In his 83 years, Wililam Burroughs lived many different lifetimes.  He was a novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, poet and performer.  A significant figure of the Beat Generation (and probably the only one who had the literary respect of the whole movement), Burroughs has been a major influence on more people than you’ll realise and that could possibly be listed here: Andy Warhol, Gus Van Sant, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, JG Ballard, Will Self, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, Hunter S. Thompson, Keith Haring, David Cronenberg.

You can walk into any bookshop anywhere in the world and buy a book by William Burroughs.  It’s not very often in London that you can walk into a gallery and see an exhibition of his paintings.  Welcome to All out of time and into space, a new exhibition of work by Burroughs at October Gallery.  The gallery owners knew the artist and for this exhibition have collaborated with Burrough’s long-time editor.  It features his paintings, drawings and a selection of his art objects.

Like his fiction, Burrough’s art is about transgression from the linear; it’s about corruption of the established routine.  For a man predominantly known for his writing, his visual artwork retains the immediacy and the power of the mind under distress.  He used the ‘cut-up’ technique, splicing together paint and various cultural reference.  Always an arbiter of style, this is a show that sustains itself well beyond the initial burn of the reverential flame.

William Burroughs: All out of time and into space is at October Gallery until 16 February.

Because hasn’t featured Jack Bell Gallery for what will be two years in May, which is a small oversight though we do try to make a habit of showcasing as diverse as possible a collection of cultural happenings in the city.  Over the weekend, an email from Jack Bell, director of the eponymous gallery, popped into my inbox with the subject header ‘Instal. shots’ and a message saying that he thought I might like to see photographs taken of the new show on display, before its opening to the public.  Bell couldn’t have known it, but that was a massive understatement.

Opening next Tuesday is Quitte Le Pouvoir: New Paintings by Aboudia.  The 30-year old Ivorian is noted for his works of great immediacy and great power.  These are paintings as epically-inclined as Picasso’s Guernica – and no less explosive, revolting or claustrophobic.  When Laurent Gbago, former tyrant President of the Ivory Coast, was under the final throes of civil unrest in April 2011, Aboudia took refuge in his underground workshop in Abidjan.  The visceral power of armed combat between the military, rebels and the UN on the streets of the Ivory Coast capital made its way onto Aboudia’s canvas.

Largely, the works on display here were made in the aftermath of Aboudia’s self-imposed exile and show a very tense situation of what we consider ‘normal life’.  There is a very fine balance between the routine and its disruption.  These graffiti-esque landscapes fall between the politically- and racially charged work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the evil as depicted by Leon Golub.  There are very few artists working today who can accurately capture the moments of madness, chaos and its respite that define the modern world.

Quitte Le Pouvoir: New Paintings by Aboudia is at Jack Bell Gallery between 22 January – 16 Feburary.

5340 submissions showing the work of 2350 photographers, and a winner was chosen.  Spanish-born, London-based photographer Jordi Ruiz Cirera's image of Margerita, a young Bolivian woman living in a religious community, won the 28-year old the overall prize, worth a total of £12,000.  Margerita found the process of taking the picture troubling, even though she sits behind a table, her face partially obscured by a hand placed casually before it.

This is one of sixty portraits in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, which is open at the National Portrait Gallery for another month.  It is an opportunity to see exciting work by some of the most captivating and challenging photographers today.  There are images here from advertising, editorial and the fine arts and balanced smattering of interesting faces, interesting stories and contemporary icons.

There are wonderfully evocative portraits of Gillian Wearing and Mo Farah, and there is the image below. This picture of Chinese dissident/activist/artist Ai Weiwei won Matthew Niederhauser the John Kobal New Work award, an adjunct prize given to an outstanding photographic artist under the age of 30.  The very notion of celebrity was born from painting and portraiture, so this exhibition feels delightfully relevant.  Well worth your time.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is at the National Portrait Gallery until 17 February

Header image: “Harriet and Gentleman Jack” (2010) by Jooney Woodward © Jooney Woodward

Second image: © Matthew Niederhauser