Anna Glantz

Lichens

★★★☆☆

On until 16 December 2023

If there is a logic to these seven paintings, Glantz makes it hard to believe. In one, half of a bright-eyed, middle-aged woman poses with a handbag and… half of a duck. One is a landscape within a landscape, and Glantz paints in a coffee cup to remind the eye that its job is to think. Another could have been a still life with fruit, but something obscures most of the scene, suggesting a more intense affair right behind. There’s also a closer portrait of another woman, this one with no gimmick. It matches the others only in its palette of lichen greens and beiges and the sparse application of paint.

Despite the purposeful distractions, each of these images commands attention. But their assembly is unsatisfying. The clues that Glantz leaves on her surfaces are also traps. There are either too many or not quite enough to follow or fall into. 


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

Herman Chong, The Book of Equators at Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Herman Chong

The Book of Equators

★★☆☆☆

Chong was probably reading some epic while painting his Equator pictures.

Victor Man: The Absence That We Are at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Victor Man

The Absence That We Are

★★★☆☆

Man’s colours are only a small nudge of the wheel from Tretchikoff’s infamous portrait of the Chinese girl.

Miranda Forrester, Arrival at Tiwani Contemporary ★★★☆☆

Miranda Forrester

Arrival

★★★☆☆

Forrester’s project is timely when foundational concepts like ‘mother’ and their ‘as-though’ counterparts are readily confused.

When Forms Come Alive at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

When Forms Come Alive

★★☆☆☆

This exhibition cannot decide if it’s a tourist attraction or a serious examination of sculpture’s relationship with movement.

Material Rites at Gathering ★★★☆☆

Fritsch, Genzken, Oldenburg, Shani, Sherman, Smithson, Thek

Material Rites

★★★☆☆

The instincts are right, but too much makes sense to make sense together.

Donna Huddleston, Company at White Cube ★★★★☆

Donna Huddleston

Company

★★★★☆

A palpably stubborn nature unites Huddleston’s women

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