Patricia Ferguson

Each Little Scar

★★★★☆

Curated by Brenna Horrox
On until 6 October 2024

No medium is better suited to anxiety and dread than the menacing dark line of the copperplate print. The late Ferguson’s 1980s graphic and charcoal works trace life in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Fear and loss left deep scratches in the faces of the women and children whom these works catch in moments of great trepidation. In one, a knock on the door wakes up a mother’s basest of instincts. In another, a liberatory political banner is a deadly trap.

“There is a gun in her home, and she is afraid”, marks a print titled Ireland. There is no defiance here, and no resolution in peace, either. Ferguson’s later works veered into media abstraction. Three sizeable plates of copper scoured seemingly at random and bearing signs of rust are hard to view through the gallery’s window. This isn’t on purpose, but it gives the show respite.

Elsewhere, the display reveals an anxiety over the status of prints as worthy art objects. A bizarre contraption of steel and distressed wood inspired by Ferguson’s subjects serves as a counter for her smaller coppers. It needlessly compensates for a deficiency not manifest in the work.


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

Stephen Willats, Time Tumbler at Victoria Miro

Stephen Willats

Time Tumbler

★★★★☆

Willats orders fragments of time, matter, and space into data packets on one side of the flow chart and puts them to use on the other.

Harmony Korine, Aggressive Dr1fter Part II at Hauser & Wirth ★★☆☆☆

Harmony Korine

Aggressive Dr1fter Part II

★★☆☆☆

The garish colours which may have carried the story in cinema here are unfitting of their new medium.

Ebun Sodipo, An Ominous Presence at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Ebun Sodipo

An Ominous Presence

★★☆☆☆

Look, and it’s all on the surface.

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.

James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher at Maureen Paley ★★★☆☆

James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher

★★★☆☆

Welling’s veneration of brutalist concrete borders on fetish.

Lutz Bacher, AYE! at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Lutz Bacher

AYE!

★★★★☆

There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition.

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