Willie Doherty

Remnant

★★★☆☆

On until 10 November 2024

Doherty’s rich black-and-white images are half melancholia, half haunting. Large photographs and nearly still videos transpose a decrepit, eerie Northern Irish landscape to the barely-built Nine Lems. Deserted streets, the woods, even a shore’s silent cove turn into locations for a crime reconstruction drama.

An actor’s sombre voiceover completes this sorry mood board. “Where battles raged. […] Names changed. Language lost.” This land can age a man prematurely. Even the trees are in mourning here. Their memory will fade only with death. 

Doherty’s tragipoetic timing and mise-en-scène can be masterly. This exhibition’s staging skips a beat, however. The installation is too neat, too classically formal. The gallery’s overlit, airless white cube denatures Doherty’s places and asks too much of the viewer far too quickly.


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

Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Wilhelm Sasnal

★★★☆☆

Only in flights of anger does this vision come close to becoming believable.

Claire Fontaine: Show Less at Mimosa House ★★☆☆☆

Claire Fontaine

Show Less

★★☆☆☆

Repeat these mantras enough, and the lie becomes art.

Michael Andrew Page, Claustrum at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Michael Andrew Page

Claustrum

★★★★☆

Page’s tent, brain, and the cathedral take the same form for a pretty good reason.

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

Meeson Jessica Pae

Secretions & Formations

★★★★☆

Oil paint can cause cancer.

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.

Jan Gatewood, Group Relations at Rose Easton ★☆☆☆☆

Jan Gatewood

Group Relations

★☆☆☆☆

Such thin metaphors could only have come from LA.

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