Backyard Biennial: East review – this morose and meaningless exhibition gave me a migraine

Whitechapel Gallery, London I feel bad for the artists whose work has been crowbarred into a wonky show about migration, protest, climate and identity It’s rare that an exhibition is so bad you feel compelled to text a friend saying “you wouldn’t believe the garbage I just saw” as soon as you get out. And if you can walk around this badly explained, undercontextualised, barely linked, poorly thought through mess of a show without getting a migraine, you have a stronger constitution than me. This is an exhibition about east London. Or maybe it’s about Britishness. Or migration. Or the climate crisis. Or music. Or global trade. Whitechapel Gallery doesn’t seem to really know, so what chance do the rest of us have of figuring it out? The gallery would argue it’s about all of these things; I’d say it manages to be about none of them. Continue reading...