Pauline Boty

A Portrait

★★★★☆

On until 24 February 2024

Pauline Boty was half pop artist, half actress, and in her mythology half pin-up it girl. The swinging ’60s would have been the perfect time for someone of Boty’s charisma to make a career of three halves. But she died young barely a decade into her practice, leaving a legacy of painting, collage, stained glass, and TV drama for speculation.

Although Boty was posthumously quite the rage in Poland’s soc-realist ’80s, it wasn’t until the again roaring ’90s that interest in her surviving oeuvre hit the UK art scene. Gazeli’s modest exhibition now brings a handful of Boty’s works – somewhat chaotic paper and gouache collages and oil paintings that could have been collages too – together with archives and tributes.

This mixes the woman and her legend, but without the air of mystery the artist enjoyed during her lifetime. Today, when a creator’s presence in their work is subject to TikTok’s terms of service, Boty’s multiple faces are challenging. She poses seductively on the cover of Men Only and in Michael Ward’s photographs, she lifts her dress for the camera. Such emancipation may have been a strategy for Pop art’s leading female founder. Today, its prompts aesthetic suspicion.


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

Victor Man: The Absence That We Are at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Victor Man

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★★★☆☆

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Meeson Jessica Pae, Secretions & Formations at Carl Kostyál ★★★★☆

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Secretions & Formations

★★★★☆

Oil paint can cause cancer.

Aria Dean, Abattoir at ICA ★★★☆☆

Aria Dean

Abattoir

★★★☆☆

Visuals of her own making overpower the artist.

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón at South Parade ★★☆☆☆

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón

phosphorescence of my local lore

★★☆☆☆

Rot overpowered this subject and came for the object next. 

Shu Lea Cheang at Project Native Informant ★★☆☆☆

Shu Lea Cheang

Scifi New Queer Cinema, 1994-2023

★★☆☆☆

With material this gratuitously explicit and a curator this absent, it’s a miracle that this project wasn’t shut down by the licencing, or indeed art-historical authorities.

Nicola Singh: Sincere Seeker at Cubitt ★★☆☆☆

Nicola Singh

Sincere Seeker

★★☆☆☆

What would it take for art to look like something, anything once more?

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