Assembly Point, 49 Staffordshire Street, London SE15 5TJ
The city is striated into manifold ordered grids that similarly control our movements. The Nevada desert on the other hand, one of the locations Lilah Fowler explored for her show at Assembly Point, has no such boundaries and borders – it has an order more in common with a modulating weather system than any Cartesian geometry. Review by Matthew Turner
Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St, Oxford OX1 1BP
Six years before her death in 1970, Ryggen became the first female artist to represent Norway at the Venice Biennale, and, in more recent years, has been the subject of several important retrospectives. As the relationship between politics and the public continues to find its twenty-first century feet, the uncompromising boldness of Ryggen’s tapestries, seen in her current exhibition, Woven Histories, at Modern Art Oxford, and their gentle interrogation of questions concerning nationality, identity, inequality and storytelling seem all too strangely close to home. Review by Rowland Bagnall
Centro de Cultura Contemporânea de Castelo Branco, Campo Mártires da Pátria, S/N (Devesa) 097, 6000 Castelo Branco, Portugal
Cristina Rodrigues’ retrospective at Centro de Cultura Contemporânea in Castelo Branco sits well in the historic Portuguese town that boasts of a rich and varied textile heritage. While reviving the declining age-old tradition, Rodrigues brings into the mix a cross-cultural confluence that bring to the fore diverse contemporary concerns. Review by Ambika Rajgopal
