Free things to do in London this weekend

What is working-class England if not grey, sullen, broken, monochrome, damp and sad? That’s the classic vision of this crumbling nation presented to us by photography, film and TV. But in the early 1990s, photographer Nick Waplington rocked the metaphorical boat by showing another side of England; one filled with colour, laughter, love and happiness. ‘Living Room’ documented the community of the Broxtowe house estate in Nottingham. The book was a sensation, and this amazing little exhibition brings together previously unseen photos from the same period. It’s the same families, houses and streets, but seen anew.  There are scenes of outdoor life: dad fixing the motor in the sun, oil staining the tarmac, his kid in blue sunnies hopping on her bike; a trip to the shops to pick up a pack of cigs; everyone out grabbing an ice cream in the sun or play fighting in the streets. It’s ultra-basic, super-mundane, but it’s overflowing with life and joy. But it’s in the titular living room that the real drama plays out. This room is the stage, the set where the community acts out its relationships; a cramped, filthy, beautiful world unto itself. Babies are fed, toddlers are cuddles, fags are smoked, teas are split, clothes are ironed. It’s ultra-basic, super-mundane, but it’s overflowing with life and joy. Everyone is laughing, playing, wrestling.  It’s also brimming with signifiers of late-1980s English working-class life; the clothing, the hair, the brands. Some of it shocks (the mum f

The story goes that modernism ripped everything up and started again; and nowhere did more of that mid-century aesthetic shredding than Brazil. Helio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, Ivan Serpa et al forged a brand new path towards minimalism, shrugging off the weight of figuration and gesturalism in favour of geometry, colour and simplicity. But Raven Row’s incredible new show is challenging that oversimplified narrative, showing how figuration, traditional aesthetics and ritual symbolism were an integral part of experimental Brazilian art from 1950-1980. It’s a nice idea, but the modernist paintings on display here are still the real draw. A deep black Lygia Clark circle, shattered squares by Judith Lauand, juddering reliefs by Lygia Pape, stacks of triangles by Ivan Serpa, tumbling blocks by Helio Oiticica; it’s so joyous, so wild despite its geometric rigidity, so full of the ecstasy of breaking with the past.  Mixed in among all that is a whole heap of flat perspective, faux-naive figuration. Heitor dos Prazeres paints women in striped dresses dancing in the street, Silvia de Leon Chalreo depicts workers toiling in a field, Madalena Santos Reinbolt weaves scenes of countryside festivities. This is all as joyous as the abstraction, but more rooted in the traditions and truth of life in rural Brazil. Full of the ecstasy of breaking with the past. So your job as you walk through the show is to try to follow the tangled threads that connect the ultra-simplistic rural figu

Unholy desecration, heathenistic violence, sacrilegious iconoclasm; the very flames of hell are licking the walls and ancient wooden beams of this church in Islington (the new home of Castor Gallery), and it’s all because of Fabian Ramirez. This is the Mexican painter’s act of revenge, this is how he gets back at the colonisers for using Christianity as a weapon of conquest and oppression. The works are vast, flame-singed paintings on wood done with encaustic (an ancient method of painting with heat and wax), filled with images of writhing bodies, fires and symbols of religion. In the central altarpiece, a priest and an angel watch on as indigenous gods tumble in flames and snakes coil across the panels. Symbols of christianity battle with Mayan and Aztec gods, nude figures copulate and fornicate. It’s all heady, violent, sensual and deeply spiritual. But this isn’t sacrilegious iconoclasm for the sake of worshipping Satan or anything. This is about righting historical wrongs. In Mexico, indigenous communities have taken to Christianity all while maintaining their native spiritual practices. Ramirez’s work is a violent testament to endurance in the face of oppression, to how culture survives, even when it has been set aflame.

There’s a warning in Sibylle Ruppert’s art: if the devil doesn't get you, technology will. And if they both miss, it’s your own perverse instincts and desires that’ll consume you.  The German artist (1942-2011) filled her drawings, paintings and collages with writhing bodies and gnashing teeth, evil spirits and throbbing phalluses, glistening leather and technological freaks. The implication is that all of this chaotic sci fi horror porn was a way for Ruppert to deal with the legacy of the war and a litany of personal traumas.  In the first work here, a tiny etching, a cock emerges from some dripping abstract blob-form, only to be licked by a faceless flesh ball. A little drawing nearby shows a body with far too many buttocks, too many vulvas. In a huge charcoal, a bird-beaked demon pinches the penis of a supine hermaphrodite while skulls scream in the background. Pretty standard Saturday night, am I right. All this demonic torture climaxes in a four- panel painting where man is desperately battling beast. Forms writhe, penises mutate into pincers, genitals metamorphose into bug-eyed mecha-gods. The work’s classic renaissance themes are shot through with erotic terror and sci fic techno-dystopianism. All are jaw-droppingly painted.  Leather appears in other works, framing bare boobs and bums as creatures are crushed in vices and workers file past post-human cyborg spectres. All this erotic, traumatic horror is way too over the top, absolutely obscene, disconcertingly vile and

This massive culmination of culture is marking its fifth consecutive year this April, and for the first time ever, both Westfield locations will be hosting the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. Both of the three-day weekenders will be packed to the rafters with Halal food stalls and ops to get stuck into some brilliant workshops, so make sure you’re one of the 300,000 expected to head through those doors.  Much like previous years, there’ll be concessions of fashion, children’s books and boutique items, as well as Henna stations and live choir performances. However, in an exciting edition, award-winning artist Maaida Noor (who has collaborated with the likes of Dior and Harrods in the past) will be running watercolour workshops, where each participant will get to experiment with colours and techniques.

