Trevor Yeung

Courtyard of Attachments

★★★☆☆

Curated by Olivia Chow
On until 24 November 2024

Young previously found recognition for his faux zoology and pseudo anthropological studies of fungi and gay cruising. This time, he dispensed with the live subject altogether and turned the Hong Kong exhibition into a ghostly aquarian pet shop. Rows of watery glass cubes line a hobbyist’s dream adventure space. Some of the aquaria are fitted with fish castles, others bear traces of photosynthetic activity induced by the purple fluorescent light hues typical of this environment.

But there are no fish. A single net miserably dangled over a bucket reminds anyone seduced by this sci-fi hall of mirrors that all this engineering is nothing lest life – and thus peril – are a key part of it. Sadly, Yeung seems to have missed his own point here and, as he did in some earlier work, the lesson slips past the viewer. This fishbowl universe is easy sea comfort but ultimately no sushi.


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

Jack O’Brien, The Reward at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Jack O'Brien

The Reward

★★☆☆☆

No narrative emerges from the tonnes of steel and plastic his work consumed

Matthew Barney, SECONDARY at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Matthew Barney

SECONDARY: light lens parallax

★★★☆☆

Secondary turns the gallery into an American Football stadium. But all the seats in the house are the cheap seats and the game lacks a cheerleader.

The Imaginary Institution of India at Barbican ★★★★★

The Imaginary Institution of India

★★★★★

How does a curator tell an unfamiliar history yet evade the museum’ didacticism and the audience’s dulled expectations? Jhaveri’s ambitious review of India’s testing decades at the end of the 20th century could easily have been a torturous sermon: the…

Florian Meisenberg, What does the smoke know of the fire? at Kate MacGarry, ★★★★☆

Florian Meisenberg

What does the smoke know of the fire?

★★★★☆

Meisenberg’s paintings are either the product of a conspiracy or documents of a conspiracy theory.

Hany Armanious, Circle Square at Phillipa Reid ★★☆☆☆

Hany Armanious

Circle Square

★★☆☆☆

The lightness of being can turn unbearable.

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’.

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