Leonardo Drew

Ubiquity II

★★☆☆☆

On until 7 September 2025

Everything turns to dust: there are many ways to misunderstand entropy. Drew piles up charred and stained wood boards as though to assemble a mountain. Then he does it some more, all the while claiming that this toil finds its own meaning.

That it would is a contradiction in terms. If it does, it’s not in the gallery and not for the viewer. The stack-it-high excess of Drew’s installation aims for spectacle, but its matter is too predetermined to spark revelation. Its smells and textures, likewise, are too obvious and too done already to deceive the senses into oblivion.

The whole get-up’s a ruse, anyhow: a parallel show in the artist’s commercial gallery revealed that the disorder of Drew’s installation work is a side-hustle to cutesy colour-coord grids. It’d take some grand physics to turn the two projects into a before-and-after cartoon strip.


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

looking to the futurepast, we are treading forward, the Bolivian pavilion in Venice ★☆☆☆☆

looking to the futurepast, we are treading forward

★☆☆☆☆

The contemporary is of no interest to a nation whose future is yet to be dug out from the ground.

Josiane M.H. Pozi, Through My Fault at Carlos/Ishikawa ★★★☆☆

Josiane M.H. Pozi

Through My Fault

★★★☆☆

There’s a group, but they’re as indistinct as the faces of Jesus that regularly appear to people on slices of toast.

Lutz Bacher, AYE! at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Lutz Bacher

AYE!

★★★★☆

There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition.

Sophie Huckfield: Lady Ludd at Outpost, Norwich ★★☆☆☆

Sophie Huckfield

Lady Ludd

★★☆☆☆

Huckfield crowbars made-up heroes into past revolutions to pose as the saviour in the next one.

Alexis Kyle Mitchell: The Goal of Our Health at Peer ★★☆☆☆

Alexis Kyle Mitchell

The Goal of Our Health

★★☆☆☆

When Adam Curtis stopped narrating his ‘documentaries’, some stories are wasted breath.

Entangled Pasts at The Royal Academy ★★☆☆☆

Entangled Pasts, 1768–now

★★☆☆☆

Who could have thought that these mantras would turn into rote?

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