Bosco Sodi: Heavens and the Earth at Blain|Southern, London, 30th January to 23rd March 2019

That a painting is the lasting evidence of a performance is certainly true of the works of Bosco Sodi. Inspired by wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that accepts imperfection and reveres natural authenticity, Sodi’s paintings are fashioned from organic materials transformed into art through an intensely physical process in which chance and experimentation play important roles. Working for the first time with black and white, these monochromatic relief paintings offer a dialogue between contrasting universal forces – light and dark, good and evil, life and death – and have a striking sense of post-apocalyptic art about them

Gainsborough’s Family Album at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 22nd November 2018 until 3rd February 2019

Imagine you’re one of the greatest ever portrait painters. How would you preserve your legacy? This was the problem that confronted Thomas Gainsborough. Despite being father to two daughters whom he clearly adored, the best Gainsborough could hope for was that his daughters would marry well. such was the position of women in 18th century England. Instead he turned to his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont, who became in turn apprentice, studio assistant, collaborator, chief mourner, executor and artistic heir to the great man.