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

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.

This is the first iteration of a new summer art festival, hosted and conceived by Whitechapel Gallery, made up of dozens of offsite exhibitions and events across the area, and a central show at the gallery itself. The main exhibition is called East of the Aldgate Pump, so you might think it’s going to be about east London, Tower Hamlets, a portrait of the history of migration, manufacturing, protest and collective identity of the area. That’s what the wall text says it’s about: “The exhibition maps east London as a place defined by movement, resilience and cultural interdependence.”

And some of it kind of is, such as Rachel Garfield’s film about the history of Jewish tailoring in the city. But almost none of Marwan Bassiouni’s photos of views out of mosque windows are in London, most aren’t even in England. Susan Pui San Lok’s video is about the Chinese community way out in Dagenham. Adam Farah-Saad’s installation is very specifically about west London’s Brent Cross shopping centre and Staples Corner flyover.

OK fine, they’re playing it loose with their geography, at least it’s all about London. Right? Wrong. Rehana Zaman’s dual film installation focuses on seasonal workers and sharecroppers in Punjab and Scotland. Fozia Ismail’s atmospheric sculptural work is about the impact of climate breakdown on traditional Somali basket weaving. Do you have a migraine yet?

It feels as if they came up with an idea and just couldn’t pull it off; it comes across like an exercise in ticking Arts Council England funding boxes without any consideration for the audience or what makes an exhibition work.

I just don’t get how any of it is related. And it’s the artists I feel bad for, their work crowbarred into a meaningless, vague, wonky framework that makes them look as confused as the curators, who have somehow made the idea of migration and community in London feel totally joyless. This is a dour, heavy-handed, morose exhibition – and it really didn’t have to be.

Loads of the individual work is great: Farah-Saad’s installation of Mariah Carey CDs under a huge image of the North Circular ring road is a tender, sad elegy to lost youth; Denzil Forrester’s paintings of reggae clubs are wild and hypnotic images of the heyday of soundsystem culture. But the idea itself, the actual show, is really bad.

I want exhibitions about migration and communities, about the climate emergency and identity; I just think those exhibitions need to make sense and not suck.

Near the end, Laisul Hoque has created a snack stand filled with trays of jhuri bundiya, the artist’s favourite childhood treat, making connections between Bangladesh and London. It’s a work about cultural memory and community tensions. And it does mean that while you walk around trying to figure out what the hell this exhibition is about and who it’s for, at least you get to have a snack while you do it.

At Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 6 September