Bedlam: the Asylum and Beyond, Wellcome Collection (until 15 January 2017)
The show opens with Eva Kot’átková’s extraordinary Asylum (2014), an installation of distorted photographs, architectural fragments and—at times—live body parts. The work was first shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale and forms a brilliant starting point to this important and disturbing exploration of the way in which we have viewed and (mis)treated mental illness over the centuries.
From the early brutalities of the Bedlam madhouse to today’s post-asylum emphasis on combining medication with an array of therapies, the power of Bedlam is in its emphasis on the experience of individual sufferers through the centuries. As well as horrific depictions of cruelty and deprivation, including one inmate chained by his neck for a decade, there are also some marvellous works by artists known, unknown and unexpected. Look out for the psychiatric patient and celebrated dancer Vaslav Nijinsky’s extraordinary abstracted self-portraits.
Roman Ondak: the Source of Art is in the Life of a People, South London Gallery (until 6 January 2017)
Roman Ondak’s title comes from the inscription on the South London Gallery’s original ornate wooden marquetry floor, designed by the Socialist artist Walter Crane. Exposed for the first time in many years, this now forms the centrepiece of this rich and thoughtful investigation into how individuals and communities experience history and mark the passing of time.
Past and present are further intertwined and given poetic expression in the 100-year-old oak tree that Ondak has brought from his native Slovakia and cut into 100 even slices. Each wooden disc is stamped with what the artist considers to be a key event from the given year and the corresponding year-ring is highlighted. This then forms a notional calendar; on each of the 100 days of the show’s duration, an annual slice is hung up on the gallery wall.
William Kentridge: Thick Time, Whitechapel Gallery (until 15 January 2017)
There’s more tracking of matters temporal in William Kentridge’s kaleidoscopic, immersive exploration into the expansion and contraction of time, both within the studio and also inside the artist’s head. The larger works—such as his room-filling, five-channel Refusal of Time (2012), with its cacophonous megaphones and symbolic breathing machine—form a visually striking, mind-boggling mélange of ideas. But I was most captivated by the more intimate, smaller works. Especially compelling are the procession of images and thoughts unfolding from Second-hand Reading (2013), a flip-book film made from drawing directly onto the pages of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary; and Right into her Arms (2016), a magical miniature model theatre that uses projected images, drawings and props to channel the spirit of Dada and breathe cheeky life into even the most inanimate of objects.
Tacita Dean: LA Exuberance, Frith Street Gallery (until 4 November)
Clouds and vapour trails scud across Los Angelo skies in Tacita Dean’s new series of lithographs. In Frith Street’s downstairs space there are more smoky streams as David Hockney is filmed while sitting in his LA studio smoking five cigarettes. It’s an intimate and affectionate portrait in which his defiant pleasure at each inhalation is palpable. Greater demands are made on both subject and audience in Dean’s Event for a Stage (2015), a 50-minute film that deftly edits together four nights of live performance in which she and the actor Stephen Dillane grapple with the function and role of both artist and actor in the making of the piece.