Free art in London

Walking through the high-ceilinged halls of The Perimeter in Bloomsbury, where natural light spills across bare walls and polished floors, you might not expect to stumble across something so disturbing and intimate. Gaaaaaaasp is London-born artist Alexandra Metcalf’s first solo institutional exhibition, turning the gallery’s four floors into a disorienting world of 1960s patterns and clinical sterility, brought together under themes of domestic and gendered labour.

This is an exhibition about exhibition-making as an act of passion, generosity and curiosity shared between artists. Every image, sound and object here is like a mushroom grown from a vast, international and intergenerational network of mutual support and encouragement that expands far beyond this gallery’s walls. Highlights include Kitty Kraus’ suspended Lidl trolley handlebar that spins antically in front of a first-floor mirror, Yuki Kimura’s crystalline Russian doll-like arrangement of three cognac glasses and a monumental work by Gilbert & George whose exhibition history fills a whole page.

Since the 1990s, the London-born photographer Eileen Perrier has used her camera to capture individuals in their local communities – from Peckham to Paris and beyond – and this show highlights some of her finest work. Expect to see striking portraits interrogating cultural belonging, beauty standards and the family home, from the nineties until the present day. 

Multimedia performance duo Hylozoic/Desires – aka Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser – use their work to explore both the past and the future via experimental poetry, music and moving images. This new Tate Britain exhibition sees them dive into the lost archive of the Inland Customs Line, a 2,500 kilometre hedge grown by the British Empire in the 1800s that separated the British-occupied Bengal Presidency from independent states in a bid to prevent smuggling – and keep the Brits at their most powerful. Cast through Hylozoic/Desires’ lens, the hedge becomes a poetic and political space with continued relevancy in our own divided timeline.

Chaotic explosions of wood, scrap metal and cotton cascade through the gallery in the work of Brooklyn-based artist Leonardo Drew. Known for using found natural materials that are oxidised, burned, and left to decay, Drew creates visceral, large-scale installations that reflect on the cyclical nature of existence. His sculptures evoke the scars of America’s industrial past, while also suggesting forces beyond human control. At the South London Gallery in London, Drew will unveil a new site-specific work that engulfs the walls and floor of the main space, with fragmented wood appearing as if battered by extreme weather, natural disasters, or what he calls ‘acts of God.’

It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too.

Sculptor Giuseppe Penone – famously part of the Italian movement Arte Povera, a group Inspired by the politics of 1960s and who used everyday materials in their work – has been fascinated with the relationship between man and nature since the late 60s, when he began his interventions with the natural world. This Serpentine exhibition is the most comprehensive presentation of Penone’s work in the UK and will extend beyond the gallery with his famous tree sculptures extending into the Royal Parks.