Hannah Tilson

Soft Cut

★★☆☆☆

On until 21 October 2023

A woman’s self-portrait in sickly lime green and yellow acrylic spread so thinly that it looks like a felt-tip doodle. Tilson sports a cutesy beret and a checked trench coat. She turns her absent gaze out of the frame. The pattern of her coat matches the background like in Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg, only less Technicolor. The next painting is the same, just with slightly different (sickly) colours. And the next one too. Tilson is in all of them. And in every one, she’s lost.

This line may perfectly ascribe Catherine Deneuve’s 2023 successor. But if The Umbrellas made the actress an instant star, Tilson’s styled self-portraits are an affectation that will take many years of practice to pay off.


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

Ithaca at Herald St ★★★★☆

Christopher Aque, Alekos Fassianos, Luigi Ghirri, Jessie Stevenson, George Tourkovasilis

Ithaca

★★★★☆

This show drips with affectation that wouldn’t survive a minute tomorrow.

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

Rheim Alkadhi

Templates for Liberation

★★☆☆☆

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

Karrabing Film Collective, Night Fishing with Ancestors at Goldsmiths CCA ★☆☆☆☆

Karrabing Film Collective

Night Fishing with Ancestors

★☆☆☆☆

Little separates this display from a human zoo complete with curators who occasionally kettle-prod the once noble savage into a spectacular rage.

Xie Nanxing, Hello, Portrait! at Thomas Dane ★★★★☆

Xie Nanxing

Hello, Portrait!

★★★★☆

Looking at Xie’s portraits is a little like wearing a virtual reality headset over only one eye.

Tacita Dean: Black, Green, Green and White at Frith Street Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Tacita Dean

Black, Green, Green and White

★☆☆☆☆

Film studies lost to mobile video; Dean phones it in.

Phung-Tien Pham, doesn’t work at Project Native Informant ★★☆☆☆

Phung-Tien Pham

doesn't work

★★☆☆☆

Fad aesthetics for fad ideas.

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