Ada Bond, Rebecca Davy, Karen Densha, Sam Owen Hull, Hilary Jack, Rachel Goodyear, Evita Ziemele, et al.

Medusa

★★★☆☆

Curated by Mike Chavez-Dawson
On until 22 March 2025

There is a mode of curating a group show which takes a title so literally that one suspects a hashtag search was engaged in its preparation. This one half-falls under Medusa’s spell: Ziemele’s chick-lit cover oils and Goodyear’s bedtime scare story watercolour are too straightforward as reflections from the myth and reveal little about who beheaded whom. Densham’s bijou gold ceramics are twisted-pretty but inconsequential in context. Dawson and Davy turn to AI but leave even it none the wiser. 

The joke finally lands with Murray’s spaghetti painting and Jack’s sublimely ridiculous rock. Bond’s Gogron, for the love of myth, is painted on cheese, albeit disappointingly that cheese is not gorgonzola. Interpreting a tale this grotesque, this ugly, and, as in Hull’s maquette for a painting, venomous will take thousands of years.


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

Joanne Burke, Oes with works like Esses at Soft Opening ★★★★☆

Joanne Burke

Oes with works like Esses

★★★★☆

Hot metal is that, like water, it spills away from the mould.

Jordan Derrien, Painted on a Wall of the Inn at Marlotte at Des Bains ★★☆☆☆

Jordan Derrien

Painted on a Wall of the Inn at Marlotte

★★☆☆☆

Derrien has his audience discussing the nature of paint drying out loud.

Machine Painting at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Machine Painting

★★★★☆

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

James White: Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon at Anthony Wilkinson ★★★★☆

James White

Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon

★★★★☆

Paint that does this to a pile of plastic coat hangers contends with any reality.

A light here required a shadow at Maximillian William ★★★☆☆

Grant Falardeau, Rimantė Mikulovičiūtė, Benjamin Sasserson, Bu Shi, Dylan Williams

A light here required a shadow

★★★☆☆

Catch the wrong end of the spectrum and forever remain obscured.

Eva Kot’átková, The Czech pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Eva Kot’átková

The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter

★★☆☆☆

The giraffe’s taxidermied corpse is host to an ideological stunt.

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