Ebun Sodipo

An Ominous Presence

★★☆☆☆

On until 26 April 2025

The success of Sudipo’s block colour and found image collages relies on hardly anyone looking at them closely. The shimmering reflections from their crumpled aluminium foil backgrounds dazzle the dimly lit gallery. The effect is seductive, certainly, even within the white cube’s commercial austerity.

But look, and it’s all on the surface. Sheets of translucent filters barely conceal borrowed, if not stolen motives. Each layer contributes even less to the history Sudipo is building than last year’s memes.

The dealer, the gallery cleaner, maybe even the artist had a chance to intervene in these objects in bright light. That they did not is, indeed, ominous.


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

Herman Chong, The Book of Equators at Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Herman Chong

The Book of Equators

★★☆☆☆

Chong was probably reading some epic while painting his Equator pictures.

Beatriz González at Barbican ★★★★☆

Beatriz González

★★★☆☆

What’s more 1970 than a Pop art Last Supper on the top of a dining table?

Your Ghosts Are Mine at Palazzo Franchetti ★★★☆☆

Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices

★★★☆☆

This attempt at building pan-Arabic film aesthetics falls prey to the art technician’s trickery.

Aziza Kadyri, the Uzbekistan pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Aziza Kadyri

Don't Miss the Cue

★★★★☆

This dissonance might be intentional. If it isn’t, so much for the better.

Open Group, The Polish pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Open Group

Repeat After Me II

★★★☆☆

The applause was rapturous. A sense of tragedy, however, was altogether missing.

Josiane M.H. Pozi, Through My Fault at Carlos/Ishikawa ★★★☆☆

Josiane M.H. Pozi

Through My Fault

★★★☆☆

There’s a group, but they’re as indistinct as the faces of Jesus that regularly appear to people on slices of toast.

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