RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (25-31 May)

Lucian Freud, 'Girl in a Dark Jacket', 1947. Private Collection © The Lucian Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive Lucian Freud: Portraits
LAST CHANCE: Until 27 May 2012

Several standout shows close this weekend, the crowd pleaser being the survey of Lucian Freud (1920–2011) at the National Portrait Gallery, the most significant exhibition of the late artist’s oeuvre since the retrospective at Tate Britain a decade ago.

Seven decades of paintings, drawings and etchings demonstrate the Londoner’s aesthetic development from his early phase as ‘the Ingres of Existentialism’, in the words of critic Herbert Read in 1951, when sitters were rendered realistically in situations of psychological tension, to his mature work characterised by thicker, more expressive brushstrokes that capture the corporeality and character of his subjects in equal measure.

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan
LAST CHANCE: Until 27 May 2012

The complex output of the Italian conceptualist Alighiero Boetti (1940–94), the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Modern that comes to a close this Sunday, illustrates that the Rome-based, Turin-born artist’s multidisciplinary methods anticipated many of the modes ubiquitous in today’s contemporary art world. These include the assemblage of found objects and non-art materials for social commentary (characteristic of the Arte Povera movement with which Boetti is closely associated) and collaborative practice with communities. The latter is exemplified by one of the highlights of the exhibition, the famous series of large embroidered maps he produced from the 1970s with Afghan and Pakistani weavers in which territories are represented by their flags; these both demonstrate geopolitical shifts during his lifetime and act as a metaphor for our need to create representations of our and others place in the world.

Alighiero Boetti, 'Mappa', 1994. © Alighiero Boetti Estate by DACS / SIAE, 2012, courtesy Fondazione Alighiero e Boetti

Louise Bourgeois, 'Janus Fleuri', 1968. Bronze. Suspended over Freud's couch at The Freud Museum, London. Courtesy The Easton Foundation Photo: Ollie Harrop, © Louise Bourgeois Trust. Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed
LAST CHANCE: Until 27 May 2012

For the huge number of visitors who flocked to Tate Modern in its opening year, an abiding memory of the experience would have been Maman by Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), the steel spider that towered over them in the Tate’s Turbine Hall. This monumental and unsettling work awakened anxieties and repressed childhood fears.

For the last three months, Hampstead’s Freud Museum has been digging deeper into the French artist’s interest in these themes with an exhibition that explores her relationship to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Together with some recently revealed psychoanalytical writings by Bourgeois herself (who underwent the therapy over three decades), a wide range of sculptures and drawings are presented in the psychiatrist’s former London home, including her excrescence-esque bronze Janus Feuri (1968), which is suspended above Freud’s famous couch.

Artist in Residence, Rachael Champion: The Ornithopters Garden, 23 April – 24 June 2012. Rachael Champion at Camden Arts Centre
27 May 2012, 2 – 5pm

Last year RA Magazine interviewed a selection of recent RA Schools’ graduates to see how life after the Academy was treating their practice and careers. One of the artists featured, Rachael Champion, has taken up an artist residency at London’s Camden Arts Centre until the end of June to develop new work.

Champion’s installations and constructions combine industrial materials with natural matter such as plants and grasses, exploring our interrelated expectations of architecture, technology and ecology. This Sunday afternoon, as part of the gallery’s educational programme, the artist has devised a variety of activities for all ages connected with her residency, which takes inspiration partly from the gallery’s pleasant garden area.

Damien Hirst and Bruce Nauman at White Cube
Both: 23 May – 8 July 2012
White Cube Bermondsey, the latest and largest of the commercial gallery’s London spaces, has opened two exhibitions this week. Damien Hirst presents a series of still life paintings that develop the more traditional style of practice he debuted at the Wallace Collection in 2009.

Damien Hirst, 'The Red Bird', 2008-2010. Oil on canvas. Triptych. Left and centre: 30 x 20 in. (76.2 x 50.8 cm) and right: 30 x 21 in. (76.2 x 53.3 cm). © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2012. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.Courtesy White Cube.

A separate space known as ‘Inside the White Cube’, dedicated to artists who have not been previously shown by the gallery, presents films that document pioneering performances by the respected American artist Bruce Nauman. Executed in his studio between 1967 and 1969, a year after he graduated, these works include absurdist takes on simple movements (such as Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square) that encourage the viewer to reconsider all the everyday conventions of how we use, understand and limit our bodies – a process of analysis that has proved highly influential for a generation of younger performance artists.

'Bruce Nauman', Inside the White Cube, White Cube Bermondsey, London. 23 May - 8 July 2012. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2012. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy White Cube

Sam Phillips is a London-based arts journalist and contributor to RA Magazine

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