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:

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.

Michael Simpson at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Michael Simpson

★★★★☆

In this meditation of surface disguised as a study of objects, neither is a truer likeness of the events.

Adriano Costa, ax-d. us. t at Emalin ★★★☆☆

Adriano Costa

ax-d. us. t

★★★☆☆

Form triumphs over detritus.

Hany Armanious, Circle Square at Phillipa Reid ★★☆☆☆

Hany Armanious

Circle Square

★★☆☆☆

The lightness of being can turn unbearable.

Saccharine Symbols at Rose Easton ★★★☆☆

Marisa Krangwiwat Holmes, Shamiran Istifan, Tasneem Sarkez

Saccharine Symbols

★★★☆☆

Meaning parts with the image in this exhibition, never to return. Post-structuralism triumphs.

Sylvie Fleury, S.F. at Sprüth Magers ★★★☆☆

Sylvie Fleury

S.F.

★★★☆☆

In Fleury’s car workshop cum womenswear boutique, everything is ready-made and ready-to-wear. But you can’t touch any of it and you certainly can’t afford it.

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