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:

Willie Doherty, Remnant at Matt’s Gallery ★★★☆☆

Willie Doherty

Remnant

★★★☆☆

Doherty’s tragipoetic timing can be masterly.

Anastasia Pavlou, Reader at Hot Wheels ★★☆☆☆

Anastasia Pavlou

Reader, Part 2; The Reader Reads Words in Sentences

★★☆☆☆

In this game of aesthetic cognition, the idea which survives is of the artist thinking.

Open Group, The Polish pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Open Group

Repeat After Me II

★★★☆☆

The applause was rapturous. A sense of tragedy, however, was altogether missing.

Josèfa Ntjam’s, swell of spæc(i)es, Venice ★★☆☆☆

Josèfa Ntjam

swell of spæc(i)es

★★☆☆☆

Ntjam’s Biennale presentation has all the hallmarks of world-building ambition. For one, it boasts two separate locations, one dedicated solely to the work’s public programme. The main feature is housed in a giant purpose-made structure which occupies a third of…

Meeson Jessica Pae, Secretions & Formations at Carl Kostyál ★★★★☆

Meeson Jessica Pae

Secretions & Formations

★★★★☆

Oil paint can cause cancer.

Siobhan Liddell, Been and Gone at Hollybush Gardens ★★☆☆☆

Siobhan Liddell

Been and Gone

★★☆☆☆

A twee aesthetics native to a grandmother’s mantlepiece collection of tourist souvenirs and devotional figurines.

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