transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

★☆☆☆☆

On until 26 October 2024

It becomes harder to understand what Mimosa House is for with each of its exhibitions. The mission statement lauds “intergenerational women” and “queer artists”. The programme spells “Global South” and “intersectional”, too, making this outfit indistinguishable from myriad other non-profits. 

This instalment of a confusing multipart project suggests that women’s innate caring sensitivities can liberate them from sex-based oppression that exploits their very same nature. The thesis is impossible to evaluate, however, because the videos fade in bright lights, their sound bleeds, and the sculpture hides from sight lines. A Boyce installation looks damaged. Even Himid’s framed paintings look out of place, as though the whole thing were a school project staged in a disused office block. The show has half a dozen curators.

Lack of care for the artefact is a strange USP for a gallery. Mimosa House’s shows brim with works that are both poorly fabricated and shoddily installed. Even the website is ugly. Is this how public funding (£100k a year from ACE) makes itself look “subaltern”?


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

Mike Kelley, Ghost and Sprit at Tate Modern ★★★☆☆

Mike Kelley

Ghost and Spirit

★★★☆☆

The challenge of curating a retrospective of a career as rich as Kelley’s is to build a narrative that both lay audiences and art historians can believe. Wood packs the show and pleases neither fully.  It’s remarkable that any artist’s…

Julia Maiuri, Yesterday & The End at Workplace ★☆☆☆☆

Julia Maiuri

Yesterday & The End

★☆☆☆☆

One can only imagine that some unconscious loathing of postmen motivated this project.

Richard Hunt, Metamorphosis at White Cube ★★★★★

Richard Hunt

Metamorphosis

★★★★★

A dictionary for self-determination written in phrases as they were being invented.

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

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

It Will End In Tears

★★☆☆☆

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

I’m so gay for you at Miłość ★★☆☆☆

I'm so gay for you

★★☆☆☆

This “celebration of queerness” is no orgy

Hannah Black: HUSH MR GIANT at Arcadia Missa ★☆☆☆☆

Hannah Black

HUSH MR GIANT

★☆☆☆☆

What’s wrong with rights makes no right with painting.

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