Sorcha Dallas

This exhibition is an exchange with Broadway 1602, a gallery in New York, curated by Anke Kempes, who also wrote the rather excitable gallery notes that accompany the exhibition. The arcane paintings, drawings and collages – one of a group of sexually ambiguous dandies rendered in a style recalling fashion sketches, another a flurry of geometric shapes – powdery textures and semi-anthropomorphic shapes, are mildly diverting at best; alienating, confusing and brutally inconsequential at their worst. When identifying explicitly with the preoccupations of a normative society – or the non-art world – the show is more effective. A bomber jacket, cast in white resign like Hans Solo frozen in carbon, is an almost-witty reflection of the fleeting trends and the most effective work, which documents pedestrians’ reactions to a pool of blood leaking from a door, perfectly encapsulates the spectacle of shock. Mostly dull but occasionally interesting, the show is too esoteric to be absolutely engaging.