“bacchanalian celebrations full of purgative ritual and blood-soaked animal sacrifice”
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This Week
💦 England as a top-hatted cephalopod
💦 fake roast dinners made from plastic
💦 Cat poop bin thief unmasked as Anthony Gormley
Events
As reported by Seb Summers himself (of Seb’s Art List notoriety) a bumper 100 shows are opening this week in London following the bank hol! We’ve collated some highlights below, but are chomping at the bit to see Amanda Ba at PMAM on Thurs & will be chomping on some pizza to celebrate two years of the cult South London pie shop, Dinner for One Hundred, on Sat at Tele Hill.
🧊8 June | Katherine Bernhardt: Why is a mushroom growing in my shower?, David Zwirner [Green Park]
🧊8 June | Penny Goring: Penny World, ICA [Charing Cross]
🧊8 June | 6–8pm | Steve Bishop: All Ages, Carlos Ishikawa [Whitechapel]
🧊9 June | 6–9pm | Amanda Ba: The Incorrigible Giantess, PM/AM [Goodge Street]
🧊9 June | 6–9pm | Kaleidoscope [Group Show], Workplace Gallery [Goodge Street]
🧊9 June | 6–8pm | Kathleen Ryan: Red Rose, Josh Lilley [Goodge Street]
🧊9 June | 6–9pm | Laura Berger: Soft Bound, Eve Leibe Gallery [Hackney Wick]
🧊9 June | 6–8pm | Tim Noble, Darren Flook [Oxford Street]
🧊11 June | Telegraph Hill Music Soirée, Dinner for One Hundred [Brockley]
Exhibitions
Alex Margo Arden: All Clear, Ginny on Frederick, until 11 July, information here
Is that the smell of bread? Animal feed? My gran’s attic? No, not quite. Something altogether more sinister, more synthetic, is fumigating inside Ginny on Frederick’s ex-sandwich shop space – via a repurposed wall-mounted odour dispenser, the kind that is ubiquitous in public toilets and railway waiting rooms, placed like a religious icon on the interior wall. Alex Margo Arden – a.k.a. Old Drag – has transformed the gