HelenA Pritchard

The Homeless Mind

★★★☆☆

On until 13 April 2024

Pritchard’s practice, once happily confined to the surface of a ready-made canvas, has found a new scale in this exhibition. The gallery’s basement sinks under the weight of three concrete assemblies. Their twisted shapes, textures, and menacing dimensions would make a great backdrop for a reality TV programme on Brutalist architecture and earthquakes. 

Death by debris falling from building façades is an artist’s occupational hazard. A couple of collages that accompany Pritchard’s future rubble suggest that collapse was not far from the painter’s mind.

It is a matter of course that one end puts another in perspective. By unavoidable contrast, Pritchard’s smaller maquette sculptures lack either the menace or the lightness commanded by her concrete extrusions. Their number, excessive given the showroom’s subterranean lack of a skyline, leaves the exhibition unbalanced and lacking a guiding principle.


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

Future Relics at Union Pacific ★★★★☆

Future Relics

★★★★☆

“Reskilling” has the same ring in art as “reindustrialisation” does in geopolitics.

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón at South Parade ★★☆☆☆

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón

phosphorescence of my local lore

★★☆☆☆

Rot overpowered this subject and came for the object next. 

Nanténé Traoré at Sultana and Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Nanténé Traoré

She says it's the high energy

★★☆☆☆

Bodies clash with lights in front of Traoré’s Narcissus camera.

Geumhyung Jeong, Under Construction at ICA ★☆☆☆☆

Geumhyung Jeong

Under Construction

★☆☆☆☆

This tech-optimism might have entertained gallery-goers twenty years ago.

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

Tacita Dean

Black, Green, Green and White

★☆☆☆☆

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Sin Wei Kin, Portraits at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Sin Wei Kin

Portraits

★★☆☆☆

This exhibition combines the most vulgar of all art school tropes: juvenile narcissism, NFT kitsch, and mindless referentialism.

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