I'm so gay for you

★★☆☆☆

Curated by Sophie Williamson
On until 15 March 2025

Valentine’s Day is good to launch a love-in, but this thirteen-artist “celebration of queerness” is no orgy. Judging by the works selected – seemingly at random – from a related glossy magazine, to be gay is to remain only half-aware of having a body lest it prompts the realisation that so does everyone else.

The fear of sex haunts this project, if not the culture it stems from. Murky images, like Rosie Thomas’ silvery snapshots of street carnivals gesture at sensuousness but they are too hard to read, and so without good reason. Gosia Kołdraszewska thinks she’s a sex rebel, but outright censors her erotic scene with a a cutesy metaphor that saves her subjects the proverbial bother. Paul Arthur’s raunchy 70’s pin-up once came close to a climax. It now seeks the ending on PornHub.

Does anyone fuck anymore? Or make art? At least Lucy Deveral has the nerve to make an old-school lesbian nude, and that alone breaks the show’s mantra of “joy”. All that’s left is to giggle post-coitally, then dive into Olivia Sterling’s body part patisserie.


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

Riar Rizaldi, Mirage at Gasworks ★★★☆☆

Riar Rizaldi

Mirage

★★★☆☆

When an artist thinks he’s understood quantum mechanics, he doesn’t. How will he know if he knows god?

Richard Hunt, Metamorphosis at White Cube ★★★★★

Richard Hunt

Metamorphosis

★★★★★

A dictionary for self-determination written in phrases as they were being invented.

Co Westerik, Centenary at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Co Westerik

Centenary

★★★★☆

Westerik catches his figures in deep contemplation in front of the mirror, in the gynaecologist’s chair, or even mid-orgy.

Ghada Amer, QR CODES REVISITED—LONDON at Goodman ★★☆☆☆

Ghada Amer

QR CODES REVISITED—LONDON

★★☆☆☆

This invites a game of proofreading, in hope that Amer maliciously inserted a greengrocer’s apostrophe into de Beauvoir’s mind.

Özgür Kar, Heavy Ground at Emalin ★★★☆☆

Özgür Kar

Heavy Ground

★★★☆☆

Kar’s insight a fly’s life – or, to have it his way, the whole universe – is fleeting.

Ksenia Pedan, Revision at Cell Project Space ★★★★☆

Ksenia Pedan

Revision

★★★★☆

Pedan’s paintings would rather be anything but.

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