Silently, childhood’s crystalline paths sank in the garden - Oddaný Gallery

I often find that curator’s texts that accompany exhibitions leave me more confused after reading them. Instead of making the vision clearer, I’m usually left with the feeling that the curator wants me to think they’re smarter than me, and that they see something in the work that I don’t. Maybe in part that’s my own insecurity about not “getting it” coming through, but also in part I think it’s a hatred for the over intellectualisation of art and the aptly named “art wank” of it all. BUT!!! Ava Leach-Absalom and Mia Lewin manage to avoid this and instead leave me with a text which “evokes a world of memory not as a linear archive but a flickering presence” - a piece of writing that truly pulls this show together. And! their writing mirrors George Trackl’s poem from which they’ve drawn their inspiration! Oddaný’s current show draws its title from George Trakl’s Memory (fragment); Silently, childhood’s crystalline paths sank in the garden. Memories and remnants of the past are threads that draw this exhibition together, as well as an aesthetic sensibility full of soft neutrals contrasting an industrial feeling.