One of the leading exponents of British conceptual art, Michael Craig-Martin has probed the relationship between object, representation and language for more than four decades. He began by incorporating readymades into sculpture and rose to prominence in the early 1970s for such provocative works as An Oak Tree (1973), which consists of a glass of water on a glass ledge accompanied by a text written by him asserting that the glass of water is, in fact, an oak tree.

In the 1990s he turned to painting and developed his signature style of bold outlines demarcating flat planes of intensely vibrant colours. Despite this radical shift in approach, he continues to depict common place objects such as furniture, trainers, headphones and vegetables. The present work depicting a pair of purple sunglasses with a zingy green frame against a block blue background is once such brilliant example.

Harold Cohen is hailed as one of the founding fathers of computer art. In 1968, he moved to San Diego as a visiting professor of the University of California and encountered his first computer. In the early 1970s, he became a guest scholar in artificial intelligence at Stanford University and developed his drawing and painting computer program, AARON. Over the next four decades, Cohen produced a myriad of colourful abstract and figurative works using AI technology. Executed in 1986, First Athletes depicts a series of figures, many with their arms outstretched, balancing on balls. It has a strong sense of movement, combined with a fun cheerfulness and glorious bursts of colour. Cohen hand-coloured his drawings until the early 1990s when AARON had mastered both the human figure and colour.

Born in 1903, Barbara Hepworth made her name creating sensuous, abstract forms that echo the natural world. From 1950 onwards, she began working in bronze and revisiting existing artworks and forms to cast them in metal. In 1964, Hepworth finished her monumental five-tonne Single Form bronze sculpture for the United Nations headquarters in New York. The sculpture, which was her largest and most prominent public commission in bronze, commemorated the death of her friend Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the UN, who was killed in an air crash in 1961. Hammarskjöld was a collector of Hepworth’s works and proudly displayed her 1937–38 sandalwood sculpture Single Form in his United Nations office. Single Form (In Memory of Dag Hammarskjöld) has been displayed in a circular water feature in the United Nations Plaza since June 1964.

The paintings of Hurvin Anderson, which draw on the genres of still life, landscape and portraiture, tackle such urgent themes as community, identity and Blackness within contemporary society. Born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, Anderson has also explored his own personal relationship with his African-Caribbean heritage as well as societal notions of African-Caribbean males.

His celebrated Black Barbershop series, of which Flat Top is part, is perhaps his most famous investigations into these themes. From the late 1940s to the mid 1960s, the so-called ‘Windrush’ generation of Caribbean migrants was exiled from white churches, bars, pubs and hairdressers. In response, they established their own social clubs, hair salons and barbershops, which came to represent spaces of comfort and self-acceptance.

In Flat Top, two barbershop chairs sit at jaunty angles in front of a pink wall filled with geometric blocks of colour. Scraps of hair pepper the floor, as though the sitters have only just left the shop. In this painting, Anderson conveys both presence and absence, figuration and abstraction, masterfully capturing the disorientated and displaced cultural landscape of Caribbean immigrants.

You’d be hard pressed to find a photographer of more quintessentially British scenes than Martin Parr. He rose to prominence in the 80s for his gritty pictures of northern England and has since published over 100 books of his own work. He’s perhaps best known today for his scenes of ordinary British life, from jubilee street parties and Butlins holiday camps to working-class terraces and seaside activities.

In recognition of his outstanding contribution to British photography, Photo London has presented Parr with the prestigious Master of Photography award. Previous winners include Nick Knight, Don McCullin and Shirin Neshat. ‘It’s a great honour to be named Master of Photography,’ he says. ‘I relish the opportunity to show a totally new exhibition of work of images taken in the UK.’ Shown alongside early black and white images will be new high-octane colour works including this striking photograph taken in 2022 at the Great Dorset Steam Fair. Parr’s Photo London exhibition will run from 11 to 14 May 2023 in the Embankment East Side Gallery at Somerset House. Don't miss it!

Isaac Julien is one of the leading artists working in film and video today. He came to prominence in 1989 with his drama-documentary ‘Looking for Langston’ and has since garnered a cult following with his films and video installations exploring such urgent themes as memory, desire, identity and politics. He hasn’t, however, had a major solo museum show in the UK until now.

Opening in April at Tate Britain is the largest UK survey of Julien’s pioneering four-decade career to date. Among the standout works on display will be this striking image from Julien’s 2019 photographic series exploring the buildings designed by the Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. It depicts a twirling ballet dance under a staircase in an abandoned culture centre designed by Bo Bardi in Salvador. ‘The idea was to really question the utilization of the museum space,’ Julien explained. ‘I think there’s a way in which architectural spaces offer this sort of appropriation for artists and performance.’

Over her boundary-breaking five-decade career, South Korean artist Lee Bul has made work, spanning large-scale sculptures, paintings and installations, that tackles urgent themes such as patriarchal authority, the marginalisation of women and the blurred lines between binary oppositions such as old and new.

Featuring serpentine forms, Untitled (Cravings White) is made from painted white cotton-filled fabric, and suspended from the ceiling on a thin steel chain. The abstract sculpture is a reconstruction of a piece of clothing that Bul wore during a performance titled Craving at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul in South Korea in 1989. Unfortunately, the original objects worn during the performance were destroyed when the artist’s studio was flooded in 1990.

At once an abstract sculpture and the reconstruction of a performative piece, it underlines the integral role of the two art forms in Bul's work. ‘My first performances were a natural extension of my sculptural concerns and incorporated some of the soft-sculptural forms that I had been working on,’ the artist once said.

The self-taught Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu is best known for her artfully constructed images celebrating Africa’s vibrant patterned textiles and its rich mix of cultural practices and beauty traditions. In recent years, her unique visual language blending Kenyan tradition, heritage and modernity has garnered her critical acclaim and loyal collectors around the world.

Muriu often photographs her models with sculptural hairstyles and their eyes closed or covered in the same striking fabric that is used for the backdrop. In doing so, she creates a surreal illusion that prompts the viewer to ask questions around identity, beauty ideals and what it means to be a modern woman in Kenya today.

Maridadi, meaning ‘beautiful with style’ in Kiswahili, is part of the artist’s Material Culture series, which is inspired by the elaborate headwraps that her mother dons for special occasions. Even if many women use the same fabric, Muriu says, no two headwraps are ever the same. As such, they reveal each wearer’s personality and style.

Richard Prince made his name creating works with appropriated imagery. His photographs featuring images of mass media — luxury magazine ads, social media profiles and entertainment flyers — raise questions around authenticity, ownership and copyright as well as the role of consumer culture in the construction of American identity. This photograph is the highpoint of his famous series Cowboys (1980-1992), which was pulled from Marlboro cigarette ads. By removing the text and cropping the images down, he enhanced their dynamism and intensified their original artifice. His pictures of cowboy pictures deconstruct the most famous of American archetypes, prompting the viewer to question what is real and what is fiction or myth.