Justin Fitzpatrick

Ballotta

★★★★★

On until 20 January 2024

Harpies drape themselves in pearls and wind their bodies around Art Deco ornaments on Fitzpatrick’s bronzer-gold canvases. Multiple copies of Brian Johnson, the 45-year-old billionaire face of anti-ageing therapy, haunt the room. His empty eyes betray a craving for the elixir of youth so consuming that it can only be satisfied by sacrifice. 

In a bout of dark humour, Fitzpatrick nourishes this extractive dependency and prototypes a human growth hormone home brewing kit. The apparatus is assembled from salvaged Christian devotionalia and comes with an order of kindly nuns who watch over the proceedings. Beads for counting – or prayer – meter out the ritual. The reward for taking part in this experiment of life is ascension to the holy orders. 

This would be a cynical caricature if it weren’t all true. Fitzpatrick’s sculpture and painting follow a rigorous research protocol deep into our molecular-spiritual system. Work by work, they build an ornate map intelligible only after decades of devoted study and even then, only to the divine. There’s no fast promise in this practice, but it’s the only way to reverse art’s schism with the image.


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

Nikita Gale, Blur Ballad at Emalin ★★☆☆☆

Nikita Gale

Blur Ballad

★★☆☆☆

Even though the show brings together a few unusual tricks, they are disjointed and leave little for the eye to linger on.

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold at Tabula Rasa ★★★★☆

Elli Antoniou, Ali Glover, Richard Dean Hughes

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

★★★★☆

These works could bear witness to the birth of a star or the heat death of the universe. The curators don’t know which.

Machine Painting at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Machine Painting

★★★★☆

Ask DALL-E to paint an abstraction and it’ll confidently produce a museum-worthy clone

Paulina Olowska at Pace ★★★★☆

Paulina Olowska

Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas

★★★★☆

It should be within the resources of Pace and Olowska’s experience to advance her legend beyond the discretely marketable.

Dominique Fung, (Up)Rooted, at Massimo de Carlo ★★☆☆☆

Dominique Fung

(Up)Rooted

★★☆☆☆

All this tries to be macabre and surreal like in Bosch or Miyazaki but is instead laughably twee.

The Poplar Bestiary at Tondo Cosmic ★★★☆☆

Tamsin Morse, Kris Lock, Casper Scarth, et al.

The Poplar Bestiary

★★★☆☆

This menagerie comes with no humanly comprehensible challenge.

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