Elegant art installation featuring a draped, peach-coloured fabric backdrop and a matching tablecloth with three whimsical white dog sculptures, creating a sophisticated and playful visual display.

Nicola Singh

Sincere Seeker

★★☆☆☆

Curated by Seán Elder
On until 25 October 2025

The phrase “vocalised gibberish”, which features in this exhibition’s introduction, is a depressing description of contemporary art’s penchant for the exotic evacuated of any aesthetics. Singh casts three toy monkeys – the see/hear/speak no evil line-up – in plaster resin, modelling them after a toy family heirloom. This somehow shows, in the curator’s words, that the artist’s heritage gives her some special relationship to this visual maxim. It doesn’t, of course, but the work’s too dull to invite the consideration of its essentialist claim.

An improvised mezzo-soprano soundtrack half-intently emanates from the sculptures, bringing, as Singh’s practice often does, more claims on cultural signifiers. Those make the fact that the room looks like a wedding cake shop at the end of a busy week more than a little incongruous. White ink prints of the plush toys on black paper, resembling the patterns a half-exhausted roller brush leaves on a bathroom wall, bring no explanation.

Where are the “esoteric rituals” and “emotional pain”? What would it take for art to look like something, anythingonce more?


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

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

Willie Doherty, Remnant at Matt’s Gallery ★★★☆☆

Willie Doherty

Remnant

★★★☆☆

Doherty’s tragipoetic timing can be masterly.

Claire Fontaine: Show Less at Mimosa House ★★☆☆☆

Claire Fontaine

Show Less

★★☆☆☆

Repeat these mantras enough, and the lie becomes art.

Gina Fischli, Love Love Love at Soft Opening ★★★★☆

Gina Fischli

Love Love Love

★★★★☆

What good it is to be best in show when the competition is lame, crooked, or outright fake?

Judith Dean at South Parade ★★★★☆

Judith Dean

New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace?

★★★★☆

Holbein’s skulls impresses no one anymore.

Erick Meyenberg, Nos marchábamos, regresábamos siempre, the Mexican pavilion in Venice ★☆☆☆☆

Erick Meyenberg

Nos marchábamos, regresábamos siempre

★☆☆☆☆

Whatever the purpose of this confusion, it’s not to be found in the gallery.

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