Visual Arts

Visual Arts previews from around the region

Packing A Punch: British Graphic Satire And Caricature

The Barber Institute of Fine Art, University of Birmingham, until Sun 16 January

In common with pretty much any Shakespeare comedy you care to name, this fascinating exhibition ably proves the point that humour doesn’t always transcend the centuries and generations. The display focuses on prints and drawings created in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries, exploring the variety, confines and crossovers of caricature, satire and cartoons.

Coventry Biennial 2021: Hyper-Possible

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, until Sun 6 February

The third Coventry Biennial is currently taking place in seven exhibition venues across Coventry & Warwickshire. The show’s aim, explains its artistic director, Ryan Hughes, is to highlight the fact that social, political and critical art in Coventry ‘is, has been and always will be hyper-possible’. Speaking about the exhibition at the Herbert, Ryan says: “The venue has always performed a vital role for the city’s visual art sector, and it’s a pleasure to continue our longstanding relationship with the gallery and its team. Our exhibition in the galleries and public spaces around the building bring together artworks from national collections with newly commissioned and co-created projects that explore a range of urgent ideas. “We also hope that the Biennial will act as a way for people to reconnect with each other following the painful months of 2020 and 2021.”

Betsy Bradley: Chasing Rainbows

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Fri 3 December - Sun 13 February

“I see my work as an invitation to the present moment, “ says Midlands-based artist Betsy Bradley, who is here presenting her first major solo exhibition. “It’s an escape as well as a grounding, which enables the viewer to let go.” Betsy further describes her vivid, gestural works - using bright flashes of neon acrylic paint which glow on translucent fabrics - as a life force that traces the dance between thought and action. “My practice is concerned with creating a direct experience with the viewer; I consider gesture in my painting not as subjective expression but as objective direct action on a surface, communicating spontaneity and providing an escape from thought into the present moment.”

Visual Arts

John Nash: The Landscape Of Love And Solace

Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until Sun 23 January

Given that he was one of the most prolific artists of the 20th century, it’s somewhat surprising that the last major exhibition to pay tribute to John Nash took place more than half a century ago. Born in 1893 and the brother of fellow artist Paul in whose shadow he often found himself - Nash was an ‘official war artist’ in both the Great War and the Second World War. It was in the final year of the Great War that he produced two of the paintings for which he is probably best known: Over The Top - which now hangs in the Imperial War Museum - and The Corn Field - which features in this show alongside a number of the artist’s other war-era works. Evidencing Nash’s versatility, the exhibition also includes a selection of his botanical artworks - he was a keen plantsman - which are here being displayed for the very first time.

Yasmin David: Into The Light

New Art Gallery, Walsall, until Spring 2022

This first solo exhibition by the late landscape painter is close to the gallery’s heart - Yasmin was the niece of Kathleen Garman, who donated Walsall’s prestigious Garman Ryan Collection in the 1970s. In the decade-plus since Yasmin’s death, her daughter, filmmaker Clio David, has unearthed hundreds of hidden works around the family’s farm, a selection of which are here exhibited alongside her wider family’s collection. “Her paintings are dramatic, emotional and often turbulent,” wrote her son, Julian, soon after her death, “conveying the drama in the landscape as she saw it, and perhaps resonating human dramas within them. Her preoccupation was with the huge polarities of light and dark, the sky and the land, and inner and outer states of being. “She tried to capture the molten, ever-changing quality of nature. Her paintings are forceful expressions of landscape in a constant state of flux, of becoming.”