Too much clowning

Coming to prominence when sexual and identity politics were all the rage, Cindy Sherman has since shown a penchant for the increasingly grotesque.

Her quiet and convincing Film Stills in the late-1970s and early-1980s, and her later series of social types - suburban housewives, mousey secretaries, designer-clad rich bitches - all showed an acute talent for social observation and a love of dressing-up for the camera.

But her most recent work, a series of brash images featuring clowns, are a bit pointless. When earlier, modernist artists painted clowns they were identifying with an outsider culture, a way of life so alienated from bourgeois aspirations that a simple act of representation became an act of transgression.

And though contemporary artists, such as Bruce Nauman and Paul McCarthy, have also used the image of the clown, these were rarely straightforward acts of representation. Now that even McDonald's has abandoned Ronald, who cares about clowns these days, or what clichès of the sinister/sad variety they're associated with?

Sherman's clowns have a multiplicity of faces, but they all look grim and spooky. We've got a trio of gaping heads surrounding a forlorn clown cowering in a blue romper suit; we've got a girl clown wearing a bigbreasted 'naked' suit; we've got a pig-tailed, goofy clown; and we've got an ugly granny clown. Proof we didn't really need that clowns aren't all jolly and cuddly.

Until Jan 15, Spr¸th Magers Lee, 12 Berkeley Street W1, Mon to Fri 10am to 6pm, Sat 11am to 4pm, free. Tel: 020 7491 0100. Tube: Green Park