Christmas round-up

A major new exhibiting space is always welcome in London, and the multi-purpose venue at Kings Place, 90 York Way, N1, comes with the added attractions of restaurants and concert halls. It’s a conference centre as well as the home of the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the new HQ of the Guardian and Observer newspapers. It also houses Pangolin London, a dedicated sculpture gallery currently showing works in silver by the likes of Antony Gormley, Ann Christopher and Lynne Chadwick (until 18 January), and Kings Place Gallery, where a show of Bert Irvin’s vibrant abstracts lights up the inner walkways and balconies of this vast building (till 6 February).

Irvin (born 1922) is enjoying something of a celebration at the moment, with large paintings hanging in the stairwell at Tate Britain and now this show of more of his highly coloured and gestural abstracts. They look very good from the escalators as you pass up and down between levels at Kings Place, and, if you stop off at the actual gallery (as opposed to viewing the balcony spaces), you will find smaller paintings and a couple of earlier works (‘Plimsoll’, 1979, and ‘Sultan’, 1982) which give an indication of Irvin’s range. It will be interesting to see how these vast spaces are used in the future, and whether artists will be tempted to paint big especially for a show here.

It should be noted that Kings Place Gallery is a commercial venture, not a museum, though there will be occasional museum-type shows, such as the Borchard Collection of British artists’ self-portraits, scheduled for next July to September. Commercial galleries in London can be quiet over the Christmas period, many closing on 19 or 20 December and staying shut for the duration, or at least until New Year hangovers have subsided.