Soft Opening, 6 Minerva St, London E2 9EH

Olivia Erlanger: Home is a Body

At Soft Opening, contained within five large polystyrene and plexiglass eyes — their slightly warped corneas protruding from the walls — Erlanger presents a collection of domestic rooms, modelled precisely in miniature: a bedroom, garage/gym, living room, bathroom and garden. The white picket fences and floral bedspreads evoke an image of suburban life that those of us who grew up outside of America will recognise largely through its ubiquity in the fictional worlds of Hollywood films. Review by Amy Jones

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Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, St James's, New Cross, London SE14 6AD

Sophie Barber: The Greatest Song a Songbird Ever Sung

Sophie Barber’s canvases drape tentatively across the floor at Goldsmith’s Centre for Contemporary Art. Repurposed from old paintings and materials within her studio in Hastings, Barber’s works suggest child-like fortresses or half-completed patchwork quilts, laid bare for inspection. With its excitable superlatives and hyperbole, ‘The Greatest Song a Songbird Ever Sung’ invites its viewer to group these works together as a foray into the faux-naif style. Review by Olivia Fletcher

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The Assembly Room, 82 Borough Road, London, SE1 1DN, United Kingdom

Elizabeth Price: SLOW DANS

Elizabeth Price’s cycle of three multi-channel video works comes to London’s Assembly Room after showings at the Walker Art Centre, Nottingham Contemporary and the Whitworth, University of Manchester. Review by Kirsty White

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Emalin, Unit 4 Huntingdon Estate, Bethnal Green Rd, London E1 6JU

Sung Tieu: What is your |x|?

Are you aware of yourself moving around the room? The ubiquitous etiquette on entering a gallery – an awkward hello, the tentative shuffling behind a stranger's footsteps and the finickity orbiting of an artwork – makes us makeshift performers in any exhibition. In Sung Tieu’s installation ‘What is your (x)?’ the effect is exaggerated. Where we go and how we think are deliberately choreographed in a captivating mise-en-scène of mirrored plaques and stainless steel doors. You’re encouraged to hold on to your inhibitions in here, listening closely to the cogs turning in your brain, as if waiting for your cue to go on stage. Review by Ted Targett

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Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, Mayfair, London W1S 3ET

Trevor Paglen: Bloom

The gallery attendant at Pace warned me before I could even get a foot through the door. By entering, she explained, I'm consenting to being filmed. It's nothing to worry about, of course— it's just art. But that's precisely Trevor Paglen’s point. He has spent his career exploring the nature of artificial intelligence and data collection and, in this new exhibition, offers a reminder that these practices are never as benign as they appear. Review by Kaitlyn Kane

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Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland

Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra

2019 saw Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca represent Brazil at the Venice Biennale with a new video titled ‘Swinguerra,’ in the Giardini della Biennale. And whilst it’s less than a year since Venice, the world that ‘Swinguerra’ originally inhabited seems like a lifetime ago. Its presentation in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in Dublin comes amidst a global pandemic, blazing wildfires and a deepening culture war on both sides of the Atlantic. And whilst these topics have dominated the media 2020, they have been core issues in Brazil for a number of years with the continued deforestation of the Amazon and increasing violence against LGBTQ+ communities. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy

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MeetFactory, o. p. s., Ke Sklárně 3213/15, 150 00 Praha 5, Czech Republic

Spiritualities: Three Contemporary Portrayals of Transcendence and Beliefs

Curated by Tereza Jindrová, the exhibition inaugurated a long-term programme line titled ‘Other Knowledge’. If one of the pillars of Western modernity is rationality and the division between nature and culture, the involved artists challenge both of these notions and propose to open up to a much wider array of epistemologies. Review by Jaroslava Tomanova

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Fuller Rosen Gallery, 1928 NW Lovejoy St, Portland, OR 97209, United States

Devin Harclerode and Laura Camila Medina: Loopholes

Areas of ambiguity and endless possibilities are the grounds from which the two-person exhibition featuring the work of Devin Harclerode and Laura Camila Medina springs. Visible through the front windows of Fuller Rosen Gallery in Northwest Portland, Harclerode’s ‘Beat Curtains’ (all 2020), featuring resin and epoxy dyed beads that dissipate down their strands into snippets of hair, hint at the hybrid nostalgic-mythic-atemporal worlds that await visitors. Review by Laurel McLaughlin

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Netwerk Aalst, Houtkaai 15, 9300 Aalst, Belgium

Occupie Paradit: Alex Cecchetti and Laure Prouvost

In ‘Eve and the Snake’, the story accompanying Alex Cecchetti and Laure Prouvost’s magnificently expressive ‘Occupie Paradit’, Adam and Eve’s lives were unaffected by children, friends, enemies, celebratory events, bouts of pain or any other unique or unexpected circumstances. Every day was like the other until the snake arrived. And that changed everything. Review by John Gayer

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Platform Southwark, 1 Joan St, South Bank, London SE1 8BS

GLF at 50: The Art of Protest

In 1970, a group of students started weekly meetings at the London School of Economics; they called for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in employment, education, the age of consent and in being treated as mentally unwell. Celebrating 50 years of activism, radical protest and positive queerness ‘GLF at 50: The Art of Protest’ at Platform Southwark is part of a sprinkling of events marking half a century of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and their core assertion that ‘Gay is Good’. Their manifesto (republished for this exhibition) was a seminal clarion call for equality. Review by Ian Giles

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PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, 451 & 465 Saint-Jean Street Montréal (Quebec) H2Y 2R5, Canada

RELATIONS: Diaspora and Painting

In addressing the diaspora, it is a mistake to think national and cultural identity can be rendered in any fixed format marked by an artist’s displacement from one place to another, as if the experience of a second generation immigrant who only knows of their native culture could be compared to someone who is forcefully removed from their place of origin. Review by Elaine Y.J Zheng

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Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

Liisa Lounila: Shadow Zone

There’s a stillness in Liisa Lounila’s moving image works that inspires an urge to slow-down, to sit-down and to stay put, for a while. ‘Shadow Zone’, a collection of Lounila’s works from 2008 to 2020, challenges the viewer to observe the slight nuances in a seemingly repetitive world. Though spanning over a decade, the pieces selected remain relevant today; reflecting on broad themes such as the environment and consumerism, while providing a space in which to reinvigorate our relationship with the screen and digital media. Review by Selina Oakes

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Interview with Cooking Sections

Cooking Sections is a collaboration between London-based Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, who started working together in 2012 while studying at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. The duo describe themselves as ‘spatial practitioners,’ and use a combination of art, architecture and landscape design to comment on the systems that organise the world. Interview by Kirsty White

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Schinkel Pavillon, Oberwallstraße 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany

John Miller: An Elixir of Immortality

The first retrospective of John Miller’s work in Germany, ‘An Elixir of Immortality’ provides a comprehensive overview spanning from the 1980s to the present. Exhibited at Schinkel Pavillon is a divergent and at times incongruous body of work, including sculpture, video and painting. Miller refuses to be pigeonholed or swiftly pinned down, punctuating his work with a beat of wry humour along the way. Review by Eva Szwarc

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