5 fantastic art shows to see this April

Hylton Nel in his (previous) studio. Image: © Hylton Nel, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Photograph: Marc Barben

1. Life on a plate

South African artist-potter Hylton Nel has a passion for plates. More than 200 of them, crafted over 60 years, adorn the walls of Charleston’s South Gallery for his exhibition: This plate is what I have to say. Playful, idiosyncratic and sometimes cheerfully crude, Nel’s hand-painted works can be inspired by anything from a day out at the zoo to international politics. Look out for new pieces by the octogenarian artist, inspired by Charleston itself. They feel entirely at home here at the Sussex retreat of Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, who were themselves avid collectors of ceramics, while Bell’s son Quentin was a potter whose works can also be seen at the house.

Until 10 September

charleston.org.uk

Joan of Arc, 1882, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Image: © Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge 

2. The radical Rossettis 

Tate Britain’s upcoming show The Rossettis unites Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti with two of the key women in his life: his sister and fellow poet Christina Rossetti, and his wife and muse Elizabeth (Lizzie) Rossetti, née Siddal, a talented artist in her own right. Alongside her husband’s sensuous femmes fatales with their tumbling tresses you’ll find watercolours by Lizzie herself, whose ‘genius’ was recognised by the great critic John Ruskin, although her artistic development was cut short by her death from a laudanum overdose at 32. Meanwhile, Christina Rossetti’s extraordinary poetic fable of temptation and addiction, ‘Goblin Market’ (illustrated by her brother), is one of a number of her works featured. 

6 April–24 September

tate.org.uk

Woman in a Boat [detail], 2023, by Rosalind Nashashibi. Image: Courtesy of the artist and GRIMM, Amsterdam | New York | London/© The Artist

3. Be hooked by Nashashibi

‘Whenever you start to make a painting or decide on shots in a film, there are lots of other paintings and films running through your head,’ notes Croydon-born artist Rosalind Nashashibi. Her own eclectic sources of reference, including Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and works by Paolo Uccello and Edgar Degas, inform the dream-like, luminous symbolism of her show Hooks at Nottingham Contemporary. It features the largest gathering of Nashashibi’s paintings seen in the UK to date, while a recent film work, Denim Sky, inspired by an Ursula K Le Guin novella about time travel, will also be screened.

Until 7 May 

nottinghamcontemporary.org

Portrait of the artist Stefan Brüggemann. Photograph: Luke Walker

4. Pop goes Brüggemann

Text messages, newspaper headlines and movie dialogue all find their way into the work of Mexican-German conceptual artist Stefan Brüggemann. As he sees it, ‘Everybody is appropriating constantly. That’s part of our nature now.’ This spring, Llandudno’s Mostyn gallery hosts the artist’s first solo show at any UK institution, NOT BLACK, NOT WHITE, SILVER. Often drawing on a street aesthetic of spray paint, neon signage, billboards and fly posters, Brüggemann’s work always aims to allow space for ‘doubt’ in the viewer. Listen out for rocker Iggy Pop, who lends his impossibly gravelly tones to an audio recording of Brüggemann’s collected text statements. It’s a fitting collaboration for a show that feels altogether post-punk.

Until 17 June

mostyn.org

Autumn Rhapsody, 2011, by Anthony Caro. Photograph: John Hammond

5. Caro’s architectural leanings

Transparent, yellow Perspex walls both enclose and reveal the inner spaces of an underlying steel structure in Autumn Rhapsody (above) by Sir Anthony Caro (1924–2013). Completed towards the very end of his life, the sculpture reveals Caro’s preoccupation with the interplay between exteriors and interiors and how, as an artist, he remained as innovative in his choice of materials as ever. In his formative years, Caro ditched clay and bronze for abstract constructions in welded, painted steel, blurring the lines between art and the built environment, and redefining what we now consider as sculpture. In Anthony Caro: The Inspiration of Architecture, the Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery in Ealing brings together 16 key works that highlight the architectural features of his practice.

Until 10 September 

pitzhanger.org.uk

For more shows for your diary, see The Arts Society Magazine, available exclusively to members and supporters of The Arts Society (to join, see theartssociety.org/member-benefits). And for our online monthly ‘5 amazing art shows to see’, sign up at theartssociety.org/signup