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:

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji at Sweetwater and Studio M ★★★★★

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji

★★★★★

Aesthetic cognition or crossword puzzles only rarely bring such perverse pleasure.

Megan Rooney, Echoes & Hours at Kettle’s Yard ★★☆☆☆

Megan Rooney

Echoes & Hours

★★☆☆☆

For all this bravado, Rooney’s compositions offer only a very surface experience of abstraction.

Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at Victoria Miro ★★☆☆☆

Isaac Julien

All That Changes You. Metamorphosis

★★☆☆☆

An idle fancy is detached from here and now, which already shows signs of ageing.

Yuki Nakayama, After the Rain at A.I. Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Yuki Nakayama

After the Rain

★☆☆☆☆

Can an installation be too site-specific?

Richard Hunt, Metamorphosis at White Cube ★★★★★

Richard Hunt

Metamorphosis

★★★★★

A dictionary for self-determination written in phrases as they were being invented.

Lara Favaretto at Biblioteca Marciana in Venice ★☆☆☆☆

Lara Favaretto

★☆☆☆☆

Burning the art student’s undergraduate essays won’t solve the problem.

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