Our top picks of exhibitions together with cultural spaces and places, both online and in the real world.

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Viewing Alexander Nolan at Crean & Co

Above

The Accommodations of Desire
12 August — 24 September 2020
Crean & Company

The New York-based artist Alexander Nolan is developing a name for himself as an exciting new painting talent. Often inspired by scenes of city life, his works spanning oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolours and inks on paper conjure a colourful world of fantastical realism, fusing the satirical, the surreal and the salacious. (Think wine-swigging monks, candlelit dinners with skeletons and violin concertos attended by cats and dogs.)

His first solo viewing room of works at online gallery Crean & Company includes 31 new works that draw on a range of styles and movements, from the genre scenes of Old Masters to the darkly comic storytelling of Tom & Jerry. ‘I enjoy walking through my mind as if it were a forest,’ Nolan says. ‘There is something mesmerising about the appearance of things — drawing the world around me stimulates the world within me’.

Online highlights include Stocking Up On Toilet Paper (2020), which references the pandemonium of 2020; and On Nancy’s Couch, which evokes the tedium of self-isolation. Needless to say, this one should provide ample lunch-time distraction.

Viewing Yoko Ono at Whitechapel, London

The Wick Culture - Yoko Ono
Mend Piece 1966/2018
You and I, A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
Photo by: Kyle Morland

Above Yoko Ono Mend Piece 1966/2018 You and I, A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa Photo by: Kyle Morland

Yoko Ono: MEND PIECE for London
25 August 2021 — 2 January 2022
Whitechapel Gallery, London

Now’s your chance to participate in an interactive installation by Yoko Ono. The work comprises broken fragments of pottery, two white tables, materials for repair — glue, twine, scissors and tape — and a set of simple instructions provided by the artist: ‘Mend carefully. / Think of mending the world at the same time.’ Once finished, objects repaired by gallery-goers will be displayed on shelves nearby.

Ono first presented this work as Mending Piece I at her 1966 solo exhibition at Indica Gallery in London. The installation takes inspiration from the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with precious metals such as gold and silver. The practice nurtures breakage as an important part of an object’s history and celebrates the idea that something new can be created from something broken.

Participation and collaboration, which are central to Ono’s artistic practice and campaigns for peace and universal creativity, are also at the heart of Mend Piece for London. If you’re in need of a dose of mindful relaxation, look no further than his mediative, free exhibition.

Viewing James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, Serpentine Galleries

The Wick Culture - Drum Cover Girl Erlin Ibreck Kilburn, London Courtesy Autograph, 1966.

Above Drum Cover Girl Erlin Ibreck Kilburn, London Courtesy Autograph, 1966.

The Wick Culture - Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, Accra Courtesy Autograph, 1971.

Above Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, Accra Courtesy Autograph, 1971.

The Wick Culture - James Barnor: Accra/London - A Retrospective (Installation view, 19 May – 24 October 2021, Serpentine) Photograph: Zoe Maxwell

Above James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective (Installation view, 19 May – 24 October 2021, Serpentine) Photograph: Zoe Maxwell

The Wick Culture - Members of the Tunbridge Wells Overseas Club, Relaxing after a Hot Summer Sunday Walk, Kent, Courtesy of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 1968.

Above Members of the Tunbridge Wells Overseas Club, Relaxing after a Hot Summer Sunday Walk, Kent, Courtesy of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 1968.

Above Drum Cover Girl Erlin Ibreck Kilburn, London Courtesy Autograph, 1966.

Above Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, Accra Courtesy Autograph, 1971.

Above James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective (Installation view, 19 May – 24 October 2021, Serpentine) Photograph: Zoe Maxwell

Above Members of the Tunbridge Wells Overseas Club, Relaxing after a Hot Summer Sunday Walk, Kent, Courtesy of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, 1968.

James Barnor: Accra/London — A Retrospective
19 May — 24 October 2021
Serpentine Galleries, London

Serpentine’s North Gallery has just the thing for photography lovers — the largest survey to date of the pioneering Ghanaian-British photographer James Barnor.

Barnor’s work, which includes studio portraiture, photojournalism, and editorial and lifestyle commissions, covers everything from social and political changes in Accra and London to domestic scenes of family life. There is, however, a thread that connects his work across six decades: the indelible connection with his sitters.

Organised in broadly chronological order, this exhibition centres on the years between 1950 and 1980. Portraits taken at Barnor’s first studio, Ever Young, are shown alongside his era-defining work for South African anti-apartheid publication Drum. Also on display are wonderful works depicting London life in the Swinging Sixties and images from his time managing the first colour-processing laboratory in 1970s Ghana.

‘James Barnor’s work reminds us how thrillingly expansive life is,’ says Hans Ulrich Obrist. ‘His photographs offer the possibility of connection and exchange across continents and through time.’