For the February 2025 Art Diary, I begin with exhibitions by artists I’ve followed and whose work I’ve written about. These include Peter Howson, Jonathan Anderson, Barbara Hepworth and Theaster Gates. Then, I highlight the fascinating work and career of Steve Whittle, who is currently exhibiting in my parish in Essex. Following that is the mention of exhibitions catching my attention for the themes they explore, from experimental poetry to conversation and protest, environmental concerns, and nature. I end by highlighting essays and interviews I’ve undertaken recently covering artists such as Damien Hirst, Steve Whittle and Alastair Gordon.
Peter Howson is our foremost artist of apocalypse. Whether the apocalypse of war or the growth of populist movements, Howson constructs compelling narratives that delve into themes of conflict, destruction, human suffering, and redemption. Following his 2023 retrospective ‘When the Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65’ at Edinburgh City Art Centre, Flowers Gallery Hong Kong is exhibiting two major paintings, ‘Luxuria’ and ‘The Banner of Saint George’ on which the theme of the show is based, alongside a series of drawings on paper from 2023 – 2024. In a review of ‘When the Apple Ripens’, I suggested that it would not be inappropriate to view Howson’s work to the accompaniment of songs from Bob Dylan, who also views the contemporary world through an apocalyptic lens.
‘Luxuria’ visualises a densely populated world in decline, depicting figures struggling for survival. The Latin phrase that provides its title translates to a state characterised by excess and extravagance. In this image, Howson critiques the repercussions of a life driven solely by desire and passion, ultimately portraying a declining, self-indulgent society. This painting was a highlight of his 2018 solo exhibition ‘Acta Est Fabula’ at Flowers Gallery, which marked the 25th anniversary of his first visit to Bosnia in 1993, where he served as Britain’s official war artist documenting the Bosnian War. In reviewing that exhibition, I suggested that Howson’s testimony is that, despite the violence filling his canvasses and our lives, we don’t have to be driven by our mimetic desires and can consciously reject and control the conflicts which otherwise tear us apart and destroy us.
This period significantly influenced Howson’s artistic practice, coinciding with the growing prominence of right-wing politics in the United Kingdom. The apocalyptic element in Luxuria was influenced by the experiences surrounding Brexit and the resultant surge in populism following the referendum. Drawing inspiration from the politically and socially charged works of German artists Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, Howson offers a poignant portrayal of the far-right threat, serving as a cautionary reflection on humanity.
‘The Banner of St. George’ illustrates a tumultuous scene characterised by chaotic interactions, symbolising the disintegration of social order into violent struggles for dominance. The title alludes to St. George, the patron saint of England and Georgia, who has come to represent the English people’s culture, values, beliefs, and identity. St. George, an early Christian martyr, epitomised martial valour and selflessness during the Middle Ages, and his significance as a religious emblem has been prominent throughout English history owing to his popularity during the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War. The English flag, which features a red cross on a white background, derives from St. George’s emblem and is prominently displayed above the tumult in the composition. The composition is replete with themes of violence, suffering, and confusion as the figures strive to navigate an unfamiliar and fear-laden world.
This work was painted in response to the political and social challenges leading up to the UK General Election of 2015. This period in Howson’s career was marked by large-scale and intense compositions filled with chaotic arrangements of figures that convey a sense of barbarism. The depiction of disorder, violence, and the collapse of societal norms was, again, a reflection of the growing influence and popularity of radical political movements worldwide.
Theaster Gates takes a different political date as the inspiration for his latest exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey. ‘1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise’ honours the carefully kept archive of the late journalist, Ei Nagata, and his partner, Haruhi Ishitani, who committed their lives to preserving Malcolm X’s legacy by translating his speeches and correspondence following his assassination. Gates says the project: “helps me ask questions about who I am in relationship to these ideologies, how we tell stories about things we believe in, and where art lives in relationship to movements and movement building.”
