Hello London #11 - What to see in London this summer

This summer London provides us with a bunch of really exciting events, and we are here to give you some ideas in case the British capital will be a destination in your wanderings or in the less thrilling circumstance you are still stuck at your office desk. Among oneiric realities, blown up flowers and a jump back into a black and white 1960s London, here are five unmissable appointments in the city’s summer calendar:

Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro

© Yayoi Kusama Courtesy KUSAMA Enterprise

Breaking the record of stratospheric queues every Saturday afternoon, you still have time to enter Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s mystical-hypnotic  dimension – an otherworldly reality, abstract and oneiric, made of infinite reflections that fill the eyes of wonder, illusions, enchanted gardens and, of course, pumpkins sculptures and polka dots. The exhibition unfolds between two locations, Victoria Gallery I (and Garden), close to Old Street, Victoria Miro Mayfair, that respectively house the mirrored rooms and the garden the first, and a series of paintings the second.

The exhibition is held at Victoria Miro and will run until July the 3^rd.

David Hockney at Royal Academy of Arts

© David Hockney. Ph. Richard Schmidt

One of the season’s flagship events, the exhibition has just opened its doors and will run until October. For this project the major British artist, famous for his pools, the modernist aesthetic and his pop take on realism, has undertaken an authentic challenge: that of portraying different subjects – who he picked among friends, relatives, co-workers and fellow artists – in the same context, that is sitting on the same wooden chair in front of the same blue-painted wall. As if the boundaries were not enough already, these space limits were accompanied by others concerning time: each painting has, in fact, been produced in a span of just three days. The result is a series comprising 82 portraits, pure pictorial virtuosities that highlight Hockney’s capacity of depicting, whatever the conditions, the unique traits of his subjects’ personality.

David Hockney RA: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life is held at Royal Academy of Arts and will run until October the 2^nd.

Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern

© 2016 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/DACS Ph. Edward C. Robison III

Another unmissable event is the Mother of American modernism’s retrospective held at the Tate Modern. Known for her highly detailed large-scale paintings of petunias and camellias, as well as for putting on canvas New Mexico’s open skies and sun-drenched desert, O'Keeffe was a milestone in modern art since the late '20, as well as a precursor to the feminist art of the 1970s. Today, Tate decided to honor her with a major retrospective that showcases more than one hundred works, from the most seminal and abstract ones to the world-famous paintings of skulls and flowers.

The exhibition is held at Tate Modern and will run until October the 30^th.

Terence Donovan a The Photographers’ Gallery

© Terence Donovan Archive

For film lovers instead The Photographers' Gallery presents the first major retrospective dedicated to British photographer Terence Donovan, an artist who played a pivotal role in portraiture and fashion photography. In his 40 years-long career, he has captured cultural movements and authentic icons – just think of his black and white portraits of Twiggy and other prominent personalities who shaped the unforgettable Swinging Sixties. The exhibition will spread over two floors of the gallery and will not only showcase the most famous shots, but will guarantee a real journey into the artist’s mind and the creative process behind the works. It will, in fact, include diaries, sketches, magazines, and even the cameras used by the artist.

Terence Donovan: Speed of Light will be held at The Photographers’ Gallery and will run from July the 15^th to September the 25^h.

Yuri Pattison at Chisenhale Gallery

Ph. Andy Keate

If you are hungry for newness, the Chisenale Gallery may just have the answer for you. Fresh from an 18 month-long placement as part of the program Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency and winner of the Frieze Artist Award 2016, Dubliner artist Yuri Pattison presents an exhibition that blends together architecture and science fiction, modernism and futurism, references to politics and social utopias. The space is almost entirely dedicated to an immersive installation which consists of a racking wall supporting a row of synchronized computers – a blink at the predominant and invasive role technology has come to invest in our lives. At the center is also the exploration of the concept of transparency, both as merely applied to the materials he used, and to the idea of unfiltered communication and the increasingly impalpable gap between work and leisure.

Yuri Pattison: user, space is held at Chisenhale Gallery until August the 28t