MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
The alluring appeal of the quintessential British modernist
still lifes
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Ben Nicholson: From the Studio
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex
WHEN Ivan Turgenev wrote in 1861 that “the drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over 10 pages in a book,” he pointed to the separateness of the two experiences.
The work of British painter Ben Nicholson has the rare quality of being formally sophisticated and at the same time visually direct and approachable — devoid of mystique, it “speaks” for itself — hence requiring few, if any, words to describe it and certainly none to unravel its “meaning.”
Nicholson himself observed once in reference to his own work: “The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural,” adding that “whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point.”
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MICHAL BONCZA reviews Cairokee gig at the London Barbican
