Junk shop oddities
August presents a barren prospect for the visual arts but you'll find an oasis in the middle of Battersea Park.
The Pump House Gallery which, as its name suggests, is a delightful, former Victorian pump house, is showcasing the work of Swedish-born Anna Bjerger, whose small, quietly enigmatic paintings are sourced from old photographs.
These snapshots are chanced upon in charity shop books or long-discarded holiday snaps and family photos.
One series, inspired by the Guinness World Records, note small triumphs which the uninitiated onlooker may find just a little pathetic. In one painting, a stack of coins is balanced on top of a larger coin precariously balanced on its side. In another, a woman in a white dress might be drawn from a character in a Victorian ghost story.
With her pale face and paint running down one eye she looks theatrically vampiric and her long hair sweeps the floor, so perhaps she's won a prize for its extraordinary length.
Like the paintings of Chantal Joffe, these images suggest a narrative that goes beyond the frame. And like Bjerger's paintings, the exhibition's title has been appropriated from an old book.
It suggests the extraordinary amid the prosaic, a world seen through the whimsical gaze of one in search of the magical. Though you may not find magic, they are engaging all the same.
Until Sep 26, Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park SW11, Wed to Sun 11am to 5pm (Fri and Sat to 4pm), free. Tel: 020 7350 0523. Tube: Sloane Square Scarily hairy: Anna Bjerger's oil painting of Georgia Sebrantke is vampiric
Angels In Your Beer: Anna Bjerger
