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:

Anastasia Pavlou, Reader at Hot Wheels ★★☆☆☆

Anastasia Pavlou

Reader, Part 2; The Reader Reads Words in Sentences

★★☆☆☆

In this game of aesthetic cognition, the idea which survives is of the artist thinking.

Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup at the Canadian pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Abbas Akhavan

Entre chien et loup

★★★☆☆

Some water lily species are invasive.

Josèfa Ntjam’s, swell of spæc(i)es, Venice ★★☆☆☆

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swell of spæc(i)es

★★☆☆☆

Ntjam’s Biennale presentation has all the hallmarks of world-building ambition. For one, it boasts two separate locations, one dedicated solely to the work’s public programme. The main feature is housed in a giant purpose-made structure which occupies a third of…

Alexis Kyle Mitchell: The Goal of Our Health at Peer ★★☆☆☆

Alexis Kyle Mitchell

The Goal of Our Health

★★☆☆☆

When Adam Curtis stopped narrating his ‘documentaries’, some stories are wasted breath.

Sin Wei Kin, Portraits at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Sin Wei Kin

Portraits

★★☆☆☆

This exhibition combines the most vulgar of all art school tropes: juvenile narcissism, NFT kitsch, and mindless referentialism.

David Muenzer, Teen at Final Hot Desert ★★★☆☆

David Muenzer

Teen

★★★☆☆

Muenzer’s messy show bedroom actually is someone’s messy bedroom most nights of the week.

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