Mixed Media

"Inside, you are plunged into near-total darkness, feeling your way along softly curving corridors lined with compact, hair-like roots. And unlike the dank, musty odour one might expect from a mound of soil, Morelos' beast smells unexpectedly good: infused with clove and cinnamon and softened by the cool scent of earth after rain."

"The focus on religion is heavy-handed at times – perhaps loving the Spice Girls or Elvis is just not that deep? – and it feels remiss for the exhibition not to question what happens when these obsessions go too far, if they are always healthy, or if idolising celebrities should be seen as a blanket positive thing. Still, Holy Pop! is a joyous celebration of pop culture fandoms, and all their quirky, messy extremes."

"But for pure painterly excellence, you won't get much better than Glen Pudvine and Harriet Porter. The former's image of two hands unfolding a piece of paper is stunningly executed. The latter's painting of a small, silver pot is beautiful, hazy, minimal, serene."

"Elsewhere, slender ceramic figures are gathered like pawns on a chessboard, though here they are more crowded, more claustrophobic, not helped by the cages covering their heads. What are we to make of these structures? Devices for trapping fruit-eating pests, or part of a wider system of confinement, of lives hemmed into structures larger than themselves."

"But the exhibition does not sing. It spits out theory instead. Every section is framed as an essay, with artworks chosen to illustrate an argument: one bay is based around the ideas of sociologist Stuart Hall, which the works don't seem to illustrate anyway. This is a show that wants to conjure up a utopian place, Panafrica, and make it real, which would be a powerful piece of political enchantment."

"This massive, ambitious exhibition is the Chinese artist at his most monumental, and as a result at his most effective. His subject matter works best at enormous scale, blown up, expanded, shoved in your face."

"Tate's blockbuster show about this rightly beloved artist asks how and why she became an "icon". But I've never seen an exhibition about how Picasso got famous or the cultural invention of Rembrandt. We know they are great artists and how they were historically recognised is for scholars."