Simon Starling, Nottingham Contemporary and Backlit, Nottingham
This show by 2005 Turner Prize winner Simon Starling is his largest ever in the UK. With its themes of industry, manufacturing and technological invention, it includes many major projects never before shown in this country as well as new commission for Nottingham Contemporary, Project for a Crossing (2015-16), for which the artist built a boat out of magnesium that was extracted from the politically contested waters of the Dead Sea. Works on show at Backlit include the film Backdrop (2012) (pictured above), which explores the impact of astronomy on early cinema with reference to French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen’s chronophotographic revolver; a precursor to the movie camera.
Until 26 June 2016. www.backlit.org.uk
Sarah Barker, CHANGE-THE-SETTING, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
Glasgow-based artist Sara Barker presents two sequences of new work made especially for The Fruitmarket Gallery, together with a number of existing works exploring the boundary between sculpture, painting and drawing. Barker meditatively focuses on memory, individual perception, and a blurring of line and colour to develop a visual language using paint, steel, aluminium, brass and glass. CHANGE-THE-SETTING functions like a stage direction, invoking a situation for elements to be changed and recombined.
Until 5 June 2016. www.fruitmarket.co.uk
Keren Cytter, Ocean, Pilar Corrias, London
For her fourth exhibition at Pilar Corrias, Keren Cytter presents new and existing work with soap operas and American blockbuster movies as their subject matter. Treated as depictions of social realities, these are then re-observed using experimental modes of story telling and non-linear narratives. The exhibition features a new series of drawings and three recent videos: Game and Metamorphosis (both 2015), and Ocean (2014).
Until 17 May 2016. www.pilarcorrias.com
Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky, National Portrait Gallery, London
A survey of an extraordinary period of vibrancy in Russia’s cultural life during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with portraits of writers, composers, musicians and their patrons. The exhibition features works on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery (STG), Moscow, by artists including Nikolai Ge, Ivan Kramskoy, Vasily Perov, Ilia Repin, Valentin Serov and Mikhail Vrubel. Some of the work has never bee seen before in Britain; the exhibition is part of a cultural exchange between the National Portrait Gallery and STG, marking the 160th anniversary of both galleries.
Until 26 June 2016. www.npg.org.uk
Iwan Lewis, Gallery 6: Uprisings, Mostyn, Llandudno
Gallery 6: Uprisings draws from a broad spectrum of cultural influences to present a surreal yet diaristic landscape, with the ‘fragment’ heavily relied upon to suggest rather than reveal narrative. This can be activated by North Wales-based artist Iwan Lewis through a deliberately considered title, or by playing one piece against another. In this exhibition, the artist’s fragmentation is marshalled by allowing a portrait, within an installation of paintings, to act as narrator.
Until 15 May 2016. www.mostyn.org
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A boat of one’s own: women, art and the wide open canal
