Contemporary Art Exhibition Archives

May 3 2026

Summer Exhibitions at South London Gallery

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South London Gallery has just opened their summer exhibitions. One is presenting large scale artworks featuring mythical creatures by Brazilian artist, Paulo Nimer Pjota in the Main Gallery. The other one is located at the Fire Station galleries and exploring our relationship to the environment through touch, spirituality and healing by British Nigerian artist, Ranti Bam.

Paulo Nimer Pjota: Encantados

Paulo Nimer Pjota- Encantados - South London Gallery

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Brazilian ‘hip-hop’ painter, Paulo Nimer Pjota started his career with graffiti at the age of just 13. He moved to São Paulo at the age of 17 to attend art collage. This is where he had his first exhibition that combined large paintings of crystals, anatomical paintings and crabs combined with graffiti art.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

His exhibition at South London Gallery is titled Encantados which means ‘enchanted’ in English and is featuring 11 new paintings on canvas hanging against graffiti-like wall drawings.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Pjota’s artworks are heavily inspired by mythical creatures, fantastical scenes, as well as ancient civilisations and Brazilian folklore and even children’s literature.

Pjota says in a recent interview with The Guardian: “Mythology has always been interesting to me. Stories I heard in my parents’ house, in the media, these things form a big part of our life from a very young age. Becoming a father myself, I started reading a lot of fables to my son and I was looking back on the drawings I used to make when I was a kid. Crazy animals, anthropomorphised nature.”

Photo: Urban Adventurer

The Sun, the Moon and the stars are recurring motifs in Pjota’s paintings, along with beasts, animals and flowers.

Pjota’s artworks function as a storybook when exhibited together. However, unlike a usual story book which has a clear narrative that unfolds, Pjota’s works leave the viewer to create their own narrative.

Ranti Bam: Sacred Groves

Photo: Urban Adventurer

British Nigerian artist, Ranti Bam, works with sculpture, film, performance and photography.

Sacred Groves explores our relationship to the environment through touch, spirituality and healing.

Ranti Bam’s exhibition brings together Ifas and Abstract vessels. The word ‘ifa’ in Yoruba means both ‘spiritual system’ and ‘holding something close’.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

The exhibition is featuring clay vessels that Bam created by embracing vet clay against her body to form the shape of the vessels. In this way, the clay collapses, cracks and folds as the raw material spiritually connects her with the earth.

To help visitors immerse more into Bam’s artistic world, tranquil soundscape of nature is playing while the smell of wet soil and clay fills each room.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

The vessels receive a metallic glaze that reflects the body.

Monumental, glazed sculptures are also on display at the exhibition. These sculptures are Bam’s largest artworks yet.

Make sure, you spend some time at the video room, empty your mind and enjoy the tranquil scenery of a river and its surrounding.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Abstract vessels are created through slab building where pieces wrap around each other. Once together, Bam pierces the pieces by hand revealing the glaze inside the body of the vessel.

The act of rolling, puncturing, painting, glazing and firing the clay combines all the elements: earth, air, water and fire.

Ranti Bam will unveil her permanent public artwork this June for the European Capital of Culture and was invited to the 61^st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh.

Exhibition Related Events

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South London Gallery is hosting a number of exhibition related events throughout the summer. Teacher workshop, family space and curator tours are all available for free and without booking.

Click here to explore the events.

Practical Info

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Address

South London Gallery Main Gallery | 65 Peckham Rd, London SE5 8UH

(Paulo Nimer Pjota: Encantados exhibition)

South London Gallery Fire Station | 82 Peckham Rd, London SE15 5LQ

(Ranti Bam: Sacred Groves exhibition)

The two galleries are just a 2-minute walk from one another.

Opening Times

1^st May – 23^rd August 2026

Mon & Tue: CLOSED

Wed: 12pm – 9pm

Thu – Sun: 12pm – 6pm

Tickets

FREE | NO booking required

Ready for your next adventure? Another free large scale exhibition opened at the White Cube. Katharina Grosse: I Set Out, I Walked Fast is full of colours pouring out of their frames to cover the architecture: the walls, the columns and even the floor.

