No less than one hundred drawings spread across a single black-painted wall of the small gallery. They vary in size and in content: images taken from gossip magazines and from newspapers are set beside floor plans and architectural drawings, and literary fragments sit with the toilet-wall scrawlings of an anonymous small-time vandal. Every one of them is carefully rendered in pencil crayon on paper – so we are told, but it’s hard to believe. Brooks deftly manipulates his simple materials to produce a startlingly broad range of effects to match the array of source materials on show.

Previous works by Brooks have exhibited the same eye-popping levels of labour. In his last show at MOTInternational, Brooks showed 48 pencilled portraits of an (all-male) selection of artists in front of their most famous artworks. Brooks was working from images of securely canonised, artist stars of the twentieth century and although his careful copies were technically impressive, they didn’t offer any new dimension to the sources. Brooks’ City, with its sprawling collection of cultural artefacts, is more open to interpretation.

Brooks was inspired by The City: A Vision in Woodcuts, a striking pictorial novel by Belgian engraver Frans Masereel. Masereel’s bold, chunky Expressionist prints are formally a world away from Brooks’ obsessive, tightly executed pencil drawings. However both artists are united in navigating a path through the infinite narratives and histories embedded in the urban environment, and attempting to capture what it is to live in a City. (Words: Florence Ritter) 

Alan Brooks: City, MOT International is on until  30th March 2013. For more info, visit: http://www.motinternational.org/alan-brooks

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But this story is not merely about one man and his child; rather it’s about one man and his children. During her search for Jeffery, JoEllen discovered something unexpected; around a dozen half-siblings. The uncanny similarities of the donor children are juxtaposed with their individual reactions to Jeffery and the thoughts about their conception.

Donor Unknown tries to facilitate empathy and understanding of sperm donation rather than approach it with the pragmatic, sterile perspective of an outsider. Disappointingly, this means that the film only brushes upon the deeper social and ethical concerns surrounding third party reproduction but will make you curious to know more. As people move further away from traditional ideas of family and conception these are the stories that will define generations to come. (Words: Beth Downey)

Now Showing. For more information visit: www.donorunknown.com

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You may not be familiar with Hogarth’s engraving series, his most explicit work, showing the life journey of one man Tom Nero and his descent from animal cruelty to eventual murder of another human, but that won’t matter. The story they have adapted is accessible, reverentially humoured and surprisingly relevant for the modern day. They have applied the right amount of lude, crude foulness that is so truly Hogarth and have made great use of original stage direction and propping (the violin case for the horses nose is a particular favourite).

When Hogarth originally made the series it was for the masses; it was cheap, easily understandable. He wanted it to serve as a mirror held up to the grotesqueness he saw in London society of that time. And as you leave the darkness of the theatre you would be forgiven for noticing its immediate relevance to the city streets of ours. A relevant piece of theatre. (Words: Laura Thornley)

On until June 24th.

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