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Viewing Es Devlin’s Forest For Change — The Global Goals Pavilion, London Design Biennale, Somerset House

The Wick Culture - Es Devlin, Forest for Change - The Global Goals Pavilion

Above Es Devlin, Forest for Change – The Global Goals Pavilion

London Design Biennale, Somerset House

1 — 27 June 2021

Taking over Somerset House this June is the London Design Biennale, a celebration of the world’s most innovative designers, curators and design institutes.

The centrepiece is Forest for Change—The Global Goals Pavilion, an immersive installation featuring 400 trees conceived by artistic director Es Devlin in partnership with Project Everyone.

Filling the historic courtyard, it aims to spark debate on ‘the pathway of action to a better and fairer future’ and drive awareness to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals can be explored at the centre of the clearing, where they are succinctly explained on colourful mirrored pillars.

‘It’s my hope that when you get to the centre, you’re able to approach these really complex global problems without feeling so daunted or overwhelmed,’ says Devlin.

There’s already much hype around Devlin’s pop-up wood, so check it out and join the conversation.

Viewing Hilary Pecis: Piecemeal Rhythm, Timothy Taylor

The Wick Culture - Hilary Pecis: Piecemeal Rhythm
Timothy Taylor, London

Above Hilary Pecis: Piecemeal Rhythm Timothy Taylor, London

Hilary Pecis: Piecemeal Rhythm
Timothy Taylor, London

14 May — 26 June 2021

The richly coloured, deliberately flattened paintings of Los Angeles artist Hilary Pecis are as alluring as they are intriguing. ‘There’s a rhythm within my paintings,’ she says. ‘Each work has a certain wonky quality, a fluidity that I try to keep throughout the process.’

The artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK presents interior scenes, cityscapes, still lifes and landscapes inspired by photographs, memories and the space around her. Thrust centre stage are a range of intimate objects, from overflowing fruit bowls and piles of books to wilting flowers and open wine bottles, that allude to the rhythms of daily life. Visual cues such as newspaper headlines hint at specific time and place.

What strikes, though, is her palette’s luminosity — each scene is suffused with a California sunlight that brings a distinctly Los Angeles feel to traditionally European genres of painting. Dive into her world — as weird and wonderful as it is.

Viewing Frank Bowling: London/New York, Hauser & Wirth

The Wick Culture - ‘Frank Bowling – London / New York’, Installation view, Hauser & Wirth London, Photo: Alex Delfanne, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Above ‘Frank Bowling – London / New York’, Installation view, Hauser & Wirth London, Photo: Alex Delfanne, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Frank Bowling: London / New York
Hauser & Wirth London & New York 

21 May — 31 July 2021

Frank Bowling is arguably Britain’s greatest living abstractionist. Until recently, however, he was little known outside of art world circles this side of the pond. Happily, his public profile is on the rise (thanks in part to an enormously popular retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019 and a knighthood in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2020). Now he’s the subject of a solo show at Hauser & Wirth in London and New York.

Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, Bowling has spent the past 40 years criss-crossing the Atlantic. His first show at the gallery brings together works from across his six-decade career that explore his stylistic shift from figuration and pop art to abstraction as well as the influence of both London and New York on his creative vision. It also celebrates his inventive approach to the materiality of paint — notably his use of thick impasto textures, acrylic gels, and metallic and pearlescent pigments.

May Shimmer (2018) is among many highlights in London: the canvas of muddy-pink tones is flecked with vibrant yellows and greens and drops of pearlescence that make it shimmer. In New York, scope out Polish Rebecca (1971), an immense canvas that was rediscovered in 2013 after around 40 years ‘rolled up and forgotten in a friend’s attic’.