There are two reasons to see this show. One is that it collects so many must-see works that you might not have seen some of them before. The other is that the exhibition is a Johnsonian effort to catalogue the modern-day cult of Gaia and you might never have known without it that all female artists are gentle nags.
Unparadoxically, these are also reasons not to see this show. The works are ‘diverse’, but most feel the same as the next. Too many deadpan landscape photographs turn intrigue into fatigue and into paralysis. And this anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-male dictionary of environmental resistance is even more biased than the one it seeks to replace.
And that’s a pity because why we insist that women are and will save the Earth is forever intriguing. Individually, each practice on show could choose to worship or dance on Gaia’s altar. But in this Hades, the works fall prey to other agendas that call for dull slogans, not myths.
