Julia Maiuri

Yesterday & The End

★☆☆☆☆

On until 13 January 2024

Maiuri’s oil copies of found film stills and promotional photographs from Hollywood’s golden age make a perfect show for the postage stamp collector. Not only will her bijou paintings fit through the letterbox, they also come in a choice of bright colours that would readily set the first class stamp apart even in a busy collection. Women’s faces and objects lifted from black and white thrillers fill the frames to bursting. Stylised retro typography signals timeless nostalgia. These scenes are at once familiar and unplaceable, as though designed to appeal to all, yet grant the illusion of depth to the would-be connoisseur. For the philatelist on a budget, Maiuri even reprised her first day covers in miniature on unprimed and presumably cheaper canvas, effectively painting each image twice.

But seeing them once would be plenty. One can only imagine that some unconscious loathing of postmen or Hollywood motivated this project. Maiuri’s hatred of paint, on the other hand, is evident.


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

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

Tacita Dean

Black, Green, Green and White

★☆☆☆☆

Film studies lost to mobile video; Dean phones it in.

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

Ksenia Pedan

Revision

★★★★☆

Pedan’s paintings would rather be anything but.

Maso Nakahara: Floating Through Time at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Maso Nakahara

Floating Through Time

★★★★☆

Biblical floods, the comet’s fall, and the odd tsunami mercilessly toss Nakahara’s protagonists about.

Marina Abramović, 7 Deaths of Maria Callas ★☆☆☆☆

Marina Abramović

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

★☆☆☆☆

Abramović wants to destroy all performance and all women until she holds the monopoly over stage death.

Freudian Typo at Delfina Foundation ★★☆☆☆

Freudian Typo

Condensed Word, Displaced Flesh

★★☆☆☆

The problem of artists who confuse graphic design with art is that they also mistake sloganeering for critique.

Slawn at Saatchi Yates ★★☆☆☆

Slawn

★★☆☆☆

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