Laura Allsop

The title of this excellent show is taken from a work called ‘We Will Be’ (1983) by current Turner Prize nominee Lubaina Himid. It’s a plywood cutout of a woman with arms folded, her skirt variously decorated with images of black cultural and historical figures, scrawled-over pictures of revolting-looking examples of British cuisine and a poem-cum-manifesto. ‘We will be who we want, where we want, with whom we want, in the way that we want, when we want and the time is now and the place is here,’ it reads. The woman’s defiant posture sets the tone for much of the exhibition, a thrilling collection of pieces made by black and diaspora artists working in the UK during the combustible 1980s. You can almost see the sparks flying. Although anger and frustration were clearly and keenly felt by the artists, their responses to racism and civil unrest are both sensitive and moving. They also act as a powerful witness to the times. ‘This is not fiction, this is fact, I was there,’ says a talking head in ‘The People’s Account’, a documentary by Ceddo Film and Video Workshop focusing on police behaviour towards the black community in Tottenham before, during and after the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot. Just as these artists found solidarity in extended networks, so the works move deftly between the group and the individual – from ‘Twilight City’ (1989), Black Audio Film Collective’s hypnotic, multi-vocal film about the toxic effects of Thatcherism on London, to a devastating mixed-media self

Type ‘Tantra’ into Google Images, and up pops a lot of queasy erotica. Luckily, there’s none of that here. Instead, there are gorgeous nineteenth-century drawings from India, works by Indian artists from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, and pieces by ten international contemporary artists interested in tantric drawing. Loosely defined as a body of beliefs and practices that can allow a person to conjoin with cosmic forces, tantra sounds pretty mystifying, but its artwork serves the practical function of aiding meditation.  There’s a nod to the erotic in Prem Sahib’s minimalist take on male lumps and bumps and Prafulla Mohanti’s undeniably vulval study in blue from 1980. But the tone is more contemplative than titillating. (It’s clear the linking of tantra with sex is a Western obsession, anyway). Among the early, anonymous works from India is a chart of sacred stones, and a mind-boggling page of mantras, featuring hundreds of tiny squares containing bits of script. These are followed by symmetrical compositions in rich colours on silk from the ’60s, delicate pencil drawings, simple, folky images of symbols, and works by contemporary artists including Sahib, Shezad Dawood and Richard Tuttle. There’s a raw, even transitory, feel to much of it, from the drawings on found paper to Tuttle’s rough plywood sculptures. Altogether, it can be a little underwhelming but that ephemerality is also the point. Up close, many of the pieces are hypnotic – whether it’s those sacred stones, or a dense

The late British artist Patrick Caulfield had a knack for painting social spaces during moments of calm, from intimate bar nooks in the daytime to a tandoori restaurant poised before the evening rush (he was also known to like a drink). So it’s fitting that a selection of his works, painted between the late ’80s and ’90s, are being shown at The Approach, a gallery handily located above a pub. Like much of his work, these paintings are empty of people but full of atmosphere. Four large-scale paintings in the main gallery feature various items – lampshades, a chain pen, sprigs of flowers – painted either photorealistically or as flat blocks of colour, on backgrounds of yellow or burgundy. Flowers and fruit appear to float in space. Depth and mood are telegraphed via colour combinations and areas of light and shadow, with recognisable objects, decorative details and geometric shapes seeming to exist on different planes. Smaller works on show play further with depth and perception, featuring panels placed on top of sections of paintings depicting a menu or a lamp. The works in the main room suggest in-between places, portals to an alternate reality containing some of the same banal objects as ours but where things are slightly off or missing. Often grouped among the British pop artists, with whom he emerged in the ’60s, Caulfield had a love for the bland and the everyday, but his treatment of it is subversive, even magical. The paintings on show engage best with their environment