A riveting double bill across two cities is coming this month, dedicated to the late, great Abstract painter Jane Harris. Organised by CLOSE Gallery in close collaboration with the Harris estate, the two exhibitions in London and Somerset explore different aspects of the artist’s exceptional practice, offering an unprecedented insight and access.

Harris was born in Dorset in 1956, and studied at the Slade, graduating in 1981, later gaining an MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in 1991. She was a lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths from 1991 until 2006, when she moved to France. Her work is held in many major collections in the UK and abroad, including Arts Council England; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and FRAC MÈCA, who held the last major Harris exhibition, in 2024.

‘Aloof’, in London, is an exploration of Harris’ lifelong interest in surface, colour and light, through more intimately-scaled works and her playful side as an artist. Meanwhile in Somerset, ‘The Fugitives’ fills the gallery with monumental, ambitious works with illusory surfaces and thrilling visual effects. These works chart not only Harris’ endless experimentation and fascination with the possibilities of abstraction, but her masterful handling of technique, colour and form. A true pioneer who is yet to be fully appreciated and acknowledged in the UK.

This week is the last chance to see The New American West at Pierre Yovanovitch Mobilier in Chelsea, New York, a vivid and vital re-imagining of the American West through more than 60 photographs spanning nearly a century (from 1932 to 2024) curated by Howard Greenberg and Carrie Scott.

The exhibition’s starting point was the three-week journey of photographers and childhood friends Maryam Eisler and Alexei Riboud through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah last Spring. The images they made during this 2,000 mile trip – which brought the friends together after 38 years – show two constantly contrasting points of view, a way to shake up the dominant, singular way of seeing the fabled landscapes of the American West.

From there, the exhibition dives into works by heavyweights including Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Edward Weston and Mary Ellen Mark, as well as contemporary artists working in the US who have constantly sought out visions of the landscape, such as Jungjin Lee and Wim Wenders. Other notable names range from Magnum master, Bruce Davidson, celebrated for his documents of Harlem, to ‘golden age’ American photojournalist Esther Bubley. The beauty of this show is not only in the breathtaking, often startling vistas, but also in the constant contradictions between artists and their viewpoints – a reminder that there is never one way of seeing.