Shu Lea Cheang

Scifi New Queer Cinema, 1994-2023

★★☆☆☆

On until 20 April 2024

Warning visitors that Cheang’s video works “contain explicit sexual material, nudity, and strobe effects” as they leave the premises makes this gallery the champion of understatement and misrepresentation. The Taiwanese activist Cheang may be a pioneer of ‘alternative’ and ‘queer’ cinema who warrants a PhD thesis on post-punk, post-AIDS, or an altogether post-sex future. But even a brief sample of this screening programme reveals that, above all, she is a pornographer. The gallery’s darkened screening room offers the passer-by relief through hardcore sex which he would otherwise need to search for online with keywords like ‘vintage’, ‘Asian’, and ‘fantasy’. 

The gallery’s verbose text hits the queer theory tropes but does little to explain how the straight couples fucking on screen contribute to anyone’s liberation. It does even less to encourage in-depth scrutiny of the over four hours of material in the exhibition. With content this gratuitously explicit and a curator so absent, it’s a miracle that this project wasn’t shut down by the licencing, or indeed art-historical authorities.


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

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, It Will End In Tears at Barbican Curve ★★☆☆☆

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

It Will End In Tears

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With the right lighting, this story could be a mid-century colonial classic.

Joshua Leon, The Missing O and E at Chisenhale Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Joshua Leon

The Missing O and E

★☆☆☆☆

This embarrassing display indicts today’s second-fiddlers with narcissism and egomania.

Sin Wei Kin, Portraits at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Sin Wei Kin

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★★☆☆☆

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The Poplar Bestiary at Tondo Cosmic ★★★☆☆

Tamsin Morse, Kris Lock, Casper Scarth, et al.

The Poplar Bestiary

★★★☆☆

This menagerie comes with no humanly comprehensible challenge.

Fake Barn Country at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Fake Barn Country

★☆☆☆☆

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A Comparative Dialogue Act, Luxemburg pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Andrea Mancini, Every Island

A Comparative Dialogue Act

★★☆☆☆

Stage fright is real. Cowardice is another thing altogether.

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