Amilia Graham

The Crust

★★☆☆☆

On until 17 September 2024

To stage covert exhibitions in the City of London is an act of opportunistic resistance, or so declares the curator of this illegal pop-up in a bus drivers’ toilet. The respite from capitalism is temporary, however: each show lasts no more than three hours, and it’s bring-your-own booze. In the long lineage of galleries located in toilets, this one is more a hipster happening than an artistic challenge to anything. 

Graham’s poor image photographic installation, composed of scuffed stock images of breakfast foods in cheap clip frames, is so unspectacular that it would be overlooked by a driver using the facilities in a hurry. It follows some more intrusive projects that in their Insta documentation brim with toilet humour that might get TfL’s cleaning crew the sack. The practice has earned the project an invitation to a boutique art fair all the same.

To do things without the institutions’ blessing is, by principle, better than doing nothing. By paying no attention to art, however, this project replicates the problem it wants to avoid.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Lydia Gifford, Low Anchored Cloud at Alma Pearl ★★☆☆☆

Lydia Gifford

Low Anchored Cloud

★★☆☆☆

Oil paint applied so thickly that it’s a miracle the canvases don’t bring the gallery walls down with them

Patricia Ferguson, Each Little Scar at FILET ★★★★☆

Patricia Ferguson

Each Little Scar

★★★★☆

No medium is better suited to anxiety and dread.

Means of Reproduction at Emalin ★★☆☆☆

Means of Reproduction

★★☆☆☆

Is consumption is the greatest form of anticapitalism?

Prem Sahib: Kin at Phillida Reid ★★★★☆

Prem Sahib

Kin

★★★★☆

Animal pity turns into animal cruelty, and bang, the mutt’s a goner.

Some May Work as Symbols at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Some May Work as Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s–70s

★★★★☆

Art history can catch modernity in splitting from the past and thus from itself.

Michael Andrew Page, Claustrum at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Michael Andrew Page

Claustrum

★★★★☆

Page’s tent, brain, and the cathedral take the same form for a pretty good reason.

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