KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
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Postwar Modern: a lovingly created show with touches of the sublime
LYNNE WALSH is thrilled by an exhibition of post-war British art
John McHale, First Contact, 1958
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New
York, © Estate of John McHale
[Brenda Bieger for Albright-Knox Art Gallery]
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
NADIA JOSEPH welcomes a survey of the role that TV played in the debate over apartheid and race relations in Britain
Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain, 1945-1965.
Barbican
IF Jane Alison does little else in her career, she can look back on this lovingly curated show with pride.
Head of visual arts at London’s Barbican Centre, Alison has been in the job for nearly nine years; this exhibition has been two and a half in planning and execution. There are 48 artists represented, and some 200 works including painting, photography, sculpture and installations.
The curtain-raiser is John Latham’s Full Stop, a monumental piece with its giant black disk. A planet, black hole, an eclipse? One edge gives way to dots emerging — this full stop may not represent an ending, after all.
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MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
WILL STONE applauds a fine production that endures because its ever-relevant portrait of persecution