Lessons in obscurity

Tim Davis's repertoire is consciously restricted. His photographs - devoid of human presence - are all about human leavings, our traces, and the ways in which we degrade the architecture designed to contain us.

For previous exhibitions, during months of photographic investigation, Davis probed the overlooked crannies of hospitals, the overflowing bins of offices and the overwhelming trash of the urban mall, but with Retail he looks instead at corporate leavings and how architecture is avenging itself on man and his habitat.

Retail comprises a modest, rather capsule collection of prints - showing consumerism cutting a swathe through America's rural neighbourhoods and leaving a wake of golden arches, BK crowns and oil company shells beguilingly reflected across the front windows and screen doors of the suburban sprawl.

These non-consensual stained-glass windows created by capitalism's cathedrals are often based in older areas, working people's homes, 'areas that feel quite demented by the presence of these enormous parking lots and neon light 24 hours a day'.

Davis's documentary style records the bursts of commercial colour enforced on a run-down, sallow suburbia, although often he manages to downplay the central focus to the point of squint-worthy obscurity. He succeeds admirably in overwriting Norman Rockwell's Stepford-esque images of dormitory towns, but the scope of the exhibition - only ten images from a possible 20 - is notably limited. Still, it's a lot more engrossing than photographing the office water-cooler.

Starts April 25, finishes May 26, White Cube, 44 Duke Street SW1, Tue to Sat 10am to 6pm, free.

Tel: 020 7930 5373. www.whitecube.com
Tube: Green Park/Piccadilly Circus