Category: Reviews
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Paintings for a Blooming Consciousness
A review of The Greenhouse, Inka Essenhigh’s exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery in London. The article examines her lush, imaginative paintings—rich in botanical forms, mythology, and symbolism—as meditations on perception, consciousness, and the enduring power of painting to envision alternative worlds.
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Visceral Sculptures in the Turbine Hall
A powerful review of Open Wound, Mire Lee’s Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. This article examines how Lee transforms the vast industrial space into a visceral, body-like environment where machinery, vulnerability, and human labour intersect, evoking themes of precarity, decay, and care.
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Narratives of oppression
A critical reflection on The House of Bernarda Alba at Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London, this review explores how Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia and Sam Llewellyn-Jones reinterpret Federico García Lorca’s classic play through immersive painting and photography. Drawing connections between historical and contemporary forms of oppression, the exhibition evokes tension, isolation, and political unease within a…
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Fairy tales in the contemporary world
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves? marks Anna Weyant’s first London exhibition at Gagosian Gallery. Through technically refined figurative painting, Weyant draws on Flemish portraiture and Baroque chiaroscuro to explore femininity, identity, and the unsettling tension between beauty and melancholy.
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Turning adversity into creativity
Jason and the Adventure of 254 by Jason Wilsher-Mills at the Wellcome Collection is a joyful and moving exhibition that transforms childhood disability and adversity into vibrant creativity. Blending memory, humour, and imagination, the artist invites viewers to reflect on resilience, identity, and the origins of artistic expression.
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Beguiling portraits of human culture
The Monkey by Michaël Borremans at David Zwirner London is a haunting exhibition that merges 18th-century painting techniques with contemporary existential themes. Drawing on Old Master traditions, singerie, and psychological staging, Borremans presents enigmatic figures that explore identity, alienation, and the rituals of human culture.
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Abstractions of the Mind in Photography
A visit to The Photographers’ Gallery in London to experience the photography of Graciela Iturbide. The exhibition offers an insightful introduction to her major bodies of work, exploring Mexican culture, identity, and belonging through a poetic blend of documentary and imagination.
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Entering the artistic universe of a feminist avant-garde artist
A visit to Alison Jacques Gallery in London to explore the feminist avant-garde universe of Birgit Jürgenssen. This exhibition (28 June–3 August 2024) brings together photography, sculpture, drawings, and iconic works such as Mattress Shoes, offering a powerful critique of female identity, domesticity, and patriarchal structures.
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Paintings with a dreamlike quality
In Plain Sight at Halcyon Gallery in London presents dreamlike, semi-abstract paintings by Ernesto Cánovas that explore memory, perception, and disappearance. Drawing on cinema, history, and photography, Cánovas manipulates found imagery and materials such as wood and aluminium to create evocative works that oscillate between abstraction and representation.
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The creative potential of textiles in art
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Barbican Art Gallery in London brings together over 100 works by 50 international artists. Spanning the 1960s to today, the exhibition explores textiles as a powerful artistic medium—examining weaving, stitching, and fibre as tools for storytelling, resistance, and cultural memory.