Carla Busuttil's new exhibition - Choice. Click. Bait - at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg aims to examine growing wealth inequality and the overload of information in the digital age.While focused on her abstract figurative painting that touches on political issues, the exhibition also incorporates new elements.The most notable of these is a video piece made with Chris Saunders and Gary Charles that focuses on a fictional security company called Mosquito Lightning, which has its own badly designed website.However, it's still the paintings that hold the attention here and recall the work of Robert Hodgins in their colour choice and figurative execution.It was for her paintings, while a student at the Royal Academy, that Busuttil attracted the attention of Charles Saatchi, who bought all 13 of her graduate paintings in 2008.While previously Busuttil has said despite her work lending itself to political readings, there's a certain misfired, not quite satirical, not quite serious enough, feeling to the installation work in particular.For all its relevance to the rise of private security firms as the gatekeepers between the wealthy and the poor, I'm not sure that it succeeds in saying anything particularly interesting about this subject beyond its evident absurdities.The paintings, too, while sometimes striking and interesting for their colour choices and arrangements, seem to be infused with an overly earnest messaging that teeters on the didactic and jars with the installation's tone in ways that hinder rather than help.I wouldn't be the first to compare this show to the work of Cape Town painter Georgina Gratrix, whose Puppy Love exhibition earlier this year at the Smac Gallery was refreshing for its use of irony, playfulness, and the exploration of beauty in ugliness.That said there is still plenty to appreciate about Choice. Click. Bait as an opportunity to watch a talented artist exploring new areas in a step along what will be a long, sometimes successful, at other times mixed, artistic journey.If you can afford the sterling prices then you'd be missing out if you didn't add one of these paintings to your collection, because Busuttil looks set to take her place in the canon of contemporary local artists.Choice. Click. Bait is at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg until April 28..