Exhibition preview: Spring Rain – Becky Beasley, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, until September 22 2013

Cucumbers are a repeating theme in this exhibition. Grown from seed by photographer Becky Beasley, they represent green lengths of vitality, growth, reproduction, tending and nurturing, but also refer, more abstractly, to the protocols of daily life and its various cycles.

Beasley, who had a solo show at Tate Britain last year, has literary inspirations. The title, for starters, comes from a short story by 20th century Jewish American writer Bernard Malamud, whose minimal take on the ambiguities of human relationships chimes with the artist’s own interests in the unsaid and unsayable.

Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne’s meandering biography of a burbling 18th century gentleman, and Marcel Duchamp’s final painting, Étant donnés, are further key reference points for the artist.

And more vegetables – this time in a series of photographs by Victorian gardener Charles Jones – accompany a second display, I Fall to Pieces, drawn by Beasley from still life and domestic works in the Leeds collection.

• Open 10am-5pm (12pm-5pm Wednesday, 1pm-5pm Sunday, closed Bank Holidays). Admission free. Follow the gallery on Twitter @LeedsArtGallery.

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