London’s Photographers’ Gallery will close on 19 September for major redevelopment. When the gallery reopens in late 2011 it will boast three floors of gallery space, a ground floor café, a bigger bookshop, better accessibility and a whole floor dedicated to learning.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” said the gallery’s director Brett Rogers. “With the Sally Mann show, we’ve been getting eight to 10 thousand visitors a week.”

The new gallery will have room for larger scale works and more exhibitions.  It will also respond to the changing landscape of photography, with a digital wall where members of the public can upload their own photos.

During the closure, look out for pop-up Photographers’ Gallery exhibitions around London:

• FrenchMottershead will take to the streets of Soho with their quirky, interactive work
• Anders Petersen will invite people to be photographed in his London hotel room
• Fiona Tan will create an exhibition based on Londoners’ family albums
• The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011 will take place at Ambika P3

The gallery’s lecture series will also continue at various London venues, including a series of “photography socials” at Soho pubs and bars.

For more information see www.photonet.org.uk

London’s expecting heavy snow tonight. While we wait for the white stuff to arrive, here’s a picture of what London could look like in the future, if temperatures drop and the River Thames freezes over.

The picture is one of a collection of future London images by creative communications firm GMJ. It will be on show in the new Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London from May.

It’s changeover season at London’s galleries, which means it’s your last chance to see lots of the capital’s top art shows.

Make sure you catch these while you can…

Closing 13 Sep:
JW Waterhouse at the Royal Academy
Jeff Koons at the Serpentine Gallery

Closing 18 Sep:
Rankin at Old Truman Brewery

Closing 20 Sep:
BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery
Elizabeth Peyton at the Whitechapel Gallery
Futurism at Tate Modern
Corot to Monet at the National Gallery

But art lovers needn’t worry, there are plenty of exciting new exhibitions coming up. Like Anish Kapoor’s takeover of the Royal Academy;  Emin, Hirst and Warhol in Pop Life at Tate Modern; crystal-covered rooms at the Turner Prize exhibition; and Tate Britain’s Turner and the Masters.

We’re looking forward to a cultural autumn in London!

Alan and Lyn

Where are you from? Visiting from Sydney, Australia

Is it your first visit? Our daughter lives here now so we’ve come to London several times to see her. Alan’s been here on business on a few occasions over the years. And Lyn lived in Paddington for a while during the early 70s.

Did you visit anywhere outside London? Yes, we had several weeks in the UK – Northern Ireland, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

What sights have you seen in London? Trafalgar Square, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Buckingham Palace, Green Park, St James’s Park, Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House, Highgate Cemetery.

Where have you eaten? Local pubs around Tufnell Park.

Any nights out? We had a great night out at The Jazz Café London in Camden to see Wanda Jackson.

What’s different about life in London to Sydney? Much bigger city, more to see and do, very comprehensive transport system – crowded at times but available for anywhere we needed to go. Faster pace.

What surprised you? We’re always impressed by the London transport system and how well it seems to cope with the enormous numbers of people using it. Surprised and pleased by the number of parks and open space generally in such a large city.

What was the highlight? This visit, apart from seeing family, the highlight was the Wanda Jackson concert and exploring Hampstead Heath more thoroughly.

Changeling 2 by Peter Monkman. Copyright Peter Monkman

You can’t help but feel pleased for the BP Portrait Award winners. They’re not famous and they probably don’t earn a fortune, but their portraits have been selected from 1901 entries to represent the best in the country.

The winners were a closely guarded secret until last night’s awards ceremony, when they were invited up on stage to collect their awards in front of cultural luminaries such as Sebastian Faulks, Jon Snow and Gillian Wearing.

Peter Monkman, an art teacher from Surrey, won top prize for a luminous painting of his daughter, Anna. Strangely, he says the portrait is one of a series exploring the idea of a changeling – a child secretly substituted with an elf.

You can see the winning portraits and the best of the other submissions at the National Portrait Gallery.

Many of the artists in the exhibition have chosen to focus on their family. Stephen Earl Rodgers submitted a portrait of his young son, Beau, scowling. Rodgers says, “This is not the sum total of his character, but I expect to see this expression a lot more as he gets older.”

Portrait of a young woman by Emmanouil Bitsakis, 2008. Copyright Emmanouil Bitsakis

Sue Rubira painted a close-up, wrinkes-and-all picture of her mother, and says, “I chose to position her purposefully under a skylight, which presented her in the natural, unembellished state most familiar to me.”

Other highlights include a portrait by Karl Rudziak of Portsmouth FC supporter John Anthony Portsmouth Football Club Westwood, whose body is covered in Portsmouth tattoos (including “Play up Pompey” on his cheek).

And don’t miss the tiny portraits by Emmanouil Bitsakis, right at the back of the gallery. Bitsakis won the BP Travel Award last year, and spent time painting the minority Uigur people of North West China.

The BP Portrait Award exhibition opens tomorrow and runs until 20 September. Entry is free.