Fresh art on the scene

'Inside-Outside' by Philip Guston at the Timothy Taylor Gallery

11 April 2012

Paintings And Drawings from the National Gallery Of Scotland: From Raphael To The Glasgow Boys

Lured into the spotlight by its recent centenary, the National Art Fund has attracted its fair share of criticism, but this latest celebratory exhibition ought to prove a less controversial affair. A cosy collection of 40 paintings, prints and drawings, it spans Renaissance Italy, Golden Age Denmark and Nineties Glasgow, with a core of English works by the likes of Turner, Blake and Constable.

Highlights include a Raphael chalk drawing, Rembrandt's etching, 'Ecce Homo', and a Poussin preparatory drawing for one of the Wallace's own paintings, 'The Dance To The Music Of Time'.

Thur 22 Jan-Sun 18 Apr, The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1 (020-7563 9500).

William West And The Regency Toy Theatre

Curated by a team from Pollock's Toy Museum, this magical exhibition harks back to an age when children had to make their own entertainment. In 1811, a London haberdasher named William West began producing sheets of engraved figures from current theatrical productions. When children started using them to perform plays on their own miniature stages, he realised he had stumbled upon an invention, and so the Regency Toy Theatre was born.

West went on to produce a grand 146 miniature plays, ranging from panto to Shakespeare to drama on the high seas, and even commissioned special wooden theatres for them. Characters, scenes and souvenir material are all on show.

Fri 16 Jan-Sat 27 Mar, Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2 (020-7440 4246).

Charles Sandison

This British artist lives and works in Finland, and for his first solo show at the Lisson he has created a series of word-based, site-specific works to project onto the gallery's walls. The text is generated by special computer software which programmes families of words to interact, simulating social networks and behavioural patterns. In 'Yes/No', for instance, the positives work as a tight-knit group, hounding the negatives to the edge of the projected frame. The ideas are all crisp and easy enough to grasp, but visually, Sandison's work can be a little dull. Sat 17 Jan-Sat 14 Feb, Lisson Gallery, 29 Bell Street, NW1 (020-7724 2739).

Philip Guston

The acclaimed American painter Philip Guston has been the subject of only a couple of London solo shows so far, but this exhibition, which focuses on a single decade of his career, opens just a few days ahead of the Royal Academy's survey - of which more next week. Between 1969-1979, Guston edged away from the abstract impressionism that made his name and returned to more figurative subject matter such as painting and eating. These canvases are raw and urgent and depict objects from his studio, grouped together in strange, unknowable clusters.