Joanne Burke

Oes with works like Esses

★★★★☆

On until 1 March 2025

The risk of working with hot metal is that, like water, it spills away from the mould. Burke’s materials – silver, bronze, and aluminium – which she has worked into arcane ritual objects that one would more readily expect to find in the dimly-lit rooms of ethnographic museums than East London galleries have minds of their own. Some betray their decorative intent without revealing the occasion. Others are miniature charts that would lead the bearer to undisclosed treasure. A couple, resembling musical instruments, invite the staging of a performance whose score was never written.

These forms are exquisite and the little they lack in antique opulence they make up for in austerity. A nod to 17th-century hydromancy in the gallery text already charges the pieces with too much utility, however. Burke’s next demand that they affirm “posthuman feminist phenomenology” fails entirely. This, perversely, only confirms Quicksilver’s independence from artistic thought.


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

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

Rheim Alkadhi

Templates for Liberation

★★☆☆☆

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

Aria Dean, Abattoir at ICA ★★★☆☆

Aria Dean

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★★★☆☆

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Nicole Eisenman, What Happened at Whitechapel Gallery ★★★☆☆

Nicole Eisenman

What Happened

★★★☆☆

There’s a Bosch hellscape dedicated to Trump and a whole “basket of deplorables” polishing their guns in a prepper cell.

New Contemporaries at South London Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

New Contemporaries

★☆☆☆☆

This edition spells ‘stasis’ more than most, and the selectors are to blame.

Christine Ay Tjoe, Lesser Numerator at White Cube ★★☆☆☆

Christine Ay Tjoe

Lesser Numerator

★★☆☆☆

Aj Tjoe’s paintings could make great scenic backdrops to a David Attenborough documentary on the life of wild rodents

Armando D. Cosmos, Nothing New Under the Sun at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Armando D. Cosmos

Nothing New Under the Sun

★★★☆☆

Cosmos wants to redefine STEM as the alliance of science, theosophy, engineering, and myth.

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