Yinka Shonibare, Stephen Friedman Gallery, Exhibition

From Salvador Dalí 's quaint set of draws on the Venus de Milo, to Ai Weiwei’s marble security camera’s last seen in London at the Royal Academy, artists continue to play the ideal of Classical Sculpture.

This could be be to jolt an accepted paradigm into life with a shock of the surreal, as with Dalí. Or it might be a comment on societies across time and place, subtly comparing the ancient West and its generous self image to harsher realities of today, as with Weiwei and also with British artist Yinka Shonibare.

Shonibare, the Turner Prize nominee and MBE whose work has been displayed everywhere from the Smithsonian to the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square, is soon to have a sixth at the Stephen Friedman Gallery.

Recognisable pieces from the classical sculpture canon - Michelangelo’s David, for example - are given a taste of Shonibare’s signature batik (a wax dyed fabric technique inspired by Indonesian traditions, manufactured by the Dutch, but then sold to West African colonies and absorbed into their traditions) printed directly onto the sculptures themselves. This introduces a theme which winds through the exhibition: challenging and dismantling the boundaries of Western artwork with the repeating patterns and batik which Shonibare is known for.

Aiming to give insight into identity, nationality and colonial history, the second gallery in the exhibition melds aspects of African and European religious iconography and myth in larger scale canvas works, and looks for humanistic themes universal to both in a hope to find a ‘third myth’, a hybrid ideology.