What Richard Did is a remarkable feat in contemporary cinema: an independent film that is both complex and subtle, that hints at greater forces and that speaks volumes within its quiet, mannered tone.

Our eponymous hero is an unlikely lead.  An alpha male.  A handsome, blue-eyed boy who is also a good-natured overachiever and his school’s rugby star.  Films like this are seldom made about men like this.  Richard’s story becomes increasingly tense when he falls for Lara, the girlfriend of his rugby teammate Conor.  If most films of this kind are about the struggles of growing up and how people cope with their coming-of-age, What Richard Did has more in common with European auteurist cinema: this is an examination of psyche and is about the limits of control.  By the time we see what it is that Richard actually did, we’re certain that the film’s denouement can only be breathtakingly abrupt.

It’s difficult to explain this film without comparing it to others of its kind, without placing it in a context.  What Richard Did defies the context that it lays for itself and is truly a gem, unlike any film you’ve seen in recent months.  The film is poetic, thoughtful and its restlessness remainders long in the memory.  A bigger name director with a bigger name star would have this plastered in multiplexes throughout the country.  See it while you’re still in-the-know.

What Richard Did is on release.

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.