Acrylic and wire art installation featuring geometric sketches and a monochromatic rectangular piece, displayed on a white gallery wall with metal clamps and wires, exemplifying contemporary minimalism.

Roland Knowlden

Negations

★★★☆☆

On until 26 October 2025

Evacuating a two-up two-down 1970s council home seems like overkill for a weekend pop-up exhibition. A visitor who makes it past Knowlden’s steel spike sculpture – like an exhausted porcupine held together only by zip ties – that arrests would-be deniers in the property’s sunken garden, soon understands that there was no other way: the artist is an architect.

Inside, graphite and acrylic drawings, made more by erasing Knowlden’s hand than applying it, try to be subtle. This is a planner’s old trick; in art, it spared not even de Kooning. Smears, smudges, and transparencies – these images float suspended from shelf edges, sandwiched in glass panes, hung next to the kitchen island – stand out too confidently even against the house’s bright blue vinyl flooring. 

The scene’s ease of means is seductive. Yet the austerity of this assembly is feigned, and it reveals that Knowlden’s is an ill-conceived war plan. Too little is at stake here: the porcupine lost its spines in vain.


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

Material Rites at Gathering ★★★☆☆

Fritsch, Genzken, Oldenburg, Shani, Sherman, Smithson, Thek

Material Rites

★★★☆☆

The instincts are right, but too much makes sense to make sense together.

Chronoplasticity at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Chronoplasticity

★☆☆☆☆

This may have been a good joke but it’s just too exhausting to look at.

Jack O’Brien, The Reward at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Jack O'Brien

The Reward

★★☆☆☆

No narrative emerges from the tonnes of steel and plastic his work consumed

William S. Burroughs at October Gallery

William S. Burroughs

★★☆☆☆

Burroughs should be sexy, right?

Oh, the Storm at Rodeo ★☆☆☆☆

Oh, the Storm

★☆☆☆☆

This exhibitions is trying to explain the concept of ‘crazy paving’ to a blind man. It’s impossible to tell where a work ends and the wall begins.

Flare-Up at Goldsmiths CCA ★☆☆☆☆

Flare-Up

★☆☆☆☆

The social model of disability meets the Romantic notion that consumption makes the artist a truth-seer.

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