The UK artist Tacita Dean’s experience in Los Angeles is the subject of an exhibition that opens at London’s Frith Street Gallery this week (LA Exuberance, 16 September-4 November). The show includes colour lithographs depicting “the clouds and vapour trails she found striking in Los Angeles”, the organisers say—but no visit to the City of Angels is complete without a tête-à-tête with the greatest UK expatriate of them all. Dean asked David Hockney if she could film him smoking; unsurprisingly, the gruff Yorkshireman agreed. The result is Portraits, a 16mm film shot in his studio, with Hockney surrounded by numerous paintings of friends and family—including Rufus, Dean’s son.
