Dominique Fung

(Up)Rooted

★★☆☆☆

On until 20 December 2023

In Fung’s pastoral paintings and ceramics, the peaceful garden pond is the site of despair. Men weep into water lilies. The damned are locked in an underwater dance. Ghosts go fishing and fish are apex predators. 

All this tries to be macabre and surreal like in Bosch or Miyazaki but is instead laughably twee, not least because this isn’t the only show on in London set at the bottom of a Victorian garden. Fung may be on-trend and her East Asian influences elevate the canvases a little but the clumsy sculptures send the whole show back to the garden centre.


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

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

Hany Armanious

Circle Square

★★☆☆☆

The lightness of being can turn unbearable.

Vlatka Horvat, The Croatian Pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Vlatka Horvat

By the Means at Hand

★★☆☆☆

This closed circulation project speaks to and agrees with only itself.

Eva Rothschild at Modern Art ★★☆☆☆

Eva Rothschild

★★☆☆☆

These sculptures are too clean, too ordered, and too clever for no good reason.

Noah Davis at The Barbican ★★★☆☆

Noah Davis

★★★☆☆

Davis’ canvases give an account of time more sensitively than the Victorian portrait photograph

Asami Shoji et al., Gestures of Resistance at A.I. ★★★★☆

Asami Shoji et al.

Gestures of Resistance

★★★★☆

The figures appear as though in x-ray and helplessly foretell their own ends.

Place Revisited at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Richard Aldrich, Prunella Clough, Masanori Tomita, Anh Trần, Terry Winters

Place Revisited

★★★★☆

One suspects the gallery of insider trading.

×