James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher

★★★☆☆

On until 19 April 2025

Not taking the Becher’s name in vain was once the sole Düsseldorf school commandment. Welling trained elsewhere and, besides, his claim on typology is also a decades-long story. Yet this two-venue paring of the three photographers’ deadpan architectural meditations is a dead giveaway of Welling as a mere imitator.

Perhaps. The Bechers recorded industrial phenomena with such restraint that their lens critique was evident in even a single snapshot. Welling’s veneration of brutalist concrete – his lens turns to Washington’s infamous HUD building now outlawed under Trump’s classical architecture edict – borders on a fetish by contrast. But if one no longer needs to look at Bernd and Hilla’s grain silos, Welling’s quasi-opportunistic fixation leads to fresher discoveries.


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

Ithaca

★★★★☆

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

Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Wilhelm Sasnal

★★★☆☆

Only in flights of anger does this vision come close to becoming believable.

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.

Yorgos Prinos, Prologue to a Prayer at Hot Wheels ★★★★☆

Yorgos Prinos

Prologue to a Prayer

Prologue to a Prayer

★★★★☆

Prinos’ frames are precise, tight, and formal, as though the street were his studio.

Trevor Yeung, Soft Ground, at Gasworks ★★☆☆☆

Trevor Yeung

Soft Ground

Soft Ground

★★☆☆☆

It’s stressful enough to fuck in the forest for fear of passers-by or the police; imagine having to also look out for curators.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Sprüth Magers ★★★★☆

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

★★★★☆

A police procedural turns into a drinking game of Foucauldian power analysis.

×