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33 guide 12-18 Aug 2017 exhibitions

50 Years of Leeds West Indian Carnival & Joseph

Buckley Leeds

Carnival is a communal, scarcely

affordable extravagance, a

momentary release from more of

the same. It makes home ground

exotic, it’s a blatant subversion

of sober-minded and sensible

authority – art by any other

name. While in no way rivalling

the push and shove of the real

live thing, here we get costumes,

videos, photographs and sound

recordings commemorating

half a century of an event with

a claim to be Europe’s longest-

running Caribbean carnival. In

accompaniment, Joseph Buckley

presents a series of installations

reflecting on “the space between

blackness and Britishness”.

Towering suits of armour, cast

in plastic and lacquered an

alarming matt red, march across

the gallery. Elsewhere, the

jagged aesthetics of west African

tribal masks are diluted with the

cubistic geometries of British

modernist sculpture, turning

carnival elation into dystopian

nightmare. Robert Clark

The Tetley, Sat to 29 Oct

Common & Garden London

Common & Garden pitches

up during the art world’s

midsummer lull to showcase

Bermondsey Artists’ Group’s

recent work, as selected by

eminent artists Anna Barriball

and Anne Bean. Of course,

this celebration of the group’s

community-friendly history is

staged in a very different cultural

climate from that of 24 years

ago, when the collective rescued

what was then a dilapidated

lido cafe in Southwark Park and

transformed it into today’s rather

lovely gallery. This exhibition

takes its inspiration from 1920s

mayor Ada Salter’s Bermondsey

“beautification committee”,

and will look at nature as a

community project. RC

CGP London The Gallery, SE16,

Wed to 3 Sep

Opening this week

In Soviet Russia, Ilya

Kabakov was limited

to sharing his creations

with a circle of artist

friends, in exhibitions

staged secretly in their

apartments. The work

he’s made with his wife

Emilia since emigrating

to the west seems to be

a reaction against these

constrained conditions.

In the case of the 1984

installation The Man

Who Flew Into Space

from His Apartment –

where a giant catapult

has apparently launched

the occupant of a little

room into the ether – it

literally breaks down the

walls. Today, the couple

are Russia’s best-known

art stars, famed for vast

installations that riff

poetically on the failures

of the communist regime.

The forthcoming Ilya

and Emilia Kabakov: Not

Everyone Will Be Taken

Into the Future (Tate

Modern, SE1, 18 Oct to

28 Jan) will show Ilya’s

paintings and drawings

alongside signifi cant

installations such as

Labyrinth (My Mother’s

Album), a maze of dingy

corridors that recall

Soviet social housing

(pictured). Skye Sherwin

Booking now