Julian Opie is known for his multimedia installations, all realized in his computer-generated, linear signature style, with effects ranging from wry humor to disaffected urban melancholy. His theme for Ikon Gallery, the foremost showcase for new art in the Midlands, is landscape, both rural and urban. Video, sound tracks, sculpture, and paintings are brought together in an inclusive meditation on nature and artifice, sign and reality. A striking feature here is the setting of a variety of works against a continuous view of a motorway painted around the gallery walls. Elsewhere you’ll see blinking lights on a runway and soaring skyscrapers, hear waves on a beach, glimpse grazing sheep outside the gallery. New pieces and old conspire to make this a crucial show of the artist’s work.

— Richard Shone