Jan Gatewood

Group Relations

★☆☆☆☆

On until 2 March 2024

“Like people, rabbits come in a variety of different shapes, sizes, and colours”, the exhibition handout warns visitors. Beware, ye faint of heart because Gatewood has bred at least a dozen. She has a story for each and each is more thrilling than the last. The show’s a dive down the warren and it will leave you breathless. 

But not thanks to the qualities of her rainbow pastels. No. These rabbits are, to swap Gatewood’s idiotic euphemism for another, stand-ins for ‘historically oppressed people’. “Children of the projects” appear in one. Others, she explains, are the alter egos of Toni Morrison, David Hammons, and Kara Walker. 

As though this couldn’t get any more patronising, the bunnies preach morals. “Rearrange yourself as an act of humility,” one challenges the bamboozled viewer. Such thin metaphors could only have come from LA. Did Gatewood look at her “In This House We Believe” yard sign and think that it needed some furries?


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

Some May Work as Symbols at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Some May Work as Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s–70s

★★★★☆

Art history can catch modernity in splitting from the past and thus from itself.

Alexandre Canonico, Still at Ab Anbar ★★★☆☆

Alexandre Canonico

Still

★★★☆☆

Conanico’s slight structures look like they could take flight at any moment.

Michael Simpson at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Michael Simpson

★★★★☆

In this meditation of surface disguised as a study of objects, neither is a truer likeness of the events.

David Muenzer, Teen at Final Hot Desert ★★★☆☆

David Muenzer

Teen

★★★☆☆

Muenzer’s messy show bedroom actually is someone’s messy bedroom most nights of the week.

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

Tyler Eash

All the World's Horses

★★☆☆☆

The artist must choose which ground is best ceded.

Mohammad Ghazali, Trilogy: Then… at Ab-Anbar ★★★★☆

Mohammad Ghazali

Trilogy: Then…

★★★★☆

Repetition and framing are photography’s greatest tricks.

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