More exhibitions should have long, poetic, ambiguous names. I’m bored of the classic ‘Somebody Artist: Works 1987-2006’ and welcome a title that doesn’t immediately reveal what’s inside the show. It makes it more of a pass-the-parcel affair.
‘I’ve Grown Roses In This Garden of Mine’ is the heading of this group show, the first at the new London branch of South Africa’s Goodman Gallery, and one video work within it. Gabrielle Goliath’s song cycle is made of tracks selected by survivors of rape. The films of musicians are saturated in single colours, bright sulphur yellow followed by bluesy violet. The piece is reflective but defiant, an acknowledgment of pain as much as a pledge for a positive future.
It’s also the show’s title because the 21 artists represented here all consider healing and renewal after social, private or political pain (or some combination of those). Individually, there are several really interesting works. Ghada Amer’s ‘White Girls’ looks, on first glance, like an impasto white-on-white canvas. Stare more and embroidered, undressed women in the faintest pink thread become clear, either wrapped into pairs or softly pouting on their own.
Another highlight is Tabita Rezaire’s digital work displayed on an iPad in the centre of a massive slab of amethyst. Delivered like a cross between a Ted talk and a homemade exercise video, a mini-version of the artist on screen preaches a gospel of radical self-love. It’s plasticky and pastel-coloured while pinpointing how the words ‘self-care’ acquire a different meaning for black female bodies given the generations of harm they’ve been exposed to.
The exhibition suffers slightly from the regular group show malady of not totally working as a whole given how completely different the artists and their approach to the overarching themes are. But as an intro to the type of artist the gallery is interested in, it’s worth visiting for more than its title.