{"id":546455,"date":"2026-07-17T18:17:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/546455\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T18:17:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:17:35","slug":"backyard-biennial-east-review-this-morose-and-meaningless-exhibition-gave-me-a-migraine-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/546455\/","title":{"rendered":"Backyard Biennial: East review \u2013 this morose and meaningless exhibition gave me a migraine | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s rare that an exhibition is so bad you feel compelled to text a friend saying \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t believe the garbage I just saw\u201d as soon as you get out. And if you can walk around this badly explained, undercontextualised, barely linked, poorly thought through mess of a show without getting a migraine, you have a stronger constitution than me.<\/p>\n

This is an exhibition about east London. Or maybe it\u2019s about Britishness. Or migration. Or the climate crisis. Or music. Or global trade. Whitechapel Gallery<\/a> doesn\u2019t seem to really know, so what chance do the rest of us have of figuring it out? The gallery would argue it\u2019s about all of these things; I\u2019d say it manages to be about none of them.<\/p>\n

This is the first iteration of a new summer art festival, hosted and conceived by Whitechapel Gallery, made up of dozens of offsite exhibitions and events across the area, and a central show at the gallery itself. The main exhibition is called East of the Aldgate Pump<\/a>, so you might think it\u2019s going to be about east London, Tower Hamlets, a portrait of the history of migration, manufacturing, protest and collective identity of the area. That\u2019s what the wall text says it\u2019s about: \u201cThe exhibition maps east London as a place defined by movement, resilience and cultural interdependence.\u201d<\/p>\n

And some of it kind of is, such as Rachel Garfield\u2019s film about the history of Jewish tailoring in the city. But almost none of Marwan Bassiouni\u2019s photos of views out of mosque windows are in London<\/a>, most aren\u2019t even in England. Susan Pui San Lok\u2019s video is about the Chinese community way out in Dagenham. Adam Farah-Saad\u2019s installation is very specifically about west London\u2019s Brent Cross shopping centre and Staples Corner flyover.<\/p>\n

OK fine, they\u2019re playing it loose with their geography, at least it\u2019s all about London. Right? Wrong. Rehana Zaman\u2019s dual film installation focuses on seasonal workers and sharecroppers in Punjab and Scotland. Fozia Ismail\u2019s atmospheric sculptural work is about the impact of climate breakdown on traditional Somali basket weaving. Do you have a migraine yet?<\/p>\n

Wild and hypnotic \u2026 Denzil Forrester\u2019s Jah Guide Shaka. Photograph: Richard Shellabear\/Denzil Forrester. Courtesy of the artist\/Todd-White Art Photography\u2060<\/p>\n

It feels as if they came up with an idea and just couldn\u2019t pull it off; it comes across like an exercise in ticking Arts Council England funding boxes without any consideration for the audience or what makes an exhibition work.<\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t get how any of it is related. And it\u2019s the artists I feel bad for, their work crowbarred into a meaningless, vague, wonky framework that makes them look as confused as the curators, who have somehow made the idea of migration and community in London feel totally joyless. This is a dour, heavy-handed, morose exhibition \u2013 and it really didn\u2019t have to be.<\/p>\n

Loads of the individual work is great: Farah-Saad\u2019s installation of Mariah Carey CDs under a huge image of the North Circular ring road is a tender, sad elegy to lost youth; Denzil Forrester\u2019s paintings of reggae clubs are wild and hypnotic images of the heyday of soundsystem culture. But the idea itself, the actual show, is really bad.<\/p>\n

I want exhibitions about migration and communities, about the climate emergency and identity; I just think those exhibitions need to make sense and not suck.<\/p>\n

Near the end, Laisul Hoque has created a snack stand filled with trays of jhuri bundiya, the artist\u2019s favourite childhood treat, making connections between Bangladesh and London. It\u2019s a work about cultural memory and community tensions. And it does mean that while you walk around trying to figure out what the hell this exhibition is about and who it\u2019s for, at least you get to have a snack while you do it.<\/p>\n

At Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 6 September<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s rare that an exhibition is so bad you feel compelled to text a friend saying \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-546455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}