Beak Street's finest: The Riflemaker. Unsurprisingly enough, it hasn't changed its Soho location since the last review. It has changed the artwork on display in the main room on the ground floor though. Daniela Schönbächler's exhibition is, to be frank, a bit hit and miss. We were unmoved by the big painted abstracts. We didn't loathe them, we didn't love them. There, now on to the good stuff. We did like the rest of......

We were unprepared for the sheer expansiveness of the Brunswick Gallery, set beneath Bloomsbury's Brunswick Centre, north of Holborn. It's a vast room with high ceilings underneath the Centre. Divination, a travelling group show, exhibited in artist run spaces has arrived in London via Hamburg and Paris and certainly makes good use of this immense space. Bit of the show were a turn off. For example, we were not keen on the video piece......

Fashion as Art, ay. It's all over London at the moment. You can see The Supremes' costumes at the V&A; fashion meets architecture at Somerset House; and Viktor and Rolf's crazy creations are turning heads at the Barbican. Trouble is, they're all a bit flamboyant and ostentatious for these simpler, sustainable-solution-searching, credit-crunching times. If only London could offer us something more timeless, ageless, structured, nay, minimalist to soothe our muddled fashionistas' heads... …like this......

We love our Flickr friends, we really do. Where would we be without our obliging and outrageously talented photographer friends happy to share their work with us in the Londonist Flickr pool and be sent off on snap happy adventures once in a while? How marvellous then to see one of ours making good. Chutney Bannister's been a Londonist stalwart for some time and was one of our earliest Londonist Behind The Lens-ers. He's......

The British Library isn't always so good at promoting their free exhibition space, but they do tend to lay on something special for those who happen to wander in. Make a point of doing so for this summer's exhibit, The Ramayana: Love and Valour in India's Great Epic, which takes the narrative potential of the museum show and runs with it. Walking through the exhibit is an experience in storytelling -- is, in fact,......

Nathan Horton: Controlled Explosion Number 2 Last time we talked about St Pancras Crypt, we were considering buying a London Borough. This week, the tone was rather more sombre with a group show, Responses to Conflict and Loss installed in these meditative, subterranean vaults. The Crypt is nigh on perfect for this sort of show. Its damp, fusty smelling waft and many vaulted rooms, nooks and crannies, with displaced gravestones lying around and family tombs......

Soho East. That's surely what Shoreditch has become. The Forster Gallery is one of the new breed of expensive gallery you'd normally expect to see in Mayfair, yet set in the (Nathan) Barley fields of Shoreditch. It's similar to Eyestorm in that it goes for artists that sell, and sell at relatively high prices. OK, time to come clean. This Londonista has been a fan of this artist's work since first seeing it in......

Last night, we attended the launch of Darwin 200 at the Natural History Museum. If he was still alive, Charles Darwin would be an actual living legend, due his 200th birthday on 12 February 2009. Clearly he's dead but that's no excuse not to have a national programme of activities around his life and work, especially since it's also nearly 150 years since the theory of evolution was pronounced and "Origin of the Species"......

Earth shattering revelation of the day: Met Commissioner says parents key to bringing up children who don't carry weapons. Yep, apparently so. Unlikely news of the day: Hayward Gallery goes psycho. We'll be there later this week. Motoring news of the day: Lorries park up and protest Faintly amusing news pun of the day: Pawn very popular. Hah. Ha ha. Marvel-lous news of the day: 3D comic book superheroes to go on display Image......

Vyner Street is like a scruffy version of Cork Street set in the tubeless expanse of Hackney. Well, replace the expensive established artists, with the up and coming avant guard and replace the suited rich art lovers at the private views, with eccentrics, artists, and critics (not that there isn't considerable crossover between those categories, obviously). One Thursday a month the place is abuzz with art openings, and people spilling out onto the street......

The subject of the Museum in Docklands' latest exhibition should require no introduction from Londonist. Since he first struck in 1888, Jack the Ripper entered into London folklore as much as Dick Whittington, Pearly Kings and Queens or the 'Don't be a sinner, be a winner' bloke on Oxford St. What this impressively serious exhibition does, however, is remind visitors that underneath all of the London Dungeon gore, Jack-the-Ripper tours and bad-taste T-shirts, lies......

Marcel Duchamp Fountain 1917 Tate © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ Paris and DACS, London 2007 This exhibition highlights the work of three justifiably important 20th century artists: Picabia, Man Ray and Duchamp. Let us stop you right there. The show hasn't gone dada over a urinal. Although a 1960s replica of the infamous urinal does feature. This exhibition shows the progression of these three artists through the earnest art movements of the first half of......

Art lovers: brace yourselves for the onslaught of tutting, snorting and Daily Mail outrage that breaks out every summer. That's right - the Turner Prize shortlist was announced this morning. Mark Leckey is the biggest name on a list with no celebrity artists on it; his combinations of film, performance and sculpture have made him odds-on favourite with the bookies already, and the obsession with Felix the Cat in his work should get him......

