Paintings from ‘Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium’ group show @whitechapelgallery until 30 Aug. Ten artists create contemporary figurative paintings while addressing an array of subjects, including internet pornography, migration, reproductive biology, social segregation, female sex tourism, inequalities of wealth and power, the creative process via cannibalism, construction through broken anatomy, and the black American experience.

Although humour is injected into some of the works, the show feels heavy and necessary. It feels right here and right now. Each artist has a mastery of the medium, and for every single painting, it seemed the most compelling way to tell a story was with a paintbrush. Not a BBC news broadcast, not an article in The Spectator, not a photograph of a protest march, but in a painting.