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:

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★★★☆☆

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RM, A Story Backwards at Auto Italia ★★☆☆☆

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Having forgotten what the ‘dramatic’ in art stands for, visual artists today too often mistake hacked theory for stage directions.

Merike Estna: The House of Leaking Sky at the Estonian pavilion, Venice ★★☆☆☆

Merike Estna

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★★☆☆☆

A racket not useful for sport.

Co Westerik, Centenary at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Co Westerik

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★★★★☆

Westerik catches his figures in deep contemplation in front of the mirror, in the gynaecologist’s chair, or even mid-orgy.

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