1 The Place is Here
Black British artists in the 80s defied the Thatcherite age with courageous experimental work that seems increasingly influential in reinventing national identity and the nature of British art itself. Sonia Boyce was portraying herself and her place in history in paintings, drawings and photo-collages. The tensions of the time are captured in Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs; while the Turner-nominated Lubaina Himid’s paintings pulse with expressionism. These and works by other important artists, including Isaac Julien and Mona Hatoum, make this two-centred show a fascinating recovery of the recent past.
South London Gallery, SE5, to 10 September; MIMA, Middlesbrough to 8 October
2 Fahrelnissa Zeid
Abstract art is usually thought of as a modern invention, but its history in Turkey goes back centuries, even millennia. The Byzantine empire gloried in gold heavenly spaces peopled by dreamlike figures. After the fall of the empire in 1453, Islam brought an art of cosmic symmetry. So, it’s no surprise that Turkey produced a bold modern abstract painter. Zeid’s paintings are huge kaleidoscopes of mesmerising colour. Another fascinating rediscovery by Tate Modern.
Tate Modern, SE1, to 8 October
3 Sargent: The Watercolours
John Singer Sargent’s portrait Madame X caused one of the great art scandals of 19th-century Paris. Yet his success as a portraitist in Edwardian Britain has often obscured his modern daring. This survey of his free and sensitive watercolours reveals how he took on board impressionist ideals of open-air painting.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, SE21, to 8 October
4 Sidney Nolan
This Australian painter, born 100 years ago, is best known for his visions of the outlaw Ned Kelly as an absurdist antihero, but in the 1980s, he turned to the spray can to create the strange and disturbing pictures in this exhibition. You have to be impressed that in his seventh decade Nolan took up a technique being used by much younger artists. The people in these portraits – from Francis Bacon to indigenous Australians – are ghostly, shimmering figures, glimpsed as if in a dream.
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, to 3 September
5 RA Summer Exhibition 2017
In the Georgian age, the Royal Academy exhibition was Frieze and the Turner prize rolled into one: a stage for the shock of the new. It may be less dramatic now, but major artists such as Tracey Emin and Gary Hume are happy to show in this summery, democratic mix of people and styles.
Royal Academy of Arts, W1, to 20 August
