Houldsworth’s programme doesn’t get the recognition it may deserve, perhaps because so much of it looks ‘outsider’ as a matter of branding. Nakahara’s mix of studied naïveté and accidental surrealism is a case in point. Biblical floods, the comet’s fall, and the odd tsunami mercilessly toss his protagonists about before the painter makes for them a life raft of cherry blossom. The canvases, small enough to protest innocence, are disarming enough. Their sculptural companions, like the pair of child lovers in a birdcage, turn sickly ‘cute’ like a Labubu. They speak over the wind’s rush with childlike ennui of an artist making work solely for himself.
Maso Nakahara Floating Through Time
Maso Nakahara
Floating Through Time
★★★★☆
On until 4 October 2025
notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:
Pope.L
Pope.L
Hospital
★★★☆☆
This project lands in the joke section of Animal Farm and not as a prophecy of the Jan 6th insurrection.
Yuki Nakayama
Yuki Nakayama
After the Rain
★☆☆☆☆
Can an installation be too site-specific?
Abel Auer
Abel Auer
The shadow of tomorrow draws an ancient silhouette
★★★☆☆
Auer is more interested in the fate of painting than humanity and thus stands apart from the army of zealots who make eco art today.
Mike Kelley
Mike Kelley
Ghost and Spirit
★★★☆☆
The challenge of curating a retrospective of a career as rich as Kelley’s is to build a narrative that both lay audiences and art historians can believe. Wood packs the show and pleases neither fully. It’s remarkable that any artist’s…
Stuart Middleton
Stuart Middleton
The Human Model
★★☆☆☆
An interest in material is core to this practice but Middleton mistrusts his instincts.
Divine Southgate-Smith
Divine Southgate-Smith
Navigator
★☆☆☆☆
It is too late to save the regime, yet too early to mourn it.
