Caleb White

  ★   ★   ☆ ☆ ☆             Remaining in Mayfair for the moment, I chance upon the Gazelli Art House. I’ve brought gifts for some London-based friends and – wearing my hiking backpack and wading through the warm weather – I feel like an out of season Father Christmas. The Gallery is empty, save for a gallerist who is on the phone, mid-conversation with – from what I can gather - some sort of historian. He ignores me. His pocket square is vibrant, stark against his navy suit. It is only upon leaving that he offers a wave in my direction, revealing that he had, all along, been aware of my backpacked presence. This space is demonstrably not for me, not in my current get up at least. ‘The Way Forward: Derek Boshier and the Sixties’ spans both floors of the Gazelli Art House, and runs from April 25   - June 28. It is a posthumous exhibition, Boshier – a key figure in British Pop Art – passed in 2024. For someone unschooled in Art Histor...

★   ★   ★   ★   ☆ I return to writing after a considerable hiatus with a small spree of contemporary arts exhibition reviews. The subjects of the following reviews were encountered in Mayfair on Friday 2 nd May. I am in London for a social occasion and, arriving early at Victoria Station, decide to beat the swealtering heat by ducking into a few exhibitions. Up first, ‘this, that and the other: Jacqueline Poncelet’ at Richard Saltoun. Shown between March 11 – May 3 – myself arriving on the penultimate day – this exhibition showcases an retrospective of Poncelet’s varied and impressive career. Poncelet’s work ranges from ceramics to watercolours, each of her works possessing innate character, rhythm and motion. I chose this exhbition as my starting point on the strength of the poster. On it, an image of her ceramic work ‘untitled no. 5’. Within the gallery space, two key sculptures were hidden in shaded alcoves. This bestowed them with an anthropomorphic presence, ...

★ ★ ★ ☆  ☆   I am, once again, in the Whitworth, finding it a midpoint on my commute home – the perfect opportunity to check out their new exhibition after work. Replacing the Shirley Craven exhibition – a personal favourite of mine – we now have the chance to see a handful of works by Malgorzata Mirga-Tas. Though the exhibition makes some peculiar choices, it reinforces the Whitworths position as a key venue for the presentation and preservation of textile art. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a Romani-Polish artist, presents a selection of their body of work. The exhibition is curated by Tate St Ives Director Anne Barlow, alongside The Whitworth’s Modern Contemporary curator Valentin Diakonov and Textiles Assistant Curator Victoria Hartley. Together, they have hung an oddly discontinuous exhibition which nevertheless uses the space well, allowing for a partially successful destigmatising, personalising and reclamatory show. Certain artworks by Mirga-Tas take often negative depic...

 As part of 20/20 project, Manchester Art Gallery is displaying Holly Graham's artwork/exhibition 'The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake' until March 2026. It explores the legacy of colonialism and labour exploitation in the cotton industry, central to Manchester, and to the founding of The Royal Manchester Institute - which would later become the Manchester Art Gallery itself. Both Graham's final product, and the surrounding contextual archival material, are a resounding success - a shining example of explaining an artpiece in a way that doesn't reduce, but deepens the experience.  It a Tuesday. This is the third attempt at taking notes on this exhibition. On the opening day, I had just finished a shift at my new coffee shop, and - seeing the room packed with visitors - decided against taking photos and notes, blocking the view of others. Yesterday, also after a shift, I tried again, forgetting the 'closed-on-monday' sector wide rule. But today I am back. After cloc...

I’ve recently started yet another in a long string of barista jobs. This one, located in central Manchester, makes it easy for me to pop in and visit an exhibition after a shift. So, taking the opportunity to escape out of the cold, I thought I’d give the Central Library a bit of an explore. Now, I’ve been here before, mostly as a warm space to get some work done but hadn’t yet ventured much further than the café. So, noticing a sign for an exhibition hall upstairs, I ascended the steps and to find ‘Portraits of a Workforce’. The exhibition space takes up around an eighth of the circumference of the Central Library. A grand, sweeping corridor which takes you from the central staircase through the Henry Watson Music Library, circling the Wolfson reading room. From the stairs in the Shakespeare Hall, take a left, and it the exhibition is right in front of you. Grand names for grand architecture. Composed of several spoke-like walls, the exhibition space is split into library esque ...