Gates, who has recently had a major solo exhibition, ‘Afro-Mingei’, at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, first travelled to Japan in 2004 to study ceramics in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture. As an artist who has explored cultural hybridity, he couples his deep encounters in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific with his experiences as an African-American man with roots in Mississippi and Chicago. The term “Afro-Mingei” is one he coined to describe his fusion of the philosophies of the Japanese Mingei movement with the aesthetics of the “Black Is Beautiful” cultural movement.
I have written previously on the faith-informed arts-and-community-connecting entrepreneurship practised by Gates, and here, through a series of architectural interventions, large-scale installations, film works and archival presentations, he continues the careful work of the Ei Nagata/ Haruhi Ishitani archive, revealing the truth of Blackness in Japan and formally translating the aesthetics and topography of the revolution.
Buildings are among the many works that Gates has created and feature significantly in ‘In/Dwellings’ by Jonathan Anderson, an exhibition at the Dal Schindell Gallery. Anderson is the Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts at Regent College, Vancouver. I interviewed him for Artlyst in 2018 on the religious inspirations behind modernism. The interview was in relation to his co-authored book ‘Modern Art and the Life of a Culture’. His latest book, ‘The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art’, is due to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in March–April 2025.
The works featured in ‘In/Dwellings’ were made over nearly a decade, from 2005 to 2014. They are drawn from three different series, but all begin from the premise that representational paintings are like built structures, setting up provisional spaces for negotiating our ways of dwelling in the world. In many of these images, the construction of an image is deliberately conflated with the (re)construction of a building, a chapel, or a home. These painted images are, as a result, both open and closed, offering access and withholding it, with the materiality of the paint being that which performs both functions.
With these works, Anderson is exploring the curious reality that painted images generate all such spaces in entirely flat surfaces, creating important tensions as they simultaneously open onto things in the world other than themselves while persistently remaining their own distinct things-in-the-world (a flat painted surface hanging on a flat painted wall). Anderson increases these tensions in the works included by often causing the flat ground of each painting to stand forth as a figural object within the painting. The exhibition is, therefore, an extended meditation on what George Steiner called the “covenant between word and object, the presumption that being is, to a workable degree, ‘sayable.'”
While Anderson’s works are about human constructions, both buildings and paintings, the work of Barbara Hepworth with strings concerns the connections between human beings and the landscape. ‘Barbara Hepworth: Strings’ at Piano Nobile explores the ways in which Hepworth used string to suggest organic forms and natural rhythms, exploring new territory in modernist sculpture.
Hepworth began making sculptures in a variety of materials that incorporated strings in 1939 and continued the practice throughout her career until her death. Her non-figurative paintings and drawings also used string motifs, and the exhibition creates a dialogue between these two-dimensional works and her stringed sculptures. In her sculptures, the strings often bridge wave-like arms to enclose interiors or twist through voids of space. They have a rhythmic and musical quality, in which the allegorical and physical are constantly entwined, exemplified in works such as ‘Curved Form (Wave II)’. She worked strings into both small and large-scale works. The exhibition includes a unique work, ‘Small stone with black strings, ‘ which is the only stringed work she has made using stone. By contrast, ‘Winged Figure’ was a monumental work commissioned for John Lewis’s Oxford Street store, featuring strings bursting out from the centre, attaching the bladed wings together, and guiding the eye around the sculpture. ‘Maquette for Winged Figure’, which uses sheet metal and rods and was the original proposal John Lewis accepted, is on display.
The stringed sculptures began soon after she arrived in St Ives, and the landscape of Cornwall influenced her fascination with this new concept, where strings became a metaphor for her connection to the natural world. As she noted, “the strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills”. As a result, curator Michael Regan says the exhibition shows: “she used strings to create in her sculptures the tension between light and darkness, presence and absence, solidity and weightlessness. Most importantly, they symbolised the interconnectivity between the human figure and the landscape in a real, physical sense.” In an earlier review of her work, I noted that she described the task of the artist in religious terms that extend this sense of interconnection into a future realm, saying that an artistic sensibility revealed a “vision of a world that could be possible . . . inclusive of all vitality and serenity, harmony and dynamic movement”.
