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:

Riar Rizaldi, Mirage at Gasworks ★★★☆☆

Riar Rizaldi

Mirage

★★★☆☆

When an artist thinks he’s understood quantum mechanics, he doesn’t. How will he know if he knows god?

Max Boyla, Crying like a fire in the sun at Workplace ★★☆☆☆

Max Boyla

Crying like a fire in the sun

★★☆☆☆

Rothko’s abstractions are said to have induced tears in viewers overwhelmed by abstraction. Staring at the sun here, however, barely causes blindness.

Joseph Awuah-Darko, How is your day going? at Ed Cross ★★☆☆☆

Joseph Awuah-Darko

How is your day going?

★★☆☆☆

This project relies on layers of gimmicks and, sadly, they show through Awuah-Darko’s thick palette knife impasto.

Michael Andrew Page, Claustrum at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Michael Andrew Page

Claustrum

★★★★☆

Page’s tent, brain, and the cathedral take the same form for a pretty good reason.

Adriano Costa, ax-d. us. t at Emalin ★★★☆☆

Adriano Costa

ax-d. us. t

★★★☆☆

Form triumphs over detritus.

Ranti Bam: Sacred Groves at South London Gallery

Ranti Bam

Sacred Groves

★★★☆☆

The whimsical freedom of Bam’s overgrown pot plants is an illusion.

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