TJ Wilcox

Hiding in Plain Sight

★★☆☆☆

On until 2 October 2024

Vanity proceeds in circles. In the 1920s, the Irish designer Gray built herself a villa on the French Riviera. She and the structure would have become icons, but a more famous architect initially took the spotlight. It thus took a hundred years for a trust to turn the building into a tourist attraction. 

Why we might care is not obvious. Heritage projects often commission artists to “research” and twist complex narratives into marketing collateral. The history revisionist Wilcox made a two-projector film for Gray’s tiny home cinema. A docu-fiction track meets Baudelaire in his frame, laying the ground for some greater legend. 

This trivia is too tiresome to fact-check and should have stayed on the French coast. Only vanity can explain the film’s London outing. The garishly blue, metallic still prints don’t even make for good postcards.


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

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.

Mandy El-Sayegh, Interiors at Thaddeus Ropac ★★☆☆☆

Mandy El-Sayegh

Interiors

★★☆☆☆

For the abundance of material, there simply aren’t enough ideas in the exhibition to go around these Mayfair interiors.

transfeminisms Chapter IV at Mimosa House ★☆☆☆☆

transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

★☆☆☆☆

Lack of care for the artefact is a strange USP for a gallery.

Choon Mi Kim, ACID—FREEEE at Ginny on Frederick ★☆☆☆☆

Choon Mi Kim

ACID—FREEEE

★☆☆☆☆

Some forms of abstraction simply scream ‘my kid could have made that’.

Sylvie Fleury, S.F. at Sprüth Magers ★★★☆☆

Sylvie Fleury

S.F.

★★★☆☆

In Fleury’s car workshop cum womenswear boutique, everything is ready-made and ready-to-wear. But you can’t touch any of it and you certainly can’t afford it.

Josiane M.H. Pozi, Through My Fault at Carlos/Ishikawa ★★★☆☆

Josiane M.H. Pozi

Through My Fault

★★★☆☆

There’s a group, but they’re as indistinct as the faces of Jesus that regularly appear to people on slices of toast.

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