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A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
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London,
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Description: Work across a variety of media from 75 UK and international galleries.
Phone: 0207881 5200
Website: www.chelsea-pensioners.org.uk
Email: info@chelsea-pensioners.org.uk
Trains: Tube: Sloane Square 
Brightly tropical: La Danseuse Africaine by Othello Radou at Art London
School's back, conkers are falling, and the art world is gearing up for “the Season”. Setting the mood, Art London is spicing life for the Chelsea Pensioners by celebrating its 10th anniversary in their grounds. Visitors are greeted on the path by shiny, stainless steel Beasts by the sculptor Lynn Chadwick but glinting in sunshine and under spotlights, they are clunky Tin Men compared to the elegance of his expressive bronze humans.
Unlike the vastness of Frieze and the compressed space of Islington Art Fair, this is a manageable show where, thankfully, money talk isn’t conducted in loud whispers. There’s none of Zoo’s trend-setting or Frieze’s internationalism, but the strong euro has attracted more European galleries. Madrid’s Ansorena brought a marvellous, post-Cubist painting by Antonio Lopéz García.
The range is wide, and dominated by painting; photography is surprisingly little represented but former Jerwood Prize winner Veronica Bailey makes a rare appearance with her quietly beautiful still lives of book spines. Photo-realism maintains its appeal in works by two distinctive Scots: James McNaught’s nocturnal Paris streets and Stephen Mangan’s reinvention of the Harlem Renaissance style.
There are, of course, plenty of classic British regulars, the Peter Blakes and Terry Frosts, even a few “cheap” Hirsts (a butterfly: £32,000), and a retrospective by the lesser-known St Ives painter Wilhelmina Barns-Williams in a flashpast of bright 20th-century styles. Fitting into that category is the almost tropical French Caribbean flavour of La Danseuse Africaine by Othello Radou. The Chinese craze is represented in Lui Fenghua’s glossy reinterpretations of Terracotta Warriors. French Art Studio offers stencil-art pioneer Jef Aerosol, who influenced Banksy, and newcomer DJ Gwenael Salaun. Most amusing is a double stand by the sponsors Barratt London, whose mannequin-like staff, posters and models of apartments in landscaped gardens suggest an ironic statement about the end of capitalism.
Art London offers plenty of opportunity for matching paintings with curtains but it also serves serious collectors and lives up to its most important function: a chance to escape and dream, not just of owning works, but of entering the worlds envisioned by the artists.
Until Monday, 11am-8pm Fri & Sat, 11am-8.30pm Sun & Mon (020 7259 9399, www.artlondon.net) £12.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
