One of the joys of living in London is that i can mosey about galleries at a leisurely pace rather than having to gallop about in once-a-month gungho extravaganzas as when visiting from the country. I've been trying to get to more of the smaller trendier places rather than just the big name institutions but, that said, have caught some really cool exhibitions at both types of venue in the last few weeks.

Gagosian put on a very nice show Giacometti/Serra/Fontana/Twombly - all sculptures in metal, with a rich diversity of styles from Serra's brutal minimalism to Giacometti's organic expressive almost grotesque figurines. I met this Argentinian architect and had a jolly fine old yarn which extended into a 90 minute coffee after the gallery closed.

Anthony Gormley is a bit of a British icon and certainly the creator of some, so his exhib at the Hayward opened to great acclaim. MJ and I like to keep our fingers on the pulse so were dutifully queueing up on the opening weekend. It is good - see it. The box of smoke is "the new tate slides" - very interesting and fun:

More little man statues - this time all over the Festival Hall and various neighbouring buildings rather than a beach in Lancashire.

The Unknown Monet at the RA with Freja was very splendid, and an excellent opportunity to rant on at length about the Musee Marmottan and the last Monet exhibition i saw which was at the Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, oh you really should get there, it's an iconic building, that's right James Stirling, the same chap who did the Judge Institute, blahblahblah... Surprisingly Freja put up with me for long enough to go to the How We Are, photographing Britain exhib at the Tate Britain - very interesting.

The following day i maintained my role as selfproclaimed mr zeitgeist by catching the hoxton square half of the Damien Hirst exhib - he is very opportunistic but good to see continuations on his earlier themes. The guy in the fluffy dog costume hat streaking across Hoxton Square afterwards was pretty funny too.