Similarly, as curator Christopher Adams notes regarding the works of Dom Sylvester Houédard in ‘Breaking Lines’ at the Estorick Collection of Modern Art, this exhibition features compositions that “contain pronounced philosophical dimensions, as they explore themes of transcendence, contemplation and the relationship between the material and the divine”.
The first half of the exhibition explores ‘Futurism and the Origins of Experimental Poetry’ by charting the distinct phases through which Futurist poetry passed, with a particular focus on those forms of experimentation that reflected the movement’s desire to “redouble the expressive force of words” by emphasising and exploiting the visual and/or sonic dimensions of language. Included are rare original editions of works, including Fortunato Depero’s famous “bolted book” ‘Depero Futurista’, as well as newspapers and journals such as ‘L’Italia Futurista’, which made a significant contribution to the dissemination of new poetic research and helped establish an international avant-garde network.
The show then focuses on the work of Houédard, widely recognised as one of the masters of concrete poetry. A Benedictine monk and noted theologian, Houédard wrote extensively on new approaches to creativity, spirituality and philosophy and collaborated with figures such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and John Cage. His work, which blurs the boundaries between literature and visual art, helped shape the development of post-war British poetry and also influenced the global experimental poetry movement. Works by a number of other British exponents of concrete poetry, including Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Furnival and Bob Cobbing, are also on display.
Steve Whittle came to prominence within the approaches to British abstraction practised by the likes of John Hoyland, Paul Huxley, Richard Smith and Bridget Riley. However, for much of his career, the main medium he has used has been collage and over many years, he has developed the technique, which can be seen in many of the pictures in his exhibition at St Andrew’s Church in Wickford. First, the paper, which is acid-free, is prepared with several coats of acrylic paint in the appropriate colour, and the torn paper collage is applied to this surface with acrylic glue in as many layers as necessary to get the correct colour combinations. When the picture is complete, it is coated with UVS varnish.
The primary subject matter in Whittle’s work is colour, which has been the major theme throughout his career. His work is often produced in series and is unified by the similar images and combinations of colours used. His latest exhibition is entitled ‘The Way,’ and the works use collage in the creation of Stations of the Cross and collage or charcoal for a range of other religious scenes.
‘Seven Contours, One Collection’, the inaugural collection exhibition at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, features over 150 multimedia works that reflect the cultural richness and global influence of contemporary African arts. Thematically organised across a series of galleries, it explores seven main topics, including decolonisation, ecological matters, spirituality and Afro-diasporic movements, offering new perspectives and dialogues. The exhibition bridges modern and contemporary artists such as Malick Sidibé, Hassan Hajjaj, Farid Belkahia and Kapwani Kiwanga, alongside new site-specific works by Salima Naji and Aïcha Snoussi and a temporary solo exhibition of Sara Ouhaddou. These coincide with the re-opening of MACAAL following a wider series of transformations and new developments.
The exhibition is drawn from the museum’s collection of over 2000 artworks – built up by the Lazraq family (founders of MACAAL) over forty years – and explores the vast creative legacy of African arts across paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles, video art, installations and other multimedia works from the past century to the present day. ‘Seven Contours, One Collection’ is organised dynamically across a series of seven themed rooms, along with an additional room presenting a timeline of African art developments from the era of independence to the present day. It celebrates Africa’s creative and artistic innovation and diasporas while exploring many of the social, political and historic narratives that have shaped the continent.
