Our top picks of exhibitions together with cultural spaces and places, both online and in the real world.

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Viewing Van Gogh Alive, Kensington Gardens

The Wick Culture - Van Gogh Alive, Kensington Gardens, Images: rb create

Above Van Gogh Alive, Kensington Gardens, Images: rb create

Van Gogh Alive

4 June — 26 September 2021, Kensington Gardens
25 May — 11 July 2020, Birmingham Hippodrome

You never have to wait long for the next Van Gogh exhibition, so there are few aspects of his career that have been left unturned. But Van Gogh Alive, an immersive experience now open in London and Birmingham, offers a fresh take on the life and art of the Dutch master.

A you meander around this multi-sensory exhibition, which has welcomed over 7 million visitors in 65 cities worldwide, you’ll encounter a lively symphony of light, colour, sound, and fragrance. His works, which are enlarged and sometimes computer-animated, are projected onto the walls and floors to dazzling effect.

Walking around is like walking around his greatest paintings. (Think stars and sunflowers every which way you look.) Snap a selfie in Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles — a life-size recreation of one of his best-known works — before walking knee-deep through hundreds of sunflowers in the mirrored infinity room. Though not one for the purists, Van Gogh Alive is a theatrical extravaganza that brings his pictures to life.

Viewing Christopher Hartmann: In and Out of Touch, Hannah Barry Gallery

Above

Hannah Barry Gallery

3 June — 31 July 2021

Few people have shaken up London’s contemporary art scene like Hannah Barry. In 2007, she founded Bold Tendencies, a not-for-profit that champions emerging talent and produces a hugely popular summer programme of music, dance and opera on the rooftop of Peckham’s multi-storey car park. A year later, she opened her eponymous gallery in Peckham’s Holly Grove.

Celebrated for challenging the establishment, Barry’s gallery now represents a roster of rising stars, among them Rosie Grace Ward, Shaun McDowell, Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq and Christopher Hartmann, who is currently the subject of a new solo show.

Hartmann tends to focus on the ‘complex relationships shaped by alienation, intimacy and emotional attachment or detachment,’ he says. His figures are painted in a hyper saturated palette and have what he describes as ‘an artificial, digital character that makes reference to digital imagery.’

They are mostly slightly bigger than life size, boast smooth, unblemished skin — which make them ‘generic and repetitive, similar to social media filters’ — and seem to exist outside of specific time and place. They are often alone, evade eye contact or gaze past one another. A sense of isolation pervades each canvas.

In this age of social distancing, there’s something eerily relatable about Hartmann’s work. Just looking at will make you crave human touch — and a great, big hug. Which, thankfully, is back on the cards!

Viewing Present The Future, the world’s first NFT focused art residency, Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat

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Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat

7—13 June 2021, with an auction on 13 June

NFTs are fast changing the art world. In March, New York’s Superchief gallery opened the world’s first NFT gallery space and the digital artist Beeple set a world auction record when his monumental collage, Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, sold for $69 million. In June the world’s first NFT focused art residency will launch in the glorious gardens of the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera.

According to curator, collector and VOLTA Art Fairs director Kamiar Maleki, the goal is to present ‘the world’s first hybrid digital and physical NFT production and minting experience, combining the work of two immensely important artistic visionaries in collaboration with an equal master in his craft, digital artist Vector Meldrew.’

The visionaries in question are the British singer and composer Tinie Tempah and the French-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, who is best known for his abstracted oils and floral compositions created in his signature style of peinture raclée, a technique involving the scraping, layering and spreading of paint.

‘Art inspires music and vice versa,’ says Tinie, ‘and I am excited to present works and ideas Sassan and I have spent a year working on both in physical and digital form.’

This ground-breaking event offers a unique visual and audio experience and aims to inspire new levels of conviviality and creativity across mediums.

Six NFTs (one unique and five open editions) together with the NFT minted on site will be dropped on 13 June.