It’s hard to treat an exhibition this banal at anything other than face value. Báez paints semi-abstract, vaguely figurative objects inspired by the garden and the seashore. The products of such “inspiration” often end up at street stalls in tourist hotspots. Inexplicably, her oeuvre commanded the confidence of nearly a dozen of SLG’s work-experience curators.
A female figure reads Ben Okri in one of Báez’s tableaux. What hell, it’s warm outside! Other cutout personas blend into the topiary in kaleidoscopic, carnivalesque poses. They assault the senses with all the rainbow’s colours at once. The gallery’s main hall, meanwhile, became a fishing village. It is deserted save for a light ornament, as though in anticipation of some festivity. A blue cloth dropped from the ceiling is punctured with holes more densely than the Caribbean sky is with stars.
Judging by the prominently displayed promotional video, peddling tat to unsuspecting punters is what SLG trains its “fellows” in. Even the contextual references to decoloniality or claims of the installation’s immersive nature are as half-hearted as the work itself. Such kitsch might have been fine in a spinster auntie’s bedroom. In the gallery, it is a cruel trick to play on Londoners stuck in the city all summer.
