Glittering figures battle against shards of rain, wading through waist-deep water and hiding behind trees slicked black against the bright snow. We’re not in a Bear Grylls survival camp – we’re at Josh Lilley gallery for the opening of Tom Anholt’s New Lands exhibition.

As famously stated in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived’ Inspired by Walden, in this show, Anholt’s protagonists go to the woods. They traverse across land and sea, eerie colours emerging in the moonlight. Their destination is unknown but important, the figures’ quiet deliberation visible in the journey. The New Lands presented here are the place of myth, of exiled kings and Shakespearean heroes.

Berlin-based Anholt typically works to a theme for each exhibition, having previously completed a series of portraits and of trees, allowing him to work across several shows at once. On his creative process, he quotes Picasso: ‘With constraint comes creation’.

Now’s your chance to see a magical menagerie by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, known collectively as Les Lalanne. Installed across Ben Brown Fine Arts and the newly opened Claridge’s ArtSpace, Makers of Dreams brings together nearly 100 works by Les Lalanne that encapsulate the couple’s exuberant combination of witty surrealism and functionality.

As you meander through the exhibition, you’ll encounter both familiar and lesser-known works, including François-Xavier’s life-size hippopotamus bathtub in blue resin, Claude’s fanciful gingko tables and chairs as well as her widely celebrated golden apple. You’ll also see one of only two examples of François-Xavier’s 1970 grasshopper bar and four iterations of Claude’s Choupatte, a bronzed cabbage standing on chicken legs.

From the beginning of their partnership Les Lalanne, who met in 1952 and married fifteen years later, blurred the lines between functional design, sculpture and decorative art. Though they shared a studio and an interest in nature, they had distinctive styles: François-Xavier focused on the angularity of animals, Claude on botanical forms and the textures of flora and fauna.

‘Their work has become renowned the world over,’ says Ben Brown, who has exhibited Les Lalanne for nearly two decades. ‘The ways in which these artists created such discombobulating yet beautiful contradictions are part of their enduring appeal.’