Review - Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival
There’s an eerily dark, synth soundscape drifting across the galleries in Kettle’s Yard: we could be poised for either a funeral, or rave – actually, it’s a sound collage by Ndayé Kouagou peppered with samples from the theme music of Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
It is part of an installation - Unfinished Sentence (2019), by Tarek Lakhrissi, that pays respect to those impacted by sexism and racism – and its power infuses the entire show. Drawing inspiration from the 1969 landmark book Les Guérillères (The Guerillas), by Monique Wittig, evoking Amazon-tribe spirited resistance against sexism and oppression – this is a power that reminds us of the collective, transmuting individual struggle into a shared strength.
Tarek Lakhrissi, Unfinished Sentence, 2019. Metal, chains, performance, soundtrack by Ndayé Kaougou. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole.
Paying respect to this incendiary emotional landscape is bound to be potent. Experience of resistance – perhaps in our own lives, or through solidarity with loved ones, colleagues and communities resisting homophobia and racism, becomes imbued with fresh strength – an energy of renewal that runs throughout Here Is A Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival. In a world where vulnerability and empathy as human qualities are vilified as weak, empathy and solidarity are central, freshly subverted into a long moment to pause and regroup. As sunlight falls in arrow-like shards above works by Candace Hill-Montgomery, like Angle In Overwhelming Tell Tale (2023), and Under Chaos and Uncertainty Fighting That, Which, What (2025) – it’s easy to feel stirred towards strength beyond the starkly vulnerable. A strength anchored in acts of hope.
Candace Hill-Montgomery, Reluctant Gravities. Navajo sheep wool, linen, silk, kid mohair. Courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Eva Herzog
Chilean poet and artist Cecelia Vicuña’s, perhaps best known for her large-scale ‘precarious’ works are shaped by fragile beauty and impermanence. They weave radical resistance and poetic force into textiles...
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Image Credits:
Lead Image: © Candace Hill-Montgomery. Courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Eva Herzog.
All other images as credited within the photo captions.