German artist Marc Brandenburg’s new exhibition ‘Snowflake’ at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac presents a series of negative-reversed drawings exploring life at the fringe of society in this dark environment which reinforces how isolated many of these groups and individuals feel in our modern society, which results on the one hand of people joining a protest march such as we see today with Extinction Rebellion, as the only way they believe that our politicians might take any notice of what people want and respond to it and, on the other hand, of people choosing to live homeless on the streets sometimes as a matter of expediency, but sometime from choice, which again politicians do not understand.

You do feel if you are in a different environment, perhaps not so much as a snowflake as one of those snowstorm globes, where there is no escape.  The difference here is of course that you can – but out there in the real world it is different and some people feel that they can’t escape the environment in which they now live.

In ‘Wattle & Daub’, Fisk creates new places to live, reinterpreting the traditional gypsy caravan for the 21st century and also, perhaps, providing a model for ‘homeless’ people, many of whom are searching for something different in which to live rather than official mainstream housing, a situation which we as a society have not yet managed to get to grips with, thus there are tents and other temporary structures scattered all over London. We have a view of what people should be provided with, because we know best, not what they might actually want in a much more simple way.

Recent work by Fisk does introduce the rectangular form with, for example, a single droplet of water held in a sphere within a rectangular framework.

While they initially look like paintings, his work is in fact created by collages and drawings, perhaps reflecting the separation between people and the spaces they occupy, albeit for a short intransient period of time, on the beach.

What was also fascinating about the exhibition at Skarstedt was the unexpected flash of light which entered the gallery through the doorway, while the rest of the gallery was shielded in blinds.  When walking in the grey environment of the streets outside there was no indication of any such light – how then did it appear here, as if by magic – a magic which then continues through Eric Fishl’s paintings.

In one part of Mayfair at least, the optimism and colour of spring, leading into summer, has arrived – hooray!  We need it!

Shaped as a the round representation of the earth floating in the gallery space, the installation encourages viewers to identify key dates  of their own lives and write these down on coloured pieces of paper which will gradually cover the window, creating a new timeline in an area which itself is at the moment continually changing with time as it develops into a new district of London.

The French artist Emmanuelle Moureaux has created a unique and meaningful installation and, yes, you soon realise that she is also an architect, hence the interaction between time and space….

As in Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Phillips is showing work by Alex Katz, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, KAWS and Antony Gormley, but here we have different artists such as Ian Davenport, Gilbert & George, Ai Weiwei, A R Penck, Marc Quinn and Subodh Gupta and it is fascinating to see different aspects of the work of Anish Kapoor, with his blue ‘Fold’ linking with the adjacent Yves Klein.

Other highlights include work by Thomas Schütte, Bridget Riley, Jean Dubuffet, Howard Hodgkin, Yoshitomo Nara, Günther Förg and Banksy though Christie’s broad-based auction of 2oth century and contemporary art has many paintings and sculptures at surprisingly affordable prices by the likes of Antony Gormley, Grayson Perry and Elmgreen & Dragset which does leave you wondering how value works in the art world.

The big guns are at Sotheby’s with David Hockney’s seminal ‘The Splash’ from 1966 (estimate £20 million to £30 million), along with his ’30 Sunflowers’ from 30 years later to be auctioned in Hong Kong in April, supported by Bridget Riley’s ‘Shift’ from 1963, Yves Klein’s ‘Untitled Anthropometry (ANT 132) from 1960 and Francis Bacon’s ‘Turning Figure’ from 1963, from which you might assume that the 1960′s was a defining decade for 20th century art.

Also on show at the different locations are Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and KAWS, alongside work by Gayson Perry – no longer a rebel -, Alex Katz (with an exhibition nearby), Banksy (with a political twist related to Brexit), Cristo, Erwin Wurm, Sigmar Polke, Maurizio Cattelan, Jean Buffet, Sterling Ruby, Tony Cragg and many others inevitably mainly from the UK and Europe, including an on-line auction at Sotheby’s of work by Picasso from the collection of Marina Picasso which has a synergy with the exhibition on Picasso and Paper at the Royal Academy a short distance away.

Across the River Thames in Pall Mall, a selection of Ian Davenport’s latest prints in ‘Chromatic’ are on show alongside Naum Gabo’s prints in ‘Spacial Impressions’ – two artists whose work is 70 years apart.

Russian-born Naum Gabo (1890 – 1977), a pioneer of the Constructivist movement, is best know for his geometric swirling sculpures, which perhaps reflect his early training as an engineer and scientist in Munich, while English artist Ian Davenport (born 1966) uses geometry and colour in a different way, best known for his careful pouring of vertical lines of acrylic paint down a surface, which puddle and pool at the bottom, enabling him to explore different interconnections of line and colour.

Both artists also turned their hands to prints, as on show here, an interesting pairing of the two artists.

At the time of the last Scottish Independence Referendum, when 16-year olds were given the vote for the first (and only) time in the UK, photographer Craig Easton invited other leading photographers to join in his photographic project SIXTEEN, now on show near Tower Bridge and in two South London galleries, recording along with the images, the hopes, the concerns and the aspirations of a wide range of 16-year olds from all across the UK.

These young people are the future of the country.  How often do our middle-aged political leaders listen to what they are saying, to what young people see as important to achieve their own dreams and the future success of their communities?