Ahead of Earth Day, taking place on April 22, non-profit organisation Camden Clear Air Initiative have organised the first-ever Earthfest. The event, taking place over the preceding weekend consists of a programme of speakers, workshops and immersive exhibitions to discuss the pressing issue of the climate in a way that’s engaging and interactive. A fashion zone will feature sustainable brands and upcycled masterpieces, and there’ll be talks by experts at the Future of Greentech summit. April 18 is invite only, and April 19 is an industry day, but all events on 20 and 21 are free to the public!

For an artist so ubiquitous, rich and successful, Jeff Koons sure isn’t popular. But I am an unapologetic Jeff Koons apologist. I know he’s the ultimate example of art avarice and market cynicism, but I also think that all the glitz and dollar signs hide an earnest heart; there’s a real artist behind the balloon dogs and price tags, I promise. Even in this show of not-great works on canvas from 2001-2013 there’s good within the ugliness. The ‘paintings’ are collaged hodgepodges of nicked imagery. Nude women’s bodies overlap with inflatable toy monkeys, piles of pancakes, horny fertility talismans, sandwiches, feet. God they’re ugly, a total mess.  I mean, obviously this is revoltingly cynical, hyper-capitalist trophy art for gross millionaires. But it’s also really base and vile and erotic and pleasurable and fun and ecstatic. This is just Jeff’s own joy and kinks on display: food and skin, toys and tits. It’s Dionysican, stupid, real and – whisper it – kind of good.

When is Eid in the Square? One of London’s largest celebrations of Eid-al-Fitr returns for its 19th year on Saturday 20 April. The day of live music, dancing, food and traditional crafts is free to attend and attracts over 20,000 visitors each year. What time do the celebrations start and finish? Celebrations kick off at midday and wrap up at around 6pm.  What’s the main stage’s lineup for 2024? Hosted by rising British comedian Ola Labib and Capital Xtra DJ Yasser Ranjha, the main stage line-up features an eclectic roster of performers from London and further afield. Imam Mahmood Ul Hussan will open the stage with a welcome prayer, before performances from traditional and contemporary groups including Indonesia Angklung Ensemble, Star Voices Children's Choir, Members of the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians and Chahat Mahmood Ali Qawwal and Group. The full line-up can be found here.  Around the square you’ll also find food stalls offering shawarma, Korean corn dogs, Halal German sausages, churros and ice cream, face painting and Mehndi, and a ‘Creative Art Zone’ with calligraphy, storytelling and drama workshops. 

It’s a nice day for a white wedding on the Cambridge Heath Road. In Leo Costelloe’s small exhibition, the young Irish-Australian artist is taking a critical deep dive into the tropes of weddings: the superstitions, the pressures, the meanings, the aesthetics. Costelloe sees the ‘wedding’ as a deeply contrived system of societal pressure, designed to form a specific feminine identity and perpetuate specific feminine norms.  A creepy 1930s doll stares out of the window, a veil covering her face, perfect lace squeezing her tiny body. Two blonde wigs hang off a wall opposite twisted, impossibly fragile wedding totems; silver cutlery wrapped in ribbon and flowers, the old something borrowed, something blue. There’s a Polaroid of a dove, another of an androgynous bride, on frames of etched silver.  It’s all perfect, white, fragile, petite, and satisfyingly beautiful in its own way. It’s sort of like the world’s most austere bachelorette party. You could argue that marriage as an institution isn’t something desperately in need of critical discourse in 2024. But Costelloe is adapting it and twisting it to their own needs, to explore how one person’s perfect day is another’s intentional, oppressive and nefarious shaping of gender norms.  

London is crumbling, but not for long. In Matthias Groebel’s printed ‘paintings’ – made in Whitechapel in the mid-2000s – the city is bleak, derelict, graffiti’d. But it’s slowly being torn down and rebuilt, too; its greying brickwork tidied, sanitised, gentrified in a process of ceaseless, careless renewal. Each image comes in double, a stereoscopic vision of mundane street scenes, captured on a camcorder and then printed disjointedly on canvas with a custom painting machine. They’re part-photo, part-painting, caught – like the people in the images – between the broken present and a violent future. A girl in a hijab dances against a backdrop of shuttered windows and tagged walls. The building in the background is Tower House, a vast turn-of-the-century tenement, its windows smashed, its masonry crumbling. Men in skullcaps walk by it as scaffolding envelopes the building, hoardings go up promising loft apartments to rent. The structure, and the city, is being chewed up and reconstituted.  But Groebel’s work doesn’t feel like someone railing against the injustice of gentrification. The paintings are too spectral, pixelated and uncomfortable to say anything quite so binary. Instead, it feels like an almost anthropological observation of humanity. It images the poor people of this poor neighbourhood – symbols of us, the wider population of London – as ticks on the back of this city; ticks about to be treated by the corrosive power of rampant capitalism. It’s psychogeographic, de