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:

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.

Dryland, the Greek pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Thanasis Deligiannis, Yannis Michalopoulos

Xirómero/Dryland

★★★★☆

It’s Sunday in the village. And the main square is deserted.

Sophie Huckfield: Lady Ludd at Outpost, Norwich ★★☆☆☆

Sophie Huckfield

Lady Ludd

★★☆☆☆

Huckfield crowbars made-up heroes into past revolutions to pose as the saviour in the next one.

Official. Unofficial. Belarus in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Belarus Free Theatre

Official. Unofficial.

★★☆☆☆

Art matters neither to the dictator nor his opponents.

Place Revisited at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Richard Aldrich, Prunella Clough, Masanori Tomita, Anh Trần, Terry Winters

Place Revisited

★★★★☆

One suspects the gallery of insider trading.

Iris Touliatou, Outfits at PEER ★★★☆☆

Iris Touliatou

Outfits

★★★☆☆

These gestures remind the gallery that it is a social space. Unfortunately, they also inadvertently point to its sorry end.

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