Carl Andre: 'then I pulled his gun and I', 1975
typewriter ink on paper, 28 x 21.5 cm, signed and dated on front unique
Typed: Sadie Coles HQ until 5/4
The works in this group show, whether the concrete poetry of Carl Andre or Janice Kerbel's love letters - are linked by that most evocative but now outmoded object: the typewriter. This technological development revolutionised all cultural output in the twentieth century, but is often associated with the beat generation writers. The seductive qualities of its type and corruptible materiality also had a profound effect on visual art enquiry of the '50s and '60s. Artists began to explore words as visual currency beyond their literal employment. In William Burroughs' psychotropic literary realm the typewriter is described as a winged roach that could speak through an anal aperture. For those shown here, however, the machine appears less techno-nemesis as distancing device. In Sue Tompkins' drawings the visual musicality of the machine typed characters on paper is equally important as semantic meaning to the way the work is read, while the aesthetic crudity of Dirk Krecker's figurative forms, again constructed out of type, conversely reminds one of the computer screen.
Spartacus Chetwynd
The Skat Players: Vilma Gold until 6/4
The grotesque, as a representational trope in art, can be interpreted in myriad ways, as this interesting group show is testament. Essentially, though, as the Otto Dix painting of disfigured WW1 veterans by the same name aptly demonstrates, it's a disruptive force used to undermine established conventions: in this case realist painting and nationalism. The melancholic strains of the soundtrack to Charles Atlas' tragic-comic video of a drag performer brings a curious sense of pathos to Spartacus Chetwynd's ludicrous sculpture of Jabba the Hut. There is, as one might imagine from the title, a liberal smearing of scatological reference. However, the tension Dawn Mellor creates (between archetypal beauty and abject horror) in her shit spattered, figuratively fractured portraits of screen heroines such as Grace Kelly is utterly compelling.
Karla Black, Elliot Hundley and Ross Tibbles, installation view
Karla Black, Elliot Hundley and Ross Tibbles: Modern Art until 6/4
Is this the end of an era? Modern Art are packing up after 10 years on Vyner Street and following the big gallery exodus west. This subtle final show is a wise choice. And, given the gallery's predilection for effervescent pop-cultural critique, appears less parting shot than fond farewell. The frail, throwaway aesthetic shared by this trio appears, at such an historical juncture, rather typical of the kind of work shown locally - an indication, perhaps, of the gallery's influence on the now burgeoning east-end scene. Ross Tibbles' tender placement of faded or obscured collaged elements serves to temper the political overtones of the tradition, while Hundley's totemic painterly structures appear reminiscent of diagrammatic craft-kit assembly instructions. The enduring memory of the space for me, though, will be Karla Black's large brown sheet of paper, painted pink, neatly dividing the office space: its screwed up bed-linen quality makes visual poetry out of the testy interdependency between feminist art and the modernist gesture.
Roni Horn
Roni Horn: Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi Until 12/4
Colnaghi is one of the few commercial spaces left in London where one can experience momentary anxiety at potentially being in the wrong place. Its marble 19th century decadence evokes a sense of officialdom at odds with the experience of looking at contemporary art outside of the museum. The design history of the building can weigh heavy on the art object, but here in the 'red room' Roni Horn appears to have given the kitsch British notion of flying ducks a metaphysical makeover in a series of avian photos. But these frozen birds (taxidermied Icelandic wildfowl), have not been captured mid-escape rather, viewed from behind, they seem to have turned their backs on the room. These perfectly produced, but very simply composed images, therefore, swim in and out of view as ornithological data and abstract phenomena: the jaundiced necks of a pair of swans appear like phallic marine growths. The two rather beautiful, borderline Klein-blue objects in the middle of the room feel a little superfluous, but upstairs one is provided with a leather sofa and a contemplative space within which to become an urban twitcher cataloguing the many associations these dead creatures inspire with the living.
A new stance for tomorrow: Sketch until 12/4
Sketch, with its palpable members-only pomp is a very different but equally imposing place to enter. But don't let that put you off. The gallery's famous cream leather sofas have been arranged in front of a large viewing screen in the manner of a '50s cine salon. Lapped by filmic light one feels like a member of the speccy audience photographed at the first 3-D screening. This inspiring selection of video works explores the ways in which art and design shape perceptions of the future and our attempts to make sense of the fascinating conceptual breach between the two. Andrea Zittel's video description of how art and design principles define her everyday life in Death Valley would make the most creatively active soul feel positively lazy, while the insightful Q&A between Charles Eames and his wife - covering every conceivable design issue - throws the often-messy nature of fine art sensibilities into sharp relief.
