Hauser & Wirth, London

Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees and Faces

Charles Gaines is a Los Angeles based artist and lecturer who applies systematic and rule-based methods to his unique artistic practice. Gaines’ first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom is currently on view at Hauser & Wirth in London. Due to the ongoing global crisis, Gaines’ show is limited to online viewing. However, it should not be overlooked, as it confronts ideas of race and identity, and raises questions surrounding representation. Across Hauser & Wirth’s galleries on Savile Row are continuations of two ongoing series: ’Numbers & Faces: MultiRacial/Ethnic Combination Series 1’ (1978-) and ‘Numbers & Trees: London Series 1’ (1986-). Gaines’ artistic approach sees systematic colouring combined with overlapping images within a sequenced grid. Review by Sheena Carrington

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Parafin, 18 Woodstock St, Mayfair, London W1C 2AL

Nancy Holt: Points of View

‘Points of View’ brings together rarely seen photographs, sculpture, installation and works on paper from the late 1960s and early 1970s by pioneering Land and Conceptual artist Nancy Holt, which show the formation of her visual lexicon. This compact exhibition, Holt’s second at Parafin, explores her interest in language, perception and our relationship to the environment. It signals a renewed interest in the artist’s work, ahead of two forthcoming large-scale European shows, and asks questions which feel especially prescient over four decades later, at a moment in which we are acutely aware of our surrounding landscape. Review by Grace Storey

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Online

Femme Inc.: Shades of Grey

In times of magnified instability and palpable uncertainty, it’s tempting to seek the steady hand of explanation, to cling onto what seems to offer refuge in simplicity and sureness. Truth and falsity, reality and artifice, the allure of these black and white flipsides lies in their illusory straightforwardness. Review by Cultura Plasmic Inc.

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Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona, Florida

From all Points of the Southern Sky: Photography from Australia and Oceania

Together, the thirteen artists in ‘From all Points of the Southern Sky’ reckon with Australia’s colonial past. Curated by Ashley Lumb, this striking exhibition, which borrows its title from the Uluru Statement, offers an unsentimental portrait of a nation in turmoil. Review by Emily Bull

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Online and across Brighton

Photoworks: Propositions for Alternative Narratives

The longest running photography festival in England, the Brighton Photo Biennial, has reincarnated itself in the form of the Photoworks Festival. The inaugural edition is made up of three parts: an outdoor festival on the streets of Sussex, an online festival hub, and at home, a ‘Festival in a Box’. Review by Gulnaz Can

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Maxim Dondyuk: Untitled Project: Chernobyl

“This project is like an archaeological dig” writes Maxim Dondyuk of ‘Untitled Project: Chernobyl’, a vast treasure trove of an online exhibition. It combines found imagery storytelling the socio-political history of Ukraine, with the artist’s own works of hastily deserted landscapes and snowy, overgrown terrains, giving the viewer hundreds of images, click throughs, moving image pieces and news clippings to explore. Review by Nicola Jeffs

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Manon Ouimet: Altered

Unconcerned by the rhetoric of art language and the trends of the contemporary art market, this work is a true example of art as activism, motivated by genuine care and respect for others. ‘Altered’ depicts people whose bodies have been altered through very different circumstances. Review by Gabriella Sonabend

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Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, 6 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BT

Painting with Light: The Photography of Ming Smith

Smith's photographic style is candid street photography, expressive rather than direct documentation. Embedded within her photographs is emotion, feeling, and life enhanced by the precise colour and light that forms each composition. Review by Sheena Carrington

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Galerie Lelong & Co. and P·P·O·W (online)

Irrigation Veins: Ana Mendieta and Carolee Schneemann, Selected Works 1966-1983

Proposed by Carolee Schneemann in the last year of her life, ‘Irrigation Veins: Ana Mendieta & Carolee Schneemann, Selected Works 1966 – 1983’ is a compelling exhibition of two canonical artists who sought to explore their embodied relationship to the land and its history through the body as material. Considering their inclusions in influential essays by Lucy Lippard and Gloria Feman Orenstein, as well as exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery, the first artist-run gallery for women artists in the United States, it is remarkable that Mendieta and Schneemann have never been placed in direct dialogue. Review by Aileen Dowling

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Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA

Cao Fei: Blueprints

On the wall of a lobby, against a deep red velvet backdrop, a prophetic message welcomes the visitor: ‘In our splendid universe, motion pictures mirror our reality’. In Cao Fei’s ‘Blueprints’, different worlds merge and flip. Combining theatrical sets, photography, moving images, and her first VR work, the artist traces patterns of reality, teleporting visitors through distant territories and histories. Focusing on the district of Jiuxianqiao in Beijing, where the first Chinese computer was invented, the exhibition offers local perspectives of contemporary technological developments in China, mapping feelings that resonate globally. Review by Giulia Civardi

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Kerlin Gallery, Anne's Ln, Dublin 2, D02 A028, Ireland

Samuel Laurence Cunnane

Cunnane produces striking images of the built environment, brand new and abandoned buildings, plants, the sea, the lie of the land, a frosty morning, a cloud of mist, Siobhán sitting in the back seat of a car (her face half hidden behind clenched-up fists), a bruised arm and a burning truck. His pictures show that he possesses an extraordinary capacity to see the remarkable and the mundane in the things around him, as well as a knack for embodying such contradictory characteristics in his work. Review by John Gayer

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Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

Among the Trees

Historically in western art, trees have generally been depicted as ornamental afterthoughts, their upright forms used to frame a scene or add definition to a landscape. ‘Among the Trees’ at Hayward Gallery, however, puts trees centre-stage, emphasising images where branches and leaves fill the frame, confusing the eye and defying the human scale of the viewfinder or canvas. Review by Anna Souter

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Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS

Masculinities: Liberation through Photography

‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography’ at the Barbican Centre is a masterful, comprehensive exhibition that outlines a sweeping artistic history that is probing, insightful and moving. Exploring how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day, this is a show of 50 international artists working through the medium of film and photography. Working across themes from queer identity, female perceptions of men, hypermasculine stereotypes, many of the participants don't sit easily within a gender binary, and rarely is the story told without an overlap to class, racism and the Western gaze; this is masculinity at its fullest. Review by Chris Hayes

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Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET

Alina Szapocznikow: To Exalt the Ephemeral

Nearly fifty years after her death, the restlessly experimental oeuvre of Alina Szapocznikow remains unresolved work; a highly significant, even foundational, figure in the history of twentieth-century Polish art, yet her legacy remains elusive to an audience that may be encountering her for the first time. Sitting uneasily between Surrealism, Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art, her provocative body of work shifted considerably from a classical figurative manner to one more impermanent, sexualised and haunting. Review by Matthew Cheale

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