Exhibition of the week
Suzanne Jackson: In Nature’s Way …
Space-invading, multilayered paintings with a hint of Rauschenberg in their richness, from this artist based in Savannah, Georgia.
• Modern Institute, Glasgow, until 19 March.
Also showing
Danielle Dean
A video installation that explores the nature of 21st-century capital, with special reference to a little business called Amazon.
• Tate Britain, London, 5 February to 8 May.
Emilio Vedova
Splashy canvases first shown at Documenta in 1982 by this expressive Italian painter.
• Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, London, 10 February to 26 March
In This Moment
Sound, vision and touch create a cosmic experience, devised by artists Gawain Hewitt and India Harvey with young people from Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School.
• Bethlem Gallery, Beckenham, south London, 5 February to 14 April.
Thao Nguyen Phan
Meditations on the Mekong river and what it reveals about the environment, folk traditions and changing face of Vietnam.
• Tate St Ives, 5 February to 2 May.
Image of the week
The Nigerian potter Ladi Kwali garnered international renown for her fusion of traditional Gwari forms and modern pottery techniques. “Her work went from functional domestic jars into works of art through glazing and the introduction of new technology,” explains Jareh Das, curator of Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics and Contemporary Art, which explores 70 years of ceramics in Black culture and shatters western myths of the potter’s wheel. At Two Temple Place, London, until 24 April. Read the full article here.
What we learned
Van Gogh’s ‘magical, mysterious’ self-portraits get five stars
There are concrete trees inside the London School of Economic’s £145m new building
Theaster Gates will make his Serpentine Pavilion in London a modern Pantheon
Port Talbot prepared to bid its Banksy farewell
A mystery artist who makes sculptures out of books raised £50,000 for charity
Fabled Indigenous Australian art went on show 40 years after it disappeared
Mike Nelson has channelled pandemic despair into a claustrophobic installation …
… while a Zimbabwean sculptor’s Covid-inspired work will travel to China
A retrospective celebrates rebel ceramicist Edith Heath
Masterpiece of the week
The Dream of Saint Helena, c 1570, by Paolo Veronese
She looks like a sensual dreamer painted by a late Victorian symbolist, all passion spent as she rests her eyes with her legs spread out and a hand on her silky skirts. In fact, Veronese’s model is posing as Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, who found the true cross after dreaming of its forgotten location. Veronese had form when it came to making religious themes look secular. He was interrogated by the Inquisition after filling a Last Supper with realistic, bacchanalian details. Here he does at least include a big cross in the sky, St Helena’s attribute. But he takes the story as an opportunity to depict a woman alone, lost in thought, in this subversive, precociously modern vision.
• National Gallery, London
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