Kate Terry
Parallax: Fieldgate 29/3 until 20/4
A parallax is the shift that occurs in perception of an object as a result of moving around it. The complex mission of this group show - featuring the likes of Kate Terry who creates spatial territories through the most minimal of physical means and Catherine Yass whose photographs capture the psychological dimensions of space - is to communicate the subtle variations and implications of such shifts between the viewer and the work of art. Participating artist Sharon Kivland, in the press text for the show, describes the notion "as when a story is told through more than one narrator's voice, giving rise to different accounts of the same event". This literary notion neatly describes the life of an object in the collective consciousness: an entity that invokes multiple, simultaneous interpretations. It will be interesting to see how this heightening of one's awareness of being a viewer alters the physical experience of engaging with the artworks.
Christian Ward
Imaginary Realities: Max Wigram Temporary exhibition space, Ridley Road E8 until 29/4
The 14 abstract and figurative painters selected here all create images that incorporate a real or metaphorical sense of place. This construct - whether politically charged vision of an alternate reality or contemplative fantastical realm - inevitably offers a window into contemporary existence. The Ready-Brek glow of Christian Ward's lurid otherworldly landscapes causes the painterly mood to lurch between a sense of spiritual enlightenment and pre-apocalyptic doom. Meanwhile, Garth Weiser's 'Nude' may bear little relation to the human for, but curious paper-like portals disrupting the geometrically portioned ground play with the mind's desire to find an ocular route through abstraction.
Lucy Skaer
Lucy Skaer: Chisenhale 25/3 until 4/5
Lucy Skaer's ambitious new commission is built from the tension and temporal reality of the siege situation. The subjects held hostage here, within wall-delineated 'inside' and 'outside' territories are essentially historical artefacts or symbols appropriated by Skaer in ways that critique contemporary western value systems - their theoretical prison. The numeric symbol for zero appears as an object cast from gold, effectively describing the essence of something and nothing at the same time. Similarly, Skaer's floor drawings of blown-up sections of Hokusai's 'The Great Wave' and Da Vinci's 'The Deluge' imply the co-existence of priceless commodity and worthless reproduction within a single entity that defies the existing limits of classification.
Francis Upritchard, 'Cigarette Necklace', 2003
Martian Museum: Barbican until 18/5
It's a fun curatorial concept - the world of art (really 'just' examples from the last hundred years) as seen from the perspective of an alien visitor. And perhaps it's only through attempting a Martian view on the planet one can begin to realise how skewed earthly value systems have become? Certainly Francis Upritchard's 'Cigarette necklace' and Brian Jungen's cute alienoid creature crafted from sports goods paint a picture of a highly corruptible people. One can only imagine how an interplanetary being might interpret the layers of history between Duchamp's 1917 'Fountain' and Sherrie Levine's 1996 facsimile 'Fountain: 5' shown here. As one can easily divine from the gobbledy gook 'alien' symbols on the exhibition poster, the emphasis here is on entertaining: drawing the troops back to the now refurbished Barbican galleries. With this in mind, it's perhaps best to check your art-critical hat into the cloakroom, don the audio headset and abandon yourself to the Douglas Adams-style ramblings on this madly over-packaged but none-the-less extraordinary selection of contemporary art.
Alison Wilding: Tracking
Alison Wilding: Karsten Schubert 31/3 until 23/5
Alison Wilding's practice is key to descriptions of sculptural abstraction of the '80s and '90s and her works have featured in two Turner Prize exhibitions - so where has she been? Well, given the touchy-feely nature of the recent sculptural aesthetic and Wilding's past penchant for monumental, associatively macho forms, it is perhaps not surprising that she has receded a little from London view. This solo show marks a welcome return and the production of a new Ridinghouse monograph: 'Tracking'. The wall-based work of the same title, consisting of a spiralling brass form comprised of blades and centrally pinned to a washy plane of blue-grey Japanese paper, sets up an eloquent material dialogue around the notion of foreign body.
Rebecca Geldard is a freelance writer and critic living in London.
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