Roe Etheridge

Happy Birthday Louise Parker II

★★☆☆☆

On until 28 September 2024

For nearly thirty years, Etheridge has shot fashion, editorial, and what Gagosian calls “studio” photography, as though to avoid the association with “art”. Etheridge was a latecomer to the game of image semiotics. He nonetheless carved out a practice by mashing up symbols and registers. Meticulously styled product shots appear in his viewfinder as readily as candid pin-up girls. Coke bottles share colour spaces with touching family portraits. His folio is so eclectic that when a duck finds its way onto the studio’s infinity curve, nobody flaps a feather.

The success of these images relies on the active disavowal of context beyond their frames. But in this tiny pass-by display, Etheridge’s method finds an extreme. There isn’t enough information in the assembly for the mind to notice what it is not being given. The prints’ glossy richness reigns.


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

Alex Katz, Spring at Timothy Taylor ★★☆☆☆

Alex Katz

Spring

★★☆☆☆

The emperor’s clothes have moth holes.

Turner Prize 2024 at Tate Britain ★★☆☆☆

Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, Delaine Le Bas

Turner Prize 2024

★★☆☆☆

Even the artists approach this edition with ennui.

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.

Tamara Henderson, Green in the Grooves at Camden Art Centre ★★★★☆

Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

The whole thing feels like a remake of Wind in the Willows directed by a garden gnome.

Cui Jie, Thermal Currents at Pilar Corrias ★☆☆☆☆

Cui Jie

Thermal Landscapes

★☆☆☆☆

The exhibition feels like a lecture on climate change sponsored by the designers of The Line, Saudi Arabia’s dystopian plan for a 110-mile linear city in the desert.

Șerban Savu, The Romanian Pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Șerban Savu

What Work Is

★★★★☆

This Elysium is part panel house block, half Roman ruin

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