Each room is themed around a key verb. DECOLONIZE confronts the legacy of colonial imagery while celebrating artists who reframe these narratives. Language, memory and history converge in TRANSCRIBE, highlighting the transformative power of written signs and visual alphabets. COHABIT reflects on ecological issues and humanity’s evolving relationship with nature and the environment. CONVERGE looks at Afro-diasporic dialogues and movements between the continent and other areas of the world. PROMISE offers a tribute to Marrakech’s role as a global creative hub, evoking its historic influence on Western and African artists. The final room, WEAVE, celebrates the continent’s extraordinary artistic tradition of textile, craft and recycled materials.
As part of a new, annual programme of site-specific installations across the museum’s spaces, the collection exhibition also comprises two monumental works by Salima Naji and Aïcha Snoussi. Naji’s architectural piece in MACAAL’s main atrium, ‘Dans les bras de la terre’, has been crafted using local materials and construction techniques, including adobe and rammed earth, to reassess heritage preservation and sustainability. Snoussi’s work, ‘Cyborg Archaeology’ displayed in the central stairwell, addresses themes of identity, queer perspectives and power dynamics, with drawings that spread outwards to cover the surrounding walls.
‘Conversations’ at the Walker Art Gallery brings together work by around 40 leading Black women and non-binary artists who are transforming contemporary British art today. A wide range of media is represented, from traditional fine art practices such as painting and sculpture to contemporary forms such as sound and installation. Most of the works date from the last ten years, and many were selected for display by the artists themselves.
The exhibition aims to provide a platform for crucial conversations to take place, asking poignant and necessary questions about today’s culture and society as it takes place in the wake of the distressing acts of violence, hatred and racism seen across the UK in recent months, demonstrating the timely and vital need for discussion and understanding. Sumuyya Khader, Project Curator, says: “… we want to focus on the vital conversations that contemporary artists are having with each other and with audiences right now. Through joyful, timely and thought-provoking pieces, they respond to our current cultural climate – demonstrating how art can provide an avenue for interaction, exploration and learning.”
‘Resistance’ at Turner Contemporary, an exhibition conceived by artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen and curated in collaboration with Clarrie Wallis, explores how acts of resistance have shaped life in the UK and the powerful role of photography in documenting and driving change. Presenting a century of activism, ‘Resistance’ spans the period from the radical suffrage movement in 1903 to the largest-ever protest in Britain’s history—the Anti-Iraq War Protest in 2003. The exhibition brings together works by renowned photographers such as Vanley Burke, Henry Grant, Fay Godwin, Edith Tudor-Hart, Tish Murtha, Humphrey Spender, Christine Spengler, Andrew Testa, Paul Trevor and Janine Wiedel, alongside less-known photographers who documented these powerful stories.
The exhibition highlights lesser-known events, including the Blind March of 1920—a pivotal moment in the fight for disability rights, and the hunger marches of the 1930s—protesting unemployment and poverty. It explores the intersections between movements such as the Gay Liberation Front and the Women’s Liberation Movement, where protests against Section 28 of the Local Government Act brought the LGBTQ+ community together. Also examined is the fight against fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, including the Battle of Cable Street, while drawing parallels with the Battle of Lewisham in 1977. The ongoing struggle against racism is also underscored, showing how grassroots movements have consistently confronted oppression throughout history. Poignant images are included from demonstrations against environmental destruction, anti-nuclear campaigns and actions advocating for peace. The exhibition will trace the evolution of environmental movements and highlight a shift from single-issue demonstrations to broader anti-capitalist efforts that paved the way for today’s climate change action. ‘Resistance’ serves as a testament to the empowering impact of collective action.
Two immersive experiences are opening at Compton Verney. A fully immersive video installation by experiential artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) will bring the beauty and brilliance of the Colombian Amazon to Compton Verney. ‘Breathing with the Forest’—an immersive, large-scale video installation—incorporates three screens that transform the iconic Adam Hall into a living and breathing experience where visitors can observe the life cycle of the Amazon rainforest—from forest floor to tree canopy and beyond.
