I've been to see some art.
I needed a break from writing about trains.
White Cube (Bermondsey)
★★☆☆☆ Howardena Pindell: Off the Grid (until 18 January)
If you like spotty abstract canvases sparsely hung, Howardena's retrospective hits the mark. If not, don't expect to be here long. Howardena's largest works are made from tiny circles hole-punched from coloured paper, a ready resource she once described as "very small points of color and light". They form either a pleasing blur or a pixellated mess, depending, or occasionally what looks like badly-painted 1970s wallpaper. I admired her resourcefulness and tonal sense, if little else. White Cube (Mason's Yard)
★★☆☆☆ Beatriz Milhazes: Além do Horizonte (until 17 January)
As usual, two rooms. Upstairs a reflective floral composition incorporating a selfie-friendly gold leaf motif. Downstairs more traditional collage in psychedelic shades with textile-inspired chunks and popping eyes. It's no must-see but I've seen a lot worse here.
Serpentine Galleries
★☆☆☆☆ Peter Doig: House of Music (until 8 February)
The paintings are instantly forgettable, the only thing worth coming for is the music. A curated selection plays on salvaged sound systems and you can either mingle or take a seat at speakeasy tables. On Sundays real musicians turn up but you won't get in. I most enjoyed a curator explaining to a group of schoolboys what loudspeakers were. Quality of associated explanatory freebie: top notch.
★★★☆☆ Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: THE DELUSION (until 18 January)
This is not normal art, this is a multi-roomed walk-through "video game" exploring contentious opinions and how best to confront them. It helps to read the instruction booklet before you approach one of the interactive exhibits, or just act on instinct and take the freebie home as an inclusivity primer. The general idea is to talk to people and express yourself as practice for real world engagement, perhaps by aiming a lampshade, rolling an imaginary ball or slamming the door on a malign influencer. Best visited when there isn't a school party hogging the Democracy Room.
Newport Street Gallery
★★★★☆ Fairey/Hirst/Invader: Triple Trouble (until 29 March)
Gallery owner Damien Hirst has collaborated with two street art pioneers in this blokey mishmash down Lambeth way. It's bold, brash and terribly self-indulgent, but not indulgently terrible. Hirst is still arranging objects in cases, Fairey likes to produce sloganed iconography and Invader just makes pixellated Space Invaders in a variety of formats. Put 'em together and you get, fairly obviously, a giant Space Invader in a tank of formaldehyde... but also Orwellian mosaics, spotty murals and raised finger icons. On my visit the mirrored case with shelves of tiny white pills, all stamped with a Space Invader, was getting all the attention. You'll either love it or hate it.
Barbican Curve
★★★★☆ Lucy Raven: Rounds (until 4 January)
You have to sit through a nannyish warning before they'll let you into this one, although admittedly the bright light was dazzling and the loud noise was abruptly cacophonous. Lucy's installation is in two parts, first an industrial-scale centrifugal spinner with a halogen blaze, quickly stepped past. The main act is a cinema with a bank of raised seating because you could be here for 40 minutes if you watch the lot. I got lucky and arrived just before the loop began again, otherwise the narrative would have been all wrong. I eventually understood that I was watching an "undamming", the sudden release of water from a dynamited Californian dam and the subsequent transformation of the landscape downstream. A brilliantly long sequence followed the front of a torrential wave as it rushed down the valley, instantly transforming quiet pools to a white torrent. I read this as a metaphor for irreversible catastrophe, whereas Lucy actually envisaged themes of global expansionism and cultural reappropriation. Mainly I enjoyed it because I like rivers, even all the way to the Pacific and back, and you may not have the patience.
