Gallery V

Installation view of Gallery V Photo: John Bodkin/DawkinsColourThe overall mood of this powerful room, hung by Ann Christopher, is of muted colour. Many of the works are monochromatic, not least Christopher’s own mesmeric drawings,which greatly benefit from a strong sculptural sensibility. Made with graphite, Conté crayon, Mylar and aluminium, they derive from feathers. Curving and cutting-edge, they seem to operate on the very edge of space.

Nothing could be more black and white than Cornelia Parker’s The Fourth Estate: Reggie Kray’s Funeral. These images all focus on pieces of paper impaled on brass railings. Each piece bears the name of a newspaper, apart fromone announcing the name ‘Roy Riley’. And the monochromatic theme continues in Norman Ackroyd’s etchings on stainless-steel plates. Based on photographs he took in the Galapagos Islands, they all look ominously overcast. But Nigel Hall’s undulating gouache and charcoal study contains strong colour, and pale pink appears in John Maine’s twenty-five granite discs stacked dynamically on top of each other.

The subdued mood returns in Tacita Dean’s three studies. Executed with blackboard paint on fibre-based prints, they look like gleaming prehistoric rock sculpture. Equally mysterious is Alison Wilding’s white-topped table with a structure containing an enigmatic ball.

But Richard Wilson’s sculpture is more identifiable: garden sheds sitting precariously on top of each other. They are a balancing act, whereas Bryan Kneale’s stainless-steel Cascade is as spiky as Ann Christopher’s work. Finally, admirers of Anthony Caro’s sculpture will be fascinated to discover his vigorous drawings of ample nude women.