MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 209th Exhibition
Social comment, allotment architecture and humour stand out in engaging show
ZZXZ
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
WATERCOLOURS, forever the poor relatives of oil painting, have been unjustly associated with “Sunday amateurs,” a stigma that the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours has fought against tooth and nail. To its credit, it’s done so with considerable success.
The institutes’s annual exhibition and awards for painters working in the medium has been the silver lining for artists tested by the pandemic and perhaps trying times have somewhat clipped the wings of the intrepid experimentation evidenced in shows over the last few years.
Yet the unexpected and intriguing is there in Brian Smith’s Ernie’s Beach — reminiscent of Abraham Hondius’s Frost Fairs — which celebrates a triumph over developers to keep a popular stretch of the Thames near the OXO Tower public.
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MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
MICHAL BONCZA reviews Cairokee gig at the London Barbican