April 26 2026

Katharina Grosse: I Set Out, I Walked Fast – New Exhibition at the White Cube

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Known for her large-scale paintings that create an immersive visual experience, German visual artist, Katharina Grosse, is back in London. Her new exhibition: ‘I Set Out, I Walked Fast’ draws inspiration from Emily Brontë’s famous novel, Jane Eyre (1847).

@urbanadventurerldn

[BLOG POST IN BIO] New contemporary art exhibition at @White Cube 🎨 Katharina Grosse: ‘I Set Out, I Walked Fast’ Katharina Grosse is a German visual artist known for her large-scale paintings that create an immersive visual experience 🎨🖌️ The exhibition spans through three spaces where the individual works function as ‘plot’ points in a huge web where everything is connected. 📍Where White Cube | 144-152, Bermondsey St, London SE1 3TQ (Nearest station is London Bridge) 🗓️ When 22nd – 31st May 2026 🕰️ Opening Hours Mon: CLOSED Tue – Sat: 10am – 6pm Sun: 12pm – 6pm 🎟️ Tickets FREE | NO booking required #artexhibition #contemporaryart #whitecube #contemporaryartist #CapCut

♬ Trap Bach – Codec

‘I Set Out, I Walked Fast’

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Katharina Grosse’s new exhibition at White Cube is her first major UK representation since her exhibition at the former Hoxton Square location in 2002.

The exhibition’s title ‘I Set Out, I Walked Fast’ is inspired by Emily Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre (1847). As Grosse re-read the novel at her New Zealand studio, she struck by Jane’s continuous movement and action as a woman at her time. In the novel nothing stops Jane from constantly moving which propels the storyline forward.

Similarly, Grosse brings her old and new paintings together to create one single interconnected environment, allowing the viewer to travel through time and space.

The exhibition spans through three spaces where the individual works function as ‘plot’ points in a huge web where everything is connected.

Large-Scale Installations Painted In-Situ

Photo: Urban Adventurer

In the North Gallery visitors find themselves in the middle of a swirling and spiralling universe of colours. Colours leave the frames of their canvases to pour onto the walls, the columns and even the floor.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Piles of soil create an uneven, unpredictable terrain, painted over with vibrant red, yellow, purple and blue to blend into the beautiful chaos of colours. The parts of the walls and the columns that left white create a sharp contrast with the rainbow dreamlike terrain.

The spray gun allows Grosse to extend her body and reach out to all dimension as far as her eyes can see.

The colours move freely on the different surfaces, connecting canvas and architecture, walls, columns, floor and ceiling. The contours of the objects are not boundaries, instead they’re connections that work as a bridge among objects.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

The next room is showcasing a series of new paintings created in Grosse’s New Zealand studio.

During the creation process, Grosse covered one half of the canvases and painted two different pictures that she later blended together by softening the edges between the two.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

The paintings are inspired by the dramatic changes of natural elements, rain, burning sun, and the force of wind Grosse experienced while in New Zealand.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

The South gallery is showcasing a selection of works from the artist’s archive, including never-before-exhibited landscapes she created 15 years apart or repurposed from previous projects.

Many of those paintings are created in 2015 and are untitled.

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Katharina Grosse sees painting as an open system, rather than a predetermined structure. Her works being exhibited at the White Cube were created under different conditions at different periods of the artist’s life. In the gallery, the artworks appear on different surfaces and rooms, yet they are interconnected and in constant negotiation with one another.

Practical Info

Photo: Urban Adventurer

Address

White Cube | 144-152, Bermondsey St, London SE1 3TQ

(Nearest station is London Bridge)

Opening Times

22^nd – 31^st May 2026

Mon: CLOSED

Tue – Sat: 10am – 6pm

Sun: 12pm – 6pm

Tickets

FREE | NO booking required

Ready for your next adventure? A 3-months-only exhibition opened at MOCO Museum London, showcasing street artist, Keith Harring’s surviving early drawings. He created the drawings on blacked-out advertising panels in the New York underground station, using nothing but white chalk.