What to see this week
Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia is at the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery, British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1, from September 14 to January 14, 2018 (020– 7323 8181; www.britishmuseum.org) Archaeological finds excavated from burial mounds that had been preserved in the permafrost of the Altai mountains for more than 2,500 years reveal the life of these fearsome nomadic horsemen, who roamed the vast landscape that stretches from Russia to China and the Black Sea. Organised with the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, the exhibition includes multicoloured textiles, fur-lined garments, weapons, gold jewellery, objects reflecting the warriors’ love of horses (right: a gold belt plaque of a funerary scene), tattooed human remains and even some 2,000year-old hunks of cheese.
It highlights the cultural exchanges that took place between the Scythians and their ‘civilised’ Greek, Assyrian and Persian neighbours and adversaries, and concludes with a section on life in the region in the first centuries AD, after the Scythians had disappeared.
Nature Morte is at the Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London EC2, from September 7 to April 2, 2018 (020–7332 3700; http://cityoflondon.gov.uk/guildhallartgallery) This exhibition puts a modern spin on the art of the still-life, which is so often associated with paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries. Now at the final stage of an acclaimed European tour, it explores how the genre has been interpreted by contemporary artists, with more than 100 pieces in different disciplines by such leading names as Mat Collishaw, Michael Craig-martin, Gabriel Orozco, Clare Twomey and Marc Quinn.
Barbara Brown is at The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester until January 2018 (0161–275 7450; www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk) Barbara Brown was the golden girl of Heal Fabrics in the 1960s and early 1970s. Talentspotted as a student, her designs for furnishing fabrics are some of the most striking and unusual ever produced in the 20th century and won awards from the Council of Industrial Design. Abstract plant forms and geometric shapes move to Brutalist machine-age patterns and vibrant designs inspired by West African weaving. Seurat to Riley: The Art of Perception is at Compton Verney, Warwickshire until October 1 (01926 645500; www.comptonverney.org.uk) Through paintings, sculptures, light works, prints and drawings, this show explores how artists have used colour science to create optical effects. From Pointillist dabbings that heralded Modernism to the giddying illusions of Op Art, we see how Seurat, Josef Albers, M. C. Escher, Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Daniel Buren, Liz West and others have exploited the ways in which we perceive what we see.