Focused on the ecosystem surrounding a capinuri tree, ‘Breathing with the Forest’ recreates a plot of real forest. The trees are part of the life cycles that make the Amazon the “lungs of the planet”. Through audio visual cues, visitors tune in to the real sounds of the Amazon and breathe along with the forest in five-second pulses. Audiences observe the intricate flow of carbon, water and oxygen from the forest floor all the way up to the tree canopy and beyond into the air. The artwork allows for a physical reminder that humans give the world carbon dioxide, and in return, nature gives us oxygen.
Unfortunately, tropical and subtropical forests are in danger. This is one of the reasons why MLF has created this experiential artwork. The art collective’s work, which is a meeting of science, art and technology, has been exhibited internationally, from the Lisbon Triennial to the Sundance Film Festival, to interrogate our relationship with the world around us and allow us to navigate with new sensory perceptions. By connecting us back to the breathing beauty of the Amazon, this immersive work looks towards a hopeful future where our relationship with the environment can be repaired and renewed.
Emii Alrai also brings her signature large-scale works, combining ancient mythologies, oral histories and archaeological artefacts for an immersive experience erupting from a volcanic inspiration. ‘River of Black Stone’ presents a series of reworked and newly commissioned installations and sculptural works that unfold across a sequence of immersive spaces, creating a multi-sensory experience. The British Iraqi artist is in part responding to Compton Verney’s Naples Collection, such as the souvenirs made from the lava of Vesuvius brought back to Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as Pierre-Jacques Volaire’s depictions of the volcano. The title of the exhibition is drawn from Susan Sontag’s description of the aftermath of an eruption in her 1992 novel ‘The Volcano Lover’.
Alrai explains, “River of Black Stone has been a project informed through physical research into the terrain of volcanos, drawn from the collections of Compton Verney. The imagined landscape of the volcano from these paintings makes us think about how these landscapes are raging, aflame and desolate. Still, on voyaging through the active site of Etna, one understands that the landscape is asleep, dormant, willing to grow and live again. River of Black Stone is responding to these notions of life cycles, through the destruction of land, the collection, stagnation and romanticism of archaeological matter and the aural narratives which weave in between the world of the living and the dead.”
Hardeep Pandhal uses wall drawings, small and large-scale drawings on paper and animations to create mythical narratives that explore the complexities of contemporary culture, class, racial violence and power. Pandhal’s drawings introduce audiences to a rabble of creatures conjured and mutated from an ambitious range of sources – religion, video games, comics, and mainstream music – from the Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh to black metal. ‘Hardeep Pandhal: Inner World’ at The Drawing Room, the artist’s first solo exhibition in a London public gallery, is a multilayered exhibition that features a site-specific wall drawing that snakes and wraps around the entire gallery, as well as other new drawings alongside earlier work by the artist. In these, the whimsical and serious vie for attention whilst exploring the transformative forces of migration, colonialism and cultural assimilation.
Born in Birmingham to Indian migrants and now living and working between Birmingham and Glasgow, Pandhal was the recipient of a Drawing Room Bursary Award in 2015. These Awards were designed to provide opportunities for artists outside London to spend time in the capital, to use the gallery as a studio to take risks with their work, carry out research and network. His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including, most recently, New Art Gallery, Walsall (2023); British Art Show (2022-21); Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art (2020).
Per Kirkeby is a Danish painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and author whose ‘Natures Mortes’ at the Michael Werner Gallery is an exhibition of still life paintings. In the 1980s, as Kirkeby’s international fame grew, he hit an artistic crisis and leant towards historic Northern European painting as a way out. In a monumental masterpiece ‘Fram’ from 1983, on loan to the exhibition from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Kirkeby combines compositional elements from two famous Northern European paintings, Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘The Sea of Ice’ and a 17th century Dutch still life by Willem Claesz Heda. Motifs from these two paintings guided Kirkeby’s painting process, which was heightened by the artist’s sensations after reading the reports of the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, whose ship was named “Fram” which translates to “forward” or “advance” in Nordic languages. ‘Per Kirkeby: Natures Mortes’ also features several paintings from 2005 to 2012 that combine Friedrich’s theatrical scenery, fields of colour, and close horizon line with distinctive motifs derived from Claesz Heda’s still life painting.
