Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia

Grown: The Altering of Innocence and Experience

★★★★☆

On until 25 July 2026

Onwechi-Garcia’s hangings turn the gallery into a night-in-the-museum dream sequence. Her teal pastels and watercolours animate centuries of myth, mixing chronology and provenance. There’s a lifted Blake and maybe a Hogarth, and a paraphrased Goya. A broken Greek vase could be a source here, and that medieval illumination must have taken reverie to copy. These large, floating drawings, having refused their customary framings, break out in storied, fragile opulence.

Such fables are pure pleasure to narrate, yet their wealth of references overwhelms. Does the artist care for the history she dwells in, or does her maze confirm civilisation’s loss inside it? It’s hard to discern this from Onwechi-Garcia’s hand alone. Some of her characters take on a life of their own, others are stilted and composed a little too tightly. A set of Freudian slips —steel snakes, get it? — confuse transmission and fantasy emission.


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

HelenA Pritchard, The Homeless Mind at TJ Boulting ★★★☆☆

HelenA Pritchard

The Homeless Mind

★★★☆☆

Death by debris falling from building façades is an artist’s occupational hazard.

Roland Knowlden: Negations at House Work Presents ★★★☆☆

Roland Knowlden

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★★★☆☆

An exhausted porcupine and an architectural war plan.

Claire Fontaine: Show Less at Mimosa House ★★☆☆☆

Claire Fontaine

Show Less

★★☆☆☆

Repeat these mantras enough, and the lie becomes art.

Quentin James McCaffrey at Alison Jacques ★★☆☆☆

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★★☆☆☆

McCaffrey fails to distinguish between the frame and what’s inside it.

Robert Rauschenberg, ROCI at Thaddeus Ropac ★★★☆☆

Robert Rauschenberg

ROCI

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This project outs Rauschenberg as a propagandist if not an outright Fed.

Matthew Barney, SECONDARY at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

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SECONDARY: light lens parallax

★★★☆☆

Secondary turns the gallery into an American Football stadium. But all the seats in the house are the cheap seats and the game lacks a cheerleader.

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