RM

A Story Backwards

★★☆☆☆

On until 3 December 2023

The installation consists of only a handful of elements: five yellow mesh hangings which divide the gallery, four oversized kitchen colanders with text engravings, a pair of traffic lights. The constellation turns the gallery into a stage set in search of a script.

The programme promises the world. We’re watching comedia dell’arte! These objects are “experiences of power” and “satires of social hierarchies”! They question “agency and authority” and engage us in “roleplay”!

All those would be great plot twists, but the play has been cancelled. The actors are missing and there is no story, neither forward nor back.

Why theatre, why these notions, why these props? Having forgotten what the ‘dramatic’ in art stands for, visual artists today too often mistake hacked theory and mistranslated philosophy for stage directions. A tragedia dell’arte for our times.


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

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

Willie Doherty

Remnant

★★★☆☆

Doherty’s tragipoetic timing can be masterly.

Some May Work as Symbols at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Some May Work as Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s–70s

★★★★☆

Art history can catch modernity in splitting from the past and thus from itself.

Tyler Eash, All the World’s Horses at Nicoletti ★★☆☆☆

Tyler Eash

All the World's Horses

★★☆☆☆

The artist must choose which ground is best ceded.

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

Claire Fontaine

Show Less

★★☆☆☆

Repeat these mantras enough, and the lie becomes art.

Herman Chong, The Book of Equators at Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Herman Chong

The Book of Equators

★★☆☆☆

Chong was probably reading some epic while painting his Equator pictures.

Tarek Lakhrissi, Spit at Nicoletti ★★★☆☆

Tarek Lakhrissi

Spit

★★★☆☆

Writing poetry is hard enough.

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