Exhibition of the week<\/p>\n
Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today Also showing<\/p>\n Billy Childish: This Is The Universe\u2026 Big Isn\u2019t It? Katharina Grosse: I Set Out, I Walked Fast Les Krims: Fictcryptokrimsographs Racheal Crowther: Liquid Trust Image of the weekThe flowers of Grenada, from Steve McQueen\u2019s book Bounty. Photograph: Steve McQueen<\/p>\n The flora of Grenada is beautiful: colourful, lush, intense, tropical. But Oscar-winning film-maker and Turner prize-winning artist Steve McQueen saw something else in the Caribbean nation\u2019s flowers when he went to photograph them in 2024: markers of historical trauma and colonial pain. They are \u201cconstant witnesses of turmoil and upheaval. In a landscape of flux in population, they have been a constant. Sometimes the most horrific things happen in the most beautiful places. That\u2019s the perversity of life.\u201d See more images from Bounty, his new book of photography, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n Someone in Paris won a Picasso in a raffle<\/a><\/p>\n A Bridget Jones statue in Leicester Square has been made permanent<\/a><\/p>\n The new V&A East collection is dazzling<\/a> and its architecture isn\u2019t too bad either<\/a><\/p>\n A new exhibition at Compton Verney showcases the incredible needlework of Elizabeth Allen<\/a><\/p>\n Abidjan\u2019s art week shows that the C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s art scene is flourishing<\/a><\/p>\n A celebrated art historian spent 46 years sitting for Frank Auerbach<\/a><\/p>\n The gay art of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek was groundbreaking<\/a><\/p>\n The 93-year-old artist Joan Semmel wanted her work to be shameless<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the weekCeal Floyer, Monochrome Till Receipt (White), 1999. Photograph: \u00a9 Ceal Floyer, courtesy Lisson Gallery, London.<\/p>\n Ceal Floyer, Monochrome Till Receipt (White), 1999 Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get in touch<\/p>\n
Jim and Helen Ede, founders of Kettle\u2019s Yard, cared almost as much about the fresh cut flowers in their gallery as the art. This show looks at artists who share that floral passion, from Henri Rousseau to Lubaina Himid.
Kettle\u2019s Yard, Cambridge, 25 April to 6 September<\/a><\/p>\n
Garage-rock superstar does his hazy, expressionistic thing with new paintings of the California desert.
Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, 26 April to 14 June<\/a><\/p>\n
The master of giant, building-sized paintings returns, with yet more enormous site-specific interventions, and some smaller works too.
White Cube Bermondsey, London, 22 April to 31 May<\/a><\/p>\n
Ultra-weird, super-surreal staged Polaroids from the mid-1970s that undermine any idea of photographic truth.
Graces Mews, London, until 23 May<\/a><\/p>\n
Scent-based installation art about bodies and the military-industrial complex in this young artist\u2019s debut institutional show.
Chisenhale Gallery, London, until 14 June<\/a><\/p>\n
Sometimes, all you need is an idea. And in 1999, British conceptualist Ceal Floyer<\/a> \u2013 who sadly died at the end of last year \u2013 had a brilliant one. What if she could make a colour appear in your brain, paint a painting in your mind, without picking up a brush or camera, without even making an artwork. All she had to do was go shopping. Every item listed here in this 2009 version is white. Read through it and your brain pictures flour, cream cheese, eggs, rice \u2013 the images appear as if you\u2019re looking at photos; whiteness fills your head. What an amazing trick. But the work also tells the story of its own making. It tells you that she did this shopping in Camden, London, that the manager on duty was a bloke called Jim Donovan, and because your mind is already thinking of all these white items, you\u2019re now thinking about Camden Road, about the weather on the 9 June 2009, about Jim in his tie. This artwork isn\u2019t just an idea. It\u2019s not even a mental painting being conjured by a concept. It\u2019s a whole world contained in a single Morrisons receipt.
Tate Collection<\/a>. Currently on loan as part of YBA and Beyond: British Art from the 90s from the Tate Collection<\/a> at National Art Centre, Tokyo.<\/p>\n