PAPYROPHILIA included in Paul Carey-Kent's London Highlights

Papyrophilia @ CHARLIE SMITH London, 336 Old St - Hoxton

To 29 May: http://www.charliesmithlondon.com/

Zavier Ellis, who calls his gallery over the Reliance Pub after a family name rather than his own, has collaborated with Chris Westbrook (whose gallery in Fitzrovia is eponymous) to present a fascinating mix of new and old in 40 odd works on paper by 30 artists. Consistent with the obsessive tenor of 'Papyrophilia', there is a high proportion of perversity in the works shown: look out for Caro Suerkemper's beautifully modulated watercolour of a woman bound and trussed; Tim Parr's 'Construction' of chained limbs; James Unsworth's riotously adolescent nasal fuckers; young Irish artist Keiran Moore's inter-sexual characters, one of them using anemones as if they were leaches; Claire de Jong's cheekily joggled magazine page; and Miranda Whall's sensitive 'lactogenetic' portrait of one of her recently-productive breasts, which follow on logically enough from her rabbit and bird drawings in which the rabbit is a vibrator. There's also performance artist Mark McGowan's first sculpture - a tableau of performance left-overs and documentation, including a chips-up-the-nose photo, which fits right in. Even one of the obituaries drawn by Hugh Mendes is of porn star Marilyn Chambers. True, there's plenty of other stuff from still lives to landscapes, but I'd just come from White Cube...