Christine Ay Tjoe

Lesser Numerator

★★☆☆☆

On until 13 January 2024

Aj Tjoe’s paintings could make great scenic backdrops to a David Attenborough documentary on the life of wild rodents or an episode of The Human Body. Each of the canvases, only lightly primed and rendered in a restricted palette, looks inside what could be a rat’s warren in winter or the cavity between the human heart and the lungs. 

The show hopes to run multiple seasons and the painter made nearly a dozen of these images, one only slightly different from the last. But these paintings show no story and no evolution. Such pseudo-anatomical sketches can only hope to make set dressing for the tense psychological drama that Aj Tjoe would rather have us watch.


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

Rheim Alkadhi, Templates for Liberation at ICA ★★☆☆☆

Rheim Alkadhi

Templates for Liberation

★★☆☆☆

When truth and artifice are so bluntly opposed, what use is aesthetics?

SACCADES, Leo Arnold with Jo Baer at Brunette Coleman ★★★★☆

Leo Arnold with Jo Baer

SACCADES

★★★★☆

One dare not ask for more.

Nick Relph, Fils, ta vision! at Herald St ★☆☆☆☆

Nick Relph

Fils, ta vision!

★☆☆☆☆

There’s little for the eye to hang on and none of the punk culture of Relph’s earlier practice emerges from the works.

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

Yuki Nakayama

After the Rain

★☆☆☆☆

Can an installation be too site-specific?

Leonardo Drew, Ubiquity II at South London Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Leonardo Drew

Ubiquity II

★★☆☆☆

There are many ways to misunderstand entropy.

Aria Dean, Abattoir at ICA ★★★☆☆

Aria Dean

Abattoir

★★★☆☆

Visuals of her own making overpower the artist.

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