Francesca DiMattio

Wedgwood

★★★☆☆

On until 23 December 2023

If more were more, DiMattio gets close to the limit. In her giant ceramics kiln, everyday motifs like sneakers and knickers clash into the ornate Rococo stove and the Victorian China snuff box. Bucolic scenes adorn wedding cakes, teapots and cake tins turn into totems. Cutesy flowers and seashells spread over floors, walls, and ceilings to near asphyxiation.

No wonder that each item leaves the oven crooked, as though assembled in a distorting brass mirror. This is the artist’s joke which she applies indiscriminately to the Greek orgy (literally) in one corner of the gallery and to the Amazon warehouse (yes) in the next. When she runs out of life’s surfaces to glaze, she lands safely in the one-liner of the Wedgwood mail-order collection.

This opulence has no reason other than DiMattio’s craft which, granted, isn’t nothing. But the elaborately decorative environment of wallpapers and floor mosaics into which the sculptures disappear is a gallery’s reminder that DiMattio’s commodity is available to order in any shape, colour, or size. Add mistletoe and tinsel and the lot would be at home in a department store’s Christmas display.


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

Judith Dean at South Parade ★★★★☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Can't write template file

New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace?

★★★★☆

Holbein’s skulls impresses no one anymore.

The Imaginary Institution of India at Barbican ★★★★★

The Imaginary Institution of India

★★★★★

How does a curator tell an unfamiliar history yet evade the museum’ didacticism and the audience’s dulled expectations? Jhaveri’s ambitious review of India’s testing decades at the end of the 20th century could easily have been a torturous sermon: the…

Urs Fischer, Scratch & Sniff at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Urs Fischer

Scratch & Sniff

★★★☆☆

It’s too early for a funeral, yet there’s no other reprieve in this commodity cult.

Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Yin Xiuzhen

Heart to Heart

★★☆☆☆

Xiuzhen remediates commodities, turning second-hand fabrics into ‘immersive’ experiences.

Armando D. Cosmos, Nothing New Under the Sun at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Armando D. Cosmos

Nothing New Under the Sun

★★★☆☆

Cosmos wants to redefine STEM as the alliance of science, theosophy, engineering, and myth.

James White: Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon at Anthony Wilkinson ★★★★☆

James White

Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon

★★★★☆

Paint that does this to a pile of plastic coat hangers contends with any reality.

×