Our weekend arts and culture picks, from Creed III to The Woman in Black

There are plenty of reasons to be cheerful this week. It’s March, spring is here, and the end of awards season is finally in sight.

But before the culture desk gets wrapped up in Oscar-mania, there are plenty of exciting new releases from across the arts to keep us entertained. Our team of critics and editors have picked a selction of the best cultural activities for this weekend, as part of our weekly Arts Agenda.

Chief art critic Mark Hudson raves about the “fast rising young British painter of recent times”, and celebrates the work of a major British ceramicist. Arts editor Jessie Thompson weighs in on the return of a Booker-winning author after a decade, and reflects on a West End stalwart’s final curtain. Features editor Adam White, meanwhile, advocates for the boxing threequel Creed III, and TV editor Ellie Harrison champions an eye-opening documentary about George Michael. In the world of music, Roisin O’Connor sings the praises of the latest album by mercurial rapper Slowthai.

Jade Fadojutimi

There are just two weeks left to see this first major exhibition for the fastest rising young British painter of recent times. The 30-year-old London-born artist’s large, apparently abstract canvases fetch eye-watering prices, but evoke otherworldly moods, with suggestions of hallucinatory forests in shimmering reds, pinks and purples. Hepworth Wakefield, until 19 March

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2023

The cutting-edge photography prize maintains its reputation for startling exhibitions. Here, two well-established heavy-hitters – radical African-American video-maker Arthur Jafa and extraordinary self-portraitist Samuel Fosso from the Central African Republic – come up against younger women artists: Norwegian photo-collagist Frida Orupabo and Belgium’s Bieke Depoorter, who examines the relationship between sitter and snapper. Photographers Gallery, until 11 June

Lucy Rie: The Adventure of Pottery

A major show with over 100 works from one of the most popular British ceramicists of the past half century. The timeless elegance of Rie’s clay vessels belies her often dramatic interaction with current events – from fleeing the Nazis to a late-career collaboration with Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake. Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 25 June

Mark Hudson, Chief Art Critic

Fiction: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

This is the first novel from New Zealand author Eleanor Catton since her Booker Prize win for the epic historical saga The Luminaries a decade ago. With echoes of Macbeth, it follows a group of do-gooder “guerrilla gardeners” who plant crops on spare patches of land, before a billionaire investor arrives on the scene offering to help with the cause. Read our review in Sunday’s monthly books column from chief books critic Martin Chilton.

Non-fiction: Don’t Think, Dear by Alice Robb

Ballet demands the rigid policing of female bodies and the continued staging of very old-fashioned stories. This fascinating memoir from Alice Robb, who once trained to be a ballerina herself, explores whether an artform apparently founded on controlling women can ever be truly feminist.

Jessie Thompson, Arts Editor

Close

Nominated for the Best International Feature award at this month’s Oscars, Lukas Dhont’s earnest and heartbreaking coming-of-age tale revolves around the ruptured friendship between two 13-year-old boys. Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are inseparable, until their classmates begin to gossip about their perceived intimacy. Most affected is Léo, who decides to distance himself from his best friend. Close goes to brutal places, but Dhont’s understanding of complex interpersonal dynamics – particularly among the young – is striking. In cinemas now

Creed III

The Creed series has been ticking along nicely since 2015, a Rocky spin-off saga that reliably delivers bloody knuckles, soulful brutes and gargantuan pectorals. Michael B Jordan returns in the starring role and also directs, while Jonathan Majors follows up his “far too good for this” role in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with something a little chewier. Here, he plays Creed’s childhood friend, who’s just been released from jail and pledges to face him in the ring. In cinemas now

Xural.com