This show, in a former light factory building located on the no-mans land between the City and Shoreditch/Hoxton, is an exhibition of video art and photographs by Ruth Hinkel-Pevzner. Yes, yes, we know, it sounds like an edgy, late 90s, East London Art cliché. Frankly, we weren't expecting to like this show. A significant amount of video art tends to be badly made short films excused by the 'art' tag. Yet, while the stills......

Londonist sent in good friend and Flemingophile, Chris Roberts (he of the Londonist walks and One Eye Grey fame), to spy on the new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. As a kid I loved James Bond books, so much so that as an adult I tried to write one. This was before I discovered that Ian Fleming Estates come at you with a, well pick your favourite Bond villain weapon, if you so......

Tucked away behind the Royal Academy near Green Park is Cork Street. A street of galleries. A street of expensive, established galleries. Well, it is technically Mayfair, you know. If you imagine the opposite end of the contemporary art scene from a group show in a Peckham squat, then you'll get the picture. What drew us here this time, was an exhibition of experimental photography by Rob Carter, put on by the Forster Gallery......

Riflemaker is an incredible converted Georgian gunsmiths' workshop on a once seedy backstreet in Soho. Liliane Lijn, an artist who works on the often uneasy yet fascinating ground between art and science, is currently installed in the basement (with a compulsory ''nasty bump on the head" style low ceilinged doorway on the way down - you have been warned). The press release had primed us to expect 'fragile' installations. They were not exaggerating. On......

Ok, its not as famous as The White Cube, but The Victoria Miro is one of the big galleries of East London. It represents two recent Turner Prize winners, for example. It is some what hidden though. Tucked away behind the drive-through McDonalds on City road, near The Eagle of "pop goes the weasel fame". Technically, its a Hoxton gallery, but don't let the H word put you off. In fact, if you've not......

With a title like "Attractive Repulsion", we were looking forward to this group show tucked away behind Angel tube. Sadly the work on the ground floor didn't seem to be as exciting as the title. From the kitsch pictures of wildlife painted in a style that wouldn't have been out of place in a B&B to big abstracts using bits of product logos and the like, it was a bit underwhelming. Upstairs, thankfully the......

Tate Britain is mid-way through its run of Turner-nominated painter Peter Doig’s exhibition, and this weekend we ducked in from the rain to catch a bit of the sublime. Doig employs immense canvases upon which he layers textured melancholic colour upon colour, executing incredibly complex fragments that appear effortless from a distance. The exhibit follows his beginnings at Chelsea Art School in London through to his most recent work rendered in Trinidad, where the......

As we mentioned briefly before, Thursday brings the East 2008 Festival. For six days, a cornucopia of performances, exhibitions, workshops, food and other events ensures entertainment with emphasis on promotion of the best of East London. Here’s our pick of the mix: 6th March: F-EAST - artists Wiebke and Nicholas Morgan cook a meal from 12 recipes from a Nigel Slater cookbook, and serve it for visitors as an exploration into ownership and the......

For those of you with a penchant for furniture with an artistic flair or pretty but undeniably useless knick-knacks, your mecca is open for this weekend only. FORM: London - which takes over Olympia National Hall until 2 March - falls somewhere between massive gallery experience and fantasy shopping excursion. Featuring items from understated hand-carved furniture to large-scale paintings to surreal centre pieces. And everything can be taken home if the contents of your......

‘It’s new and it’s bloody scary,’ says the tourist blub. ‘C’est nouveau et terriblement effrayant,’ it repeats in French. Well, you try sounding menacing in that language. ‘Eine neue, unheimlich gruselige Sensation.’ That’s more like it. We prefer the German, especially as ‘die London Bridge Experience’ carries an apt definite article. London’s new tourist attraction beneath guess-which bridge opened its doors yesterday. (After two days of PR misery when power failures scuppered the media......

A list of London's most popular attractions in the last year have been named. The British Museum took first place with almost 5.5 million visitors thanks to the help of a motionless army. Museum heads attributed the 12% spike in visitors to the First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army, the British Museum's most popular attraction since King Tut's goods were on display in 1972. If you want to go toe-to-toe with an army that won't......

There’s a new, rather large, kid on the block. Today, London’s new movie museum, The Movieum (geddit?), has opened its door to the public, catering to the interest of those, who were left wanting, when the Museum of Moving Image (MOMI) was closed in 1999. The Movieum, situated in County Hall on the South Bank, claims to be both tactile and academic, displaying props and sets from a variety of British films, as well......

Waterfront London, which opened today, looks at waterside development in London; recently completed, underway or in the pipeline. It considers how our waterfronts are transforming and being embraced as essential public spaces whereas, not long ago, we buried rivers, turned them into sewers or filled in and built on them. The enlightened approach, celebrated here, is to embrace the waterways and exploit their potential as transport routes, leisure facilities and biodiverse environments. The key......