Aria Dean

Abattoir

★★★☆☆

On until 5 May 2024

The ICA’s once inviting gallery space is now a maze and smells of industrial rubber. Inside this pen, Dean’s video follows an animal’s death parade in a disused slaughterhouse. After a moment of exuberant confusion, the image turns into a sinister whirlwind. To the soundtrack of a cheap horror film, the invisible carcass then whimsically journeys over a pool of CGI blood and along a row of butchers’ hooks.

Dean has contributed plenty to art’s politics as a writer and editor. Her thoughts on necropolitics would have thus been of some interest. But this work is as subtle as the “U.S.A.” denominator included in the video’s title. Even at the outset, the project’s chances are scarpered by a knee-jerk association of black American life with systemic and terminal oppression.

Capital is racism, architecture is death. Dean isn’t wrong and all this could have been a decent e-flux essay. But visuals of her own making overpower Dean the artist. There are, for example, no butchers and no cattle in the film’s frame. The question of death-value turns into idle musing, leaving the work of the ‘system’ as opaque as ever.


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

Paulina Olowska at Pace ★★★★☆

Paulina Olowska

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★★★★☆

It should be within the resources of Pace and Olowska’s experience to advance her legend beyond the discretely marketable.

Francesca DiMattio, Wedgwood at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★☆☆

Francesca DiMattio

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★★★☆☆

In DiMattio’s giant ceramics kiln, everyday motifs like sneakers and knickers clash into the ornate Rococo stove and the Victorian China snuff box.

Armando D. Cosmos, Nothing New Under the Sun at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Armando D. Cosmos

Nothing New Under the Sun

★★★☆☆

Cosmos wants to redefine STEM as the alliance of science, theosophy, engineering, and myth.

Atiéna R Kilfa, Primitive Tales, at Cabinet ★☆☆☆☆

Atiéna R. Kilfa

Primitive Tales

★☆☆☆☆

An uninspired re-staging of the artist’s Camden Arts Centre show.

Poppy Jones, Solid Objects at Herald St ★★★★☆

Poppy Jones

Solid Objects

★★★★☆

The lightness of the painter’s gesture cries out for a sledgehammer that would relieve the viewer of his doubt.

Machine Painting at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Machine Painting

★★★★☆

Ask DALL-E to paint an abstraction and it’ll confidently produce a museum-worthy clone

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