Future Relics

★★★★☆

On until 12 July 2025

“Reskilling” has the same ring in art as “reindustrialisation” does in geopolitics. After decades of jettison and outsourcing of expertise and craft, a new fad for the ornate and “made in X” now drives the art market as well as industrial policy. The CNC machine replaced the lathe, the hand, if not the eye, in the artist’s studio, and in so doing laid ground for a performance of nostalgia. 

What was Trump’s “clean coal”, then, and who’ll forge all this steel? Steven Claydon’s Decline and Fall, an aluminium and bronze eagle hanged off its own rope, is right on the nose. Apollinaria Broche’s ceramic flower and silver-plated cobwebs speak to a pastoral aesthetics now only available on Etsy. But a quaint wood, wax, and mirror room panel from Mathilde Albouy stakes a claim on a decorative tradition rejected long ago for more than a single reason. These “relics” must be as reactionary as they are futuristic.


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

Sophie Huckfield: Lady Ludd at Outpost, Norwich ★★☆☆☆

Sophie Huckfield

Lady Ludd

Lady Ludd

★★☆☆☆

Huckfield crowbars made-up heroes into past revolutions to pose as the saviour in the next one.

Rheim Alkadhi, Templates for Liberation at ICA ★★☆☆☆

Rheim Alkadhi

Templates for Liberation

Templates for Liberation

★★☆☆☆

When truth and artifice are so bluntly opposed, what use is aesthetics?

Tyler Eash, All the World’s Horses at Nicoletti ★★☆☆☆

Tyler Eash

All the World's Horses

All the World's Horses

★★☆☆☆

The artist must choose which ground is best ceded.

Amilia Graham, The Crust at Scatological Rites of All Nations ★★☆☆☆

Amilia Graham

The Crust

The Crust

★★☆☆☆

Each show lasts no more than three hours, and it’s bring-your-own booze.

transfeminisms Chapter IV at Mimosa House ★☆☆☆☆

transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

★☆☆☆☆

Lack of care for the artefact is a strange USP for a gallery.

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

Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices

Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices

★★★☆☆

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

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