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:

Chronoplasticity at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Chronoplasticity

★☆☆☆☆

This may have been a good joke but it’s just too exhausting to look at.

William S. Burroughs at October Gallery

William S. Burroughs

★★☆☆☆

Burroughs should be sexy, right?

Jennifer Bartlett, In the House at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Jennifer Bartlett

In the House

★★★★☆

“Sky”, “roof”, “31”, a mantra turns into paint.

Freudian Typo at Delfina Foundation ★★☆☆☆

Freudian Typo

Condensed Word, Displaced Flesh

★★☆☆☆

The problem of artists who confuse graphic design with art is that they also mistake sloganeering for critique.

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji at Sweetwater and Studio M ★★★★★

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji

★★★★★

Aesthetic cognition or crossword puzzles only rarely bring such perverse pleasure.

Trackie McLeod, FRUIT II at The Bomb Factory ★★☆☆☆

Trackie McLeod

FRUIT II

★★☆☆☆

“Working-class” and “queer” appear in the collateral as obligatory. What doesn’t is “white”.

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