While the National Portrait Gallery is—rightly—buzzing with visitors to the Picasso exhibition, make sure you do not miss William Eggleston: Portraits (until 23 October). This small but stunning show, which closes this weekend, begins slowly with Eggleston’s early black-and-white photos, before drawing you in as the colour—and the techniques to achieve it—develop and your eyes feel saturated by the richness of his candid and often poignant portraits of the American people. It is the most comprehensive survey of Eggleston’s portraits to date, and a rare chance to see so many works in the UK by the master of colour photography.
“Wit, playfulness and a sense of the absurd” are themes of this year’s Turner Prize 2016 exhibition (until 2 January 2017), according to the director of Tate Britain and chair of the jury, Alex Farquharson. It is easy to see why, with the show filled with work ranging from a larger-than-life sculpture of a man’s buttocks (Anthea Hamilton), a sit-and-ride train installation (Josephine Pryde), a Scrooge McDuck-style pile of 2,043,599 pennies (Michael Dean), and complicated installations of handmade and found objects (Helen Marten). The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced in December.
“The Source of Art is in the Life of a People” is both the title of the show and of a permanent, yet hidden, feature of the South London Gallery (until 6 January). The Slovakian artist Roman Ondak has lifted up the floorboards in the main gallery to reveal the original 19th-century marquetry flooring and inscription, which have been preserved below. The intervention is joined by three other works by the artist including Awesome Rules of Language (2016), where Ondak’s illustrations from a textbook have been graffitied by local youths. And if the weather is fine, pop out the back to see the recently-opened garden designed by Gabriel Orozco.
