Fruitful brushstrokes

Why do artists continue to paint? This might sound a daft question, but it's one that artists have been asking since the emergence of photography. In some attempt to answer it, the artists in this exhibition return to the past, in most cases, fruitfully.

Glenn Brown famously makes paintings that look as if they might be photographic reproductions of old artworks, in this case, Dead Relatives, which looks like a Frank Auerbach portrait.

Alessandro Raho (whose Rose is pictured) also explores authenticity with 19th-century landscapes and stilllifes. One landscape has no clues to date it, so you wonder if this is a contemporary view in an old-fashioned style, or a reproduction of what it looked like then.

Maaike Schoorel's 'faded' paintings of old-fashioned motifs seem to suggest the past persists, though we might try to resist it, while Silke Otto-Knapp's painting of nymphs returns to a 19th-century symbolist concern with the distant past.

But though there is some interesting work to ponder, it looks as if these questions just might have the edge over some of the work.

Until Jan 20, Haunch of Venison, 23 Bruton Street W1, Mon to Sat 10am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7495 5050. Tube: Green Park