specific desire to use their medium to do it. That sense of urgency, of needing to transmit insight or emotion, questions or discomfort, really draws me in.

BB:
Exactly! I like work that has a perspective. I love work that feels a bit desperate. I can relate to and get sucked in by that hunger to connect.

Highlights

Emalin – Nuit: Kate Spencer Stewart & Odilon Redon

AVC:
I loved the pairing of Stewart’s paintings with Redon’s lithographs, abstraction punctuated by references to Baroque visions of heaven and hell. The curation was thoughtful and the accompanying text brought extra depth to the experience.

BB:
One painting in particular, Engine by Kate Spencer Stewart, really stayed with me. I don’t always find an immediate way into abstraction, but this work had such a charged, atmospheric presence. It felt familiar and elemental—like the sea or fire, a storm, or even hell. It was rough yet deliberate, chaotic yet composed. I stood in front of it for ages. It planted something in me. Sometimes you look at a piece and it feels like a seed in your belly.

AVC:
We spoke a lot about abstraction after this show. It’s something I’ve always responded to almost bodily—there’s an instinctive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that comes before I start breaking down why. It was so interesting, as two people who work incredibly closely and are obsessive in our love of art and talk about it constantly, to realise how different our instinctive approaches to abstraction are. In this show, the relationship to Redon’s lithographs gave the paintings an immediate context, but they also held their own and created a distinct atmosphere. I am not a believer in the necessity of context when it comes to engaging with abstraction but the dialogue happening between the lithographs and the paintings did add a different dimension to the show.

BB:
Before we even really digested the lithographs, you had already said Engine felt Baroque in its dramatics, that it reminded you of hell – you felt the context immediately.

A few days later I came across a quote from Clarice Lispector:
“In painting as in music and literature, what is called abstract so often seems to me the figurative of a more delicate and more difficult reality, less visible to the naked eye.”
That was it exactly.

AVC:
I think that gets to the core of what the work provoked in you perfectly!

Gathering – Winding Without Shore, Shuyi Cao

AVC:
Clean lines of steel and blown glass, a mirrored floor, a beautiful soundscape—this show moved elegantly from organic process into something more refined and precise. I’m excited to see where Shuyi Cao goes next.

BB:
This was one of the shows where the process itself was totally captivating. The materials and forms felt really significant. It’s so different from how I work, but deeply satisfying. Beautifully installed in a gorgeous space.

Edel Assanti – Simon Lehner: Of Peasants & Basterds

AVC:
This was one of the exhibitions I’d read about ahead of the weekend and was eager to see. I loved the interplay between mediums—painting, sculpture, photography, and print. We spent a while trying to figure out how the work was made, which led to a great conversation with the gallery staff. Learning more about the process added so much to the experience. I’d been a bit fixated on decoding the techniques, and understanding that side of it helped me engage with the work on a deeper level. I had a lot of fun with this one.

BB:
I really enjoyed this show. The stand out for me was the sculpture, Echo Chamber (pictured below). The relationship between this mannequin’s simplicity, its curiosity pressed up against the light, and then its soft belly which had been mechanised to breathe, struck me as very tender. You had to look under its arm to find the breathing belly and, when you did find it, it was rough and undisguised. You could see, almost, the exact way the artist had achieved this one, singular moving part. And that actually touched me very deeply. It felt like life on purpose. Unpolished and half-hidden, the surprise of life on purpose.

And then, when we ended up at the Victoria Miro, we saw Still Life by Elmgreen & Dragset, and it was a mirror to Echo Chamber. A ceramic cradle of hands holding a bird breathing.

**Elmgreen and Dragset** *Still Life (Bullfinch)*, 2024

AVC:
We arrived at this exhibition in the worst state possible to try and engage with art. We were dripping wet, having walked through torrential rain for 30 minutes, exhausted after a full day of exhibitions and a spontaneous night out in Soho the previous evening. We debated getting on the train home but something within us took us to Victoria Miro and thank God it did!

This ended up being my favourite exhibition of the weekend. I have been to the space many times over the years, most recently for the fantastic Alice Neel exhibition in 2024, and always enjoy it. This show was something else. The amount of incredible work was unbelievable, on every wall something captivating to take in.

I was completely obsessed by a smaller work by Saskia Colwell. The painting, Downstairs, 2025, so beautifully captures flesh in this delicate balance of the classical and contemporary.

BB:
Haha! I’m inserting a picture here in the spirit of the weekend: sometimes visuals communicate something words can’t. In this case, how little we wanted to walk around a gallery.

Drowned rats!

So… I love the Victoria Miro; we’d recently seen the Alice Neel exhibition At Home, curated by Hilton Als. It was brilliant, it cemented the VM as one of my true favourites, but it didn’t make me feel any more hopeful about getting dragged away from the train home!

And yet, in the end I think we spent hours here. We had the best time. It was their exhibition celebrating 40 years of the gallery and it showed! The breadth of work, the vision, the names. It was hands down my favourite show we saw all weekend.

You walk in and see Na Parlour by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, where you can feel the weight of history and family mythology thread around the oblivious children. The joy of our oblivious children. It’s opposite Racetrack by Tal R which, by genius of the curation, seems to offer an alternative perspective to the same scene – almost from the perspective of those completely entrenched in play, giving Na Parlour’s external perspective a quiet, emotional weight. That thoughtful start to the exhibition set the tone as we moved up through the incredible spaces in the back of the Victoria Miro in sodden, soggy, squeaking, delighted awe.