Thanasis Deligiannis, Yannis Michalopoulos

Xirómero/Dryland

★★★★☆

Curated by Panos Giannikopoulos
On until 24 November 2024

It’s Sunday in the village. Every week, the Greek state broadcaster sends a camera crew to record the harvest festivals, crochet-making displays, and wedding rituals of a rural locality. The programme has been running for decades. The nation’s hamlets anxiously wait their turn in the spotlight, knowing that the camera can turn milk maids and grocers into celebrities. Each wants to showcase their custom, more ‘diverse’ than in a contemporary art curator’s wet dream.

But it is wet and dark in Xirómero. Arriving on location in this Western Greek region, the crew found the pavilion deserted. A sound and light show synced with the movement of agricultural equipment makes for an eerie trace of past revelries which still play out on screen installations, posters, and stacks of plastic garden chairs. The famous Greek hospitality has turned into dystopia, sustained only by tricks of technology.

This display is aesthetically rich and pleasurably hard to parse. Recent Greek pavilions lamented the nation’s financial and political woes, which were in part caused by the very ideologies that now try to ‘diversity’ the OG city-state. If the Hellenic Republic tried to find the ‘foreign’ in Wester’s civilisation’s cradle as per this Biennale’s dictum, it drew a blank and missed even itself.


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

Tamara Henderson, Green in the Grooves at Camden Art Centre ★★★★☆

Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

The whole thing feels like a remake of Wind in the Willows directed by a garden gnome.

Ed Webb-Ingall, A Bedroom for Everyone at PEER ★☆☆☆☆

Ed Webb-Ingall

A Bedroom for Everyone

★☆☆☆☆

How can art improve the lives of communities? Wrong answers only.

Pablo Bronstein, Cakehole at Herald Str ★★★☆☆

Pablo Bronstein

Cakehole

★★★☆☆

Bronstein falls into the late evening stupor of the cheese trolley, the oyster tray, and… the Mars bar.

Soufiane Ababri, Their mouths at Barbican ★★☆☆☆

Soufiane Ababri

Their mouths were full of bumblebees

★★☆☆☆

Ababri’s paintings for the Grindr generation are more cartoonish than they are from life.

The Stars Fell on Alabama at Edel Assanti ★★★☆☆

Mary L. Bennett, Richard Dial, Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Joe Minter, Mose Tolliver

The Stars Fell on Alabama: Southern Black Renaissance

★★★☆☆

The commercial imperative is understandable. The art historical intent, less clear.

Robert Ryman, Line at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Robert Ryman

Line

★★★☆☆

The artist’s signature becomes a distress call.

×