Aldridge’s acid trip

Alan Aldridge is a brilliant artist-illustrator and it should not be necessary to work hard to prove it (as this show does by repeatedly advising us how fabulously groovy his clients were - The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and others from the 1960s and 70s). At its best, Aldridge's work stands alone through his creation of obsessive imaginary worlds, as complete as those of Rex Whistler, MC Escher, Walt Disney and Aubrey Beardsley. Throw a few tabs of acid tied to a hand grenade in among that lot, and you've got Aldridge. He's fantastic, as this work and his excellent new book prove.