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:

Trackie McLeod, FRUIT II at The Bomb Factory ★★☆☆☆

Trackie McLeod

FRUIT II

★★☆☆☆

“Working-class” and “queer” appear in the collateral as obligatory. What doesn’t is “white”.

The Unfinished Business of Living Together at the Swiss pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Nina Wakeford, et al.

The Unfinished Business of Living Together

★★★☆☆

If the Swiss don’t think they’re free, who is?

RM, A Story Backwards at Auto Italia ★★☆☆☆

RM

A Story Backwards

★★☆☆☆

Having forgotten what the ‘dramatic’ in art stands for, visual artists today too often mistake hacked theory for stage directions.

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.

Women in Revolt! at Tate ★★★☆☆

Women in Revolt!

★★★☆☆

There’s a room for female labour, a corner for childbirth, one for black women, and a section for lesbians. This is as close to nuance as Tate gets today.

William S. Burroughs at October Gallery

William S. Burroughs

★★☆☆☆

Burroughs should be sexy, right?

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