Kate Burling, Anna Choutova, Douglas Cantor, Nettle Grellier, Gosia Kołdraszewska, Lydia Pettit, Olivia Sterling, Sophie Vallance Cantor

Cherry Bomb!

★★☆☆☆

On until 4 October 2025

To hang a group exhibition on the idea that “the cherry throughout the history of art and literature has symbolised dualities” is to risk confusing Chekhov with Nabokov. Cantor’s handsome canvases – white of hearts, red of fruit, black of horses, and so on – show up Pettit’s oily board roundel – red of lips, red of tongue, red of OnlyFans. It, in turn, embarrasses the former. Sterling’s red nipple as the icing-topper does the same to flesh. Grellier, whose simple, faded pencils articulate past summer’s longing as both innocence and the eros, are granted too little stage time to save the assembled company from surplus, such as Kołdraszewska’s graphite cherry-poppers. 

Curating to a scheme (and a sales target) hinges on covert abstraction. This exhibition – not for the first time in the gallery’s short history – could have done better if the task were left to a single artist. 


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

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.

Oh, the Storm at Rodeo ★☆☆☆☆

Oh, the Storm

★☆☆☆☆

This exhibitions is trying to explain the concept of ‘crazy paving’ to a blind man. It’s impossible to tell where a work ends and the wall begins.

Yannis Maniatakos, Four Paintings at Sylvia Kouvali ★★★☆☆

Estate of Yiannis Maniatakos

Four Paintings

★★★☆☆

Examining the paintings in the gallery’s bright lights doesn’t lift their mystery.

Ebun Sodipo, An Ominous Presence at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Ebun Sodipo

An Ominous Presence

★★☆☆☆

Look, and it’s all on the surface.

Roland Knowlden: Negations at House Work Presents ★★★☆☆

Roland Knowlden

Negations

★★★☆☆

An exhausted porcupine and an architectural war plan.

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.

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