Our pick of this week’s art events: 16 – 23 May

RA Recommends

Published 15 May 2015

From David Hockney RA at Annely Juda Fine Art to sculptures by Conrad Shawcross RA and Barbara Hepworth in Salisbury, we guide you through the week’s top art events.

  • David Hockney – Painting and Photography

    Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 15 May – 27 June 2015
    The similarities and differences of painting and photography have always fascinated David Hockney RA. This spring Annely Juda shows the Academician’s latest works that explore multipoint perspective, one of the artist’s long-time pre-occupations. Card Players #1 (2014; below), for example, demonstrates Hockney’s mastery at combining different viewpoints, while The Red Table (2014; above) amalgates photography and painting in one of a series of clever hybrid works.

  • David Hockney , Card Players #1

    David Hockney, Card Players #1, 2014.

    Acrylic on canvas. 122 x 183 cm. © David Hockney. Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt.

  • Grayson Perry – Provincial Punk

    Turner Contemporary, Margate, 23 May – 13 September 2015
    Ceramicist and tapestry-maker Grayson Perry RA is also a punk by profession, if the subtitle of his new survey show at Turner Contemporary is anything to go by. Featuring more than 50 works dating from 1981 until today, the exhibition is permeated by his irreverent attitude to culture; the tone is set by an early work, Early English Motorcycle Helmet (1981; below), when a biker’s helmet appears like a Celtic relic, formed in rusticated metal and adorned with ancient and modern signs and signifiers. Perry chronicles contemporary life, in his words, as “a kind of teasing rebellion, not a violent revolution”.

  • Grayson Perry, Early English Motorcycle Helmet

    Grayson Perry, Early English Motorcycle Helmet, 1981.

    Aluminium. 32 x 22 x 26 cm, 12 5/8 x 8 5/8 x 10 1/4. Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London © Grayson Perry.

  • Samara Scott – Silks

    Eastside Projects, Birmingham, 16 May – 11 July 2015
    An artist clearly aware of the sensual dimension of materials, Samara Scott is filling Eastside Projects’ gallery space with poured, splattered, smeared and pooled consumer products, from soft drinks and candle wax to toothpaste – an installation not to miss.

  • Samara Scott, Still Life

    Samara Scott, Still Life, 2015.

    Courtesy of Eastside Projects and the artist.

  • Turner's Wessex – Architecture and Ambition

    The Sailsbury Museum, London, 22 May – 27 September 2015
    J.M.W. Turner worked as a draughtsman to architects when he was young boy, and his experience of this profession taught him to be exact in his depictions of architecture and perspective. The Salisbury Museum now stages the first exhibition devoted to Turner’s beautiful drawings and watercolours of Salisbury Cathedral, as well as other buildings in the city and its surroundings. The show is curated by Turner scholar Ian Warrell.

  • J.M.W Turner, Salisbury from Old Sarum

    J.M.W Turner, Salisbury from Old Sarum, 1838.

    Watercolour. © The Salisbury Museum.

  • Conrad Shawcross and Barbara Hepworth

    Both at New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury, 23 May – 26 July 2015

    Conrad Shawcross RA’s new work Three Perpetual Chords was recently installed in Dulwich Park in London, to replace the Barbara Hepworth sculpture that was sadly stolen. This May, Hepworth and Shawcross meet once more, in Salisbury’s New Art Centre.

    On show in the Artists’ House, the exhibition Form and Theatre is the first of many overdue Barbara Hepworth shows about to grace galleries across the country. This exhibition examines Hepworth’s interest in theatre, and focuses particularly on her 1951 commission to create designs for a production of Sophocles’s Electra at the Old Vic – one sculpture represents the god Apollo with curvilinear steel rods. Meanwhile, gracefully rippled metal sculptures by Conrad Shawcross adorn the centre’s bucolic grounds. Shawcross transmutes scientific patterns and mathematical ratios into 3-D form, with the oscillations of a Victorian harmonograph, for example, dictating the shape of a large standing bronze (below).

  • Conrad Shawcross, Manifold 2 (9:8)

    Conrad Shawcross, Manifold 2 (9:8), 2014.

    Bronze Edition 2 of 3 + 2 APs. 320 x 120 x 120 cm. Credit line should be © the artist, courtesy of New Art Centre.

  • Barbara Hepworth, Sphere BH561

    Barbara Hepworth, Sphere BH561, 1973.

    Bronze, Edition 0 of 7 (only 3 cast). 86.4 x 78.7 x 78.7 cm. Credit line should be © Bowness, Hepworth Estate, courtesy of New Art Centre.