Marc-Aurèle Debut

ON REPEAT

★★★☆☆

On until 1 August 2026

Are gays okay? The question’s rhetorical, of course. Debut’s installation chases orgiastic exuberance to stave off the realisation that the carnival is long over. A pile of used men’s underwear — collected, one imagines, from a mere month’s worth of sexual encounters — hangs off laundry racks as if in a fetish club. An emoji-like graphic arrangement shows what the garb’s owners may get up to were they assembled within penetrating distance. Mechanical club beats blast on repeat, sustaining this cycle without reprieve.

Until 6pm, that is, when the gallery closes. Debut and his lovers spend their nights sleepless, imagining the courage to snap out of this cycle. They admit this much, wrongly believing this confession alone might save them. Pity, then, that they can’t make art out of it.


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

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Lutz Bacher

AYE!

★★★★☆

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The Music is Black at V&A East ★★☆☆☆

The Music is Black: A British Story

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Can there be a “black British music” without Britain or blackness?

Merike Estna: The House of Leaking Sky at the Estonian pavilion, Venice ★★☆☆☆

Merike Estna

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★★☆☆☆

A racket not useful for sport.

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.

Alvaro Barrington, Grandma’s Land at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Alvaro Barrington

Grandma’s Land

★★★☆☆

The party slumps into a half-voiced political complaint and never recovers. This is what happens when instead of living culture, we ‘celebrate’ it.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at National Portrait Gallery ★★★☆☆

Jenny Saville

The Anatomy of Painting

★★★☆☆

There is no trace of the visceral in Saville’s gentle pencil studies, for example.

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