Free things to do in London this weekend

Never heard of Secret  7"? Here’s how it works: seven best-selling musicians have their singles pressed on a seven-inch vinyl record, with a run of 100 each. Then artists from around the world are invited to interpret the tracks and create an original sleeve design for each one, and those 700 artworks are selected by the Secret 7" exhibition. Finally, the records go on sale for a flat rate of £50, which goes straight to mental health charity Help Refugees. But therein lies the secret: until you hand over the fifty smackers, you don’t know whose artwork is on your chosen sleeve. You might pick out a Paul Smith, get your finger smudges on an Anish Kapoor, even head home with a Jake and Dinos Chapman – or, you might plump for a complete unknown. You’ll also have no idea which record is inside: the work could be inspired by any of the chosen singles, which vary from Aretha Franklin’s ‘One Step Ahead’ to Miles Davis’s ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’.  This year, the exhibition is still going ahead in Greenwich Peninsula’s Now Gallery. The records will be up for grabs on the official sale day, November 1, which is changing slightly this year. Instead of its traditional first-come first-served sale day, all the records in the show will be auctioned as secrets on eBay for Charity.  Which seven-inch will you choose? It’s all one big arty lucky dip – but instead of a polystyrene glider plane you could get an irreplaceable work that’s worth a bundle.

The UK’s second biggest potter – after that bloke with the wand – is back. Grayson Perry – author, broadcaster, lecturer, thinker, crossdresser and artist – is taking over Victoria Miro’s big Old Street space with a major show of new works. These pieces were all inspired by a trip across America, filmed for Channel 4 and broadcast in September, on a custom-built motorbike, engaging with communities across the land of the free. As a result, you can expect big topics and hot takes on all the major talking points of the day: gentrification, Black Lives Matter, gender identity etc. It’s Perry doing his usual incisive, insightful, but always kind-hearted thing.  Entry is free with a timed ticket available here. 

London’s streets are haunted by vile ghosts. Everywhere you walk, there are statues of Britons who conquered the world and pillaged its nations looming over you. And in front of Buckingham Palace stands the Victoria Memorial, an ornate, lavish celebration of Queen Vic and her imperial achievements. Now a version of it haunts the Turbine Hall. But American artist Kara Walker’s bubbling fountain isn’t a celebration of the British Empire, it’s a vicious, angry, fearsome attack on it. Walker has previous. Her career has seen her tackle the legacy of the slave trade for decades, using film, puppetry and installation. But this is her first stab at Britain, and the knife’s going deep. The enormous fountain is covered in crudely carved figures. Sharks leap out of the water, a man lies in a sinking boat, a prone body is pulled from the waves. On the tier above the water sits a ship’s captain, and a noose hangs from a tree. At the very top stands a black Venus spurting water from her breasts, with a mouth like a magical black goddess. It’s full of references to art history – Goya, Hirst, Turner – and nods to Britain. The whole thing is an allegory for the Atlantic as a site of black tragedy, of forcible removal, of death and pain. Though it’s a little rough, a little rushed, it still hits you pretty hard. Walker is using the fountain to highlight the links between Africa, Europe and America, to show how connected we are through a shared past of pain and exploitation. In its heady mul

Under a filthy plastic tarp, Kai Althoff tells his impenetrable stories. The German painter has lowered the Whitechapel’s ceiling and littered it with leaves and debris. You walk under this dirty, constricting canopy to pore over his mystical, romantic, violent works. These are dark paintings, like something unearthed from some forgotten library. The papers are faded, the canvases all auburn and ochre. You spy ghosts from japanese antiquity, ladies from some nineteenth century French park scene, white youths with snapped legs, a World War I soldier sharing beer with a boy. The canvases are all odd shapes, some are abstract constructions of felt, some are draped in lace. And for the most part, the wafty, incomprehensible mysticism of the exhibition works. It’s intoxicating, it sucks you into its weird aggressive atmosphere. But upstairs, things start to fray. The pictures become less coherent, and then there’s a room of pots by British studio potter Bernard Leach. They’re nice and all, but it’s hard to tell why they’re here.At the artist’s request, there are no wall texts in the gallery, and the only information available is a short essay written by ‘a friend’ of Althoff’s. That essay is unreadable, opaque, art waffle that makes absolutely no fucking sense. It’s so badly written, so full of syntactical errors and grammatical war crimes, that it just pushes you away from the art.  And that’s a shame, because a lot of this is good. There’s no singular ‘Althoff’ style; instead, i

Pick up handmade crafts and fresh local produce from King’s Cross’s weekend market. It’s found new digs in swanky Coal Drops Yard while its usual home is used as a car park for key workers. There won’t be any hot food, but you can still pick up provisions and unique pieces from designer-makers, including jewellery from Audra’s Brooches and blooms from English Flowerhouse. So wholesome.