Kirkeby wrote about Friedrich as “the perfect painter of theatrical scenery. The whole picture is divided up into decorations in very close proximity and very close to the backcloth: the sky, the mountains, the rainbow, and the mist. Each plane completely unfolded in terms of the feel of the colour. There is so little room in the world. The horizon is close, not far away. The world is not very big. You can contain it in its entirety inside your head.” Reliance on motifs garnered from the history of Northern European painting, where immense religious and philosophical themes are conveyed through inanimate items in domestic spaces, pulled Kirkeby out of his artistic crisis in the 1980s and defined his art over the ensuing decades.
Finally, for this month, here are some recent pieces I have prepared on the work of Damien Hirst, Steve Whittle and Alastair Gordon. ‘In the Face of Death: Damien Hirst and the Thrill of Mortality’ is an essay I have written for Image Journal which argues that Hirst’s work has been ethically and religiously engaged from the get-go: “In addition to his central focus on the inevitability of death, Hirst explores our efforts to prolong life, including the paradox that we kill other creatures as food to survive, the preservation and decay of bodies, death threats, and how we live in the light of our mortality.”
My interview with Steve Whittle for ArtWay covers his fascinating career to date and the range of work he undertakes, including his primary focus on collage. From colour field and op art to collaged landscapes and flower studies, his career has had many twists and turns, including finding faith through his art. Throughout, he has searched for a language with which to communicate.
I have also interviewed Alastair Gordon about the attention paid by artists and why it is that the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze. These themes relate to a recent church commission undertaken by Gordon and a book project with the poet Ed Mayhew. Gordon says: “Focusing on details—colours, shapes, emotions, and often overlooked objects—allows me to connect with something greater. It feels like speaking in tongues; the act of creation transcends words and expresses something less tangible. At times, the meaning isn’t clear, and I need to wait for it to be revealed.”
‘Peter Howson: Luxuria’, 17 January – 15 March, 2025, Flowers Gallery Hong Kong – Visit Here
‘1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise’, 7 February – 6 April, 2025, White Cube Bermondsey – Visit Here
‘In/Dwellings’, 15 January – 27 March, 2025, Dal Schindell Gallery – Visit Here
‘Barbara Hepworth: Strings’, 6 February – 2 May 2025, Piano Nobile – Visit Here
‘Breaking Lines’, 15 January – 11 May 2025, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art – Visit Here
‘The Way’, 11 January to 18 April 2025, St Andrew’s Wickford – Visit Here
‘Seven Contours, One Collection’, 2 February 2025, Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech – Visit Here
‘Conversations’, 19 October 2024—9 March 2025, Walker Art Gallery – Visit Here
‘Resistance’, 22 February – 1 June 2025, Turner Contemporary – Visit Here
‘Breathing with the Forest’, 8 February – 6 April 2025, Compton Verney – Visit Here
‘River of Black Stone’, 15 February – 15 June 2025, Compton Verney – Visit Here
‘Hardeep Pandhal: Inner World’, 13 February – 13 April 2025, The Drawing Room – Visit Here
‘Per Kirkeby: Natures Mortes’, 7 February – 5 April 2025, Michael Werner Gallery – Visit Here
‘In the Face of Death: Damien Hirst and the Thrill of Mortality’, Image Journal, Issue 123 – Visit Here
‘Interview with Steve Whittle’, ArtWay – Visit Here
‘Interview: Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention’, Seen and Unseen, 6 February 2025 – Interview: Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention | Seen & Unseen
Lead image: Installation view of WEAVE in Seven Contours, One Collection at MACAAL © Ayoub El Bardii.