Rosemarie Castoro: Working Out One of the best exhibitions to see at London Gallery Weekend 2022

 

Next Friday, the second edition of London Gallery Weekend kicks off. The galleries in question are not the public ones like Tate and the National but the commercial spaces across the city, those that represent artists and show their work, often to very small audiences.

 

Traditionally, commercial galleries have a chilly reputation: think the stern, bored gallerist or assistant, sitting behind a high-spec designer desk looking down their nose at the grubby hoi polloi who have dared to cross their threshold in search of art without opening their wallets. But these days, most of them hope to be more welcoming; ultimately they want people to see their artists’ work, like it and share it. 

 

London Gallery Weekend is their most significant gesture in this sense, especially as the Frieze Art Fair is now so expensive to attend. The Weekend, which launched last year as London emerged, again, from the pandemic, now features 150 galleries across three areas, Central, South and East, from the bluest chip spaces in Mayfair to emerging artist-run spaces in the further reaches of London, with many shows opening especially for the event with extended opening hours and specially organised talks and other events (for more on these, check the London Gallery Weekend website and those of the participating galleries). 

 

Best of all, it’s free, as commercial spaces always are – so it’s an encouragement to visit them more often. Among those 150 shows are countless gems, but here’s a suggested itinerary of top shows in different areas.

 

Rosemarie Castoro: Working Out

Like so many of the women artists around the key New York movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, like Minimalism and Process Art, Castoro (who died in 2015) wasn’t afforded the same attention that many of her male peers were. In that time, she collaborated with the great choreographer Yvonne Rainer, and developed a signature style that had the toughness of minimalism but with forms which clearly alluded to the body and human movement. Remarkably, this is the first solo show of her work in the UK.

To May 21