Serpentine Gallery are having quite a year so far.  Kicking off with a retrospective of work by Jonas Mekas, the West London gallery have dived straight into the mind of German artist Rosemarie Trockel with their latest show, A Cosmos.

The exhibition is a cornucopia, a cabinet of curiosities, filled with sculpture, painting, film, photography, taxidermy, tapestry and weaving.  The lightness of touch that Mekas brought has been replaced with an almost anthropological approach to understanding the world around us.  Compiling her work alongside that of artists and scientists including Maria Sibylla Merian, Judith Scott, James Castle, Wladyslaw Starewicz and Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, this is a show that both sets its own boundaries while resisting strict definition.  It’s possible to be able to analyse all the diverse aspects of this display, but it would take far more space than I have here.

Essentially, this is an exhibition about natural history, social history, politics and the human body.  It encourages us to think while propelling us through this microcosmic display.  It arrives in London having travelled from Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the New Museum, New York.  This might turn out to be a banner year for Trockel, and it’s simply a show that should not be missed.

Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos is at Serpentine Gallery until 07 April.

header image:

Rosemarie Trockel
Prime-Age 2012
Digital print
42 x 42 cm
Private collection
© Rosemarie Trockel, DACS 2013
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

second image:

Rosemarie Trockel
Replace Me, 2011
Digital print
32.5 x 40 cm
Private collection
© Rosemarie Trockel, DACS 2013
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

You have to love living in London.  Anybody who doesn’t is not doing it right.  Sure, no-one is saying that you can’t leave for a little while, but the draw of the big city is irresistible, irrefutable.  As your dear Culture Editor, it’s my job to make sure that you get out there and see as much as possible in the town that can -- literally -- offer you anything and everything you want.

Meet us tomorrow in The Old King’s Head on Borough High Street.  We’ll be sat near Catharine Arnold whose latest book, City of Sin: London and its Vices, is being brought to near-literal life by the South East London Folklore Society.  It’s a special kind of Valentine’s Day treat.

We’re there for a talk, because Arnold will detail -- from the second century to the present day – the life of vice that has made London one of the most carnal, lusty, desirous and wicked cities on Earth.  Giving stories of brothels, bathhouses, courtesans (and folk of much lower moral fortitude), as well as all manner of illicit behaviours, this is a colourful tour of London that you’re unlikely to find in many other places.  Of course Arnold glosses over some of the more painfully harsh realities, but we’re not here for a lesson in inequalities in social history, this is a romp through the city’s more vibrant side.  There’ll be laughs, double entendres, and a more than a few cheeky titters.  If London hasn’t been your cup of tea so far, let’s see what else we can throw at you.

City of Sin: London and its Vices is at The Old King’s Head, 45-49 Borough High Street, tomorrow, 14 February from 2000.

Lisson Gallery seem to be expert at working with some of the most significant names in contemporary art at the moment of their reconsideration in major London institutions.  A new exhibition of work by Gerard Byrne is no different.

Byrne, whose current exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery is the Kunsthalle's first important show of the year, presents at Lisson Gallery Present Continuous Past.  The works on display here examine the conditions and the processes of creating art and being an artist.  Known best for his filmed reconstructions of meetings and conversations between artists, philosophers and ordinary people, this display comprises film, video and photography, and is a thoughtful counterpoint to larger-scale show further east.

Byrne’s works are about humour, language, the translation of text to image and the knotty relationship that the two share.  One of the most interesting series on display here is called Images or shadows of divine things.  Working backward from the studies of 18^th century theologian Jonathan Edwards, this set of works interrogates the notion of the divine in nature.  These monochrome images, shot across the United States over the past seven years, exhibit precisely what Byrne does best -- enact the historical among the contemporary.  Go to Whitechapel, and then come back west to Lisson Gallery.  It’s a journey through art history that will keep you going back for more.

Gerard Byrne: Present Continuous Past is at Lisson Gallery until 09 March.