Exhibitions in the UK

Murder, suicide, earthquake, arson, car smashes… steel yourself for a very Mexican view of death and misfortune before heading for the Enrique Metinides retrospective at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. Metinides – now almost 70 – captured all these events for the Mexican tabloid La Prensa, and his pictures appeared in La Nota Roja – or “Bloody News”. (The most notorious tabloid of them all is El Alarma ["the Alarm"], which I squeamishly skimmed through only once at a magazine stall.)

I’m yet to see the exhibition for myself, but read the recent flurry of reviews with interest: Metinides found “humanity in catastrophe”, says Adrian Searle in The Guardian , while in The Observer last Sunday, Sean O’Hagan writes that Metinides “shows us something of what death is like: the randomness, the absurdity even, the awful humour”. Polly Corrigan ponders for The Telegraph: “…in the British media we seldom see images of the dead, even during a war. Not so in Mexico.”

There is a programme of talks and events during the exhibition, the photograper’s first in Europe, which runs until 7th September.

Five plumed warriors will enter the Royal Academy courtyard at 11:45pm on 11 April to enact a ceremony that evokes the spirit of an Aztec ritual. Chanting and thunderous drumming will herald the close at midnight of the phenomenally successful London ‘show’. No exhibition ticket necessary for this event. Just turn up!

From 8:00pm onwards, there will be projections of exhibits from Aztecs beamed around the RA’s courtyard.

I’ve learned that The Royal Academy expects that a staggering 400,000 people would have visited Aztecs in London by the time the doors close on 11th April. This would put it into the ‘top 10′ of their most successful exhibitions ever held.
Pictured: Mask, c. 300-600,Teotihuacan; Greenstone, shell, obsidian and coral – Photo: Michel Zabe/PA Picselect