Castor - News

Alan Magee: Data Dust, Dust Data - Review
Rebecca Morrill - This Is Tomorrow

Periodically, in curatorial and museological circles, studies appear and debates rage about why an exhibition visitor is more likely to turn left or turn right upon entering a gallery space. Some believe the decision to be driven by an individual’s innate predisposition or their cultural background, while others think it is dictated by the display itself – the curator’s choice. Upon entering ‘Data Dust, Dust Data’, Alan Magee’s second exhibition at Castor Projects, the visitor is immediately confronted by two contrasting artworks: go left towards a hanging, high-tech exhibit that includes a tangle of wires and exposed circuitry and a motionless robotic arm, or right towards a chest-height, curvilinear plinth topped with black foam and displaying a dozen small, pinkish objects... read more

Lindsey Mendick: The Ex Files - Review
Vanessa Murrell - Coeval Magazine

According to artist Lindsey Mendick, her latest breakup hurt so much it felt like her ex-boyfriend had punched her in the ribs. However, the artist is now finally moving on at ‘The Ex Files’, at Castor Projects, London, where her five former boyfriends have all been through the ritual of being fired in the kiln and, as if mutilated in an alien invasion, are immortalised as sickly and dribbling ceramic busts, in an endeavour for the artist to put the past behind... read more

Jack West: Last Man Standing - Review
Martin Holman - Art Monthly

Jack West’s installation offers and image of creative redundancy. Found among his new sculptures (all dated 2019) are aluminium, oak, rubber, brass, wood, plaster and other metals. Some materials are spray-painted in solid colours and some masquerade as facsimiles of other materials, like wood shaped into miniature lumps of coal or rock. Indeed, role-playing is a practical possibility in this show. In a brief text, the artist delves into the mindset that gamers might recognise from when they graduated to blooded veteran from being a green novice, humiliated and outplayed by experience players... read more

Miriam Naeh: Tall Tales, Tall Tails - Review
Cara Bray - Boundary

Walking into Miriam Naeh’s ‘Tall Tales, Tall Tails,’ I’ve stumbled across the remnants of a scene I’m not so sure if I’m supposed to have seen. In the centre of the room, a burnt out fire not so long ago extinguished, reveals small skeletal bones settled amongst glowing embers and discarded objects, ashes consuming the final particles of life.Five white plinths surround the middle space, harbouring habitual evidence of unfamiliar life forms that remain unmoved since my entrance. Bulging bodies ooze eerily from behind the painted surfaces, unable to fully contain their swollen, lumpy mass. Nostrils, nipples, toes and tongues creep outwardly from dark holes, searching blindly for a hint of presence, whilst videos implanted inside the plinths beckon me to move closer, but still offer no explanation of the narrative on display... read more

Derek Mainella: It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine - Review
Jillian Knipe - Wall Street International

.. we're up close but strangely at a great distance from the content of Mainella's works. With compositions derived from image creation and editing programmes, their visual prompts reassure us with familiarity, simultaneously cold shouldering our gaze with the indifference of a passive screen. Take the checkered sections of 'Untitled (shopping envy)' and its neighbour 'Untitled (in tatters)'. With popular patterns of Louis Vuitton luggage, image software placeholders and hallway tiles, they trigger comforting recognition while directing us to empty, temporary, nowhere places... read more

Jack West: Time and Attendance - Review
William Davie - This Is Tomorrow

The focus here is on his video work. Two other videos flank ‘Double Six’ and are each mounted on two floor to ceiling metal supports. In them, various machines undertake tasks with no meaning while emitting the sounds of the actions performed – chains dragging along surfaces, squeaking wheels, metal hitting surfaces. In these videos the camera pans around, over and under the subjects, at times causing mild sensations of vertigo. The videos exist in a digital purgatory with nothing around them apart from pixels and hyperbolic colour palettes emulating materials we know... read more

Barry Reigate: Do Zombies Dance to Love in C Minor - Review
Gulnaz Can - The Protagonist Magazine

Reigate's description of spraying paint is vivid: firing, shooting tiny atomic particles of acrylic upon a surface – the canvas, infected by history. Going back to layers, his use of the airbrush creates a sense of illusion of depth and multiple materials throughout the work. The Canvases require some time to look at, as they seem to be almost three dimensional, and sometimes even appear to be moving as a result... read more

Kate McMillan : Stones for Dancing, Stones for Dying - Review
Issey Scott

.. encounter the recurring motif of plaster and bronze being used together. Recognising the media of each piece feels like the artist provoking a discussion into materiality in contemporary art, by which we observe both an end product and the material which has been put through a manual process. There is a certain sense of the corporeal, and human impact, in McMillan's show, in that there is a constant dichotomy between the natural and the synthetic, challenging the viewer to question both and wonder how we generate this binary... read more