Only a Couple of Days Left!

At the moment, a lot of South London hype is centered around Brit artist Damien Hirst's big show that's on now at White Cube Gallery's Bermondsey location. Fair enough. He's a big draw, and the show's pretty good. Titled Two Weeks One Summer, the Hirst exhibition offers a rare opportunity to get up close to some new paintings by the notorious artist (for free) in an amazing viewing space and judge for yourself if the bad boy artist is worth the tens of thousands of dollars his works fetch.

Still, if you make it over to the White Cube to visit for the Hirst show and don't manage to check out the other show... the even more impressive exhibition by Bruce Nauman, then consider your artsy endeavor a failure.

For the uninitiated, Bruce Nauman is an American conceptual artist mostly known for his decades' strong body of video work. The White Cube exhibition takes views back to the late 60s when Nauman had just graduated from UC Davis and set up a studio in a former grocery shop in the Mission district of San Francisco. The show features Nauman's “experimental and groundbreaking films that Bruce Nauman made between 1967 and 1969 where the artist’s own body is used as a template; an expressive instrument in motion and gesture to relentlessly question the human condition.”

The films exhibited are conceptual to a tee, kind of obnoxious and can be considered to take art to that ever ponderous level of “yeah, but is it art?” And in this regard, Nauman's stuff sits comfortably alongside Hirst's. But rather than audacity for audacity's sake, these early pieces by Nauman demonstrate his realization that “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.” As the exhibition is a freebie, if you decide he's full of it, there's little cost beyond the time it took to have gander. But you might be surprised by what you walk away thinking art is and can be.

Unfortunately though, the days are numbered for the Nauman exhibition. It ends July 8. Let this be an urgent call that I should get round to sharing free opportunities to see great art with the blogosphere in a more timely manner and that any art fans finding themselves in London should make a bee-line for this fantastic show.

Less than a year old, the massively overwhelming (and overwhelmingly massive) latest edition to London's White Cube Gallery empire of contemporary art spaces is located at 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TQ. More info at whitecube.com.

Book your last minute flight to London today and experience the Nauman exhibit.

Don't forget to 'Like us' on Facebook for exclusive travel deals!

photo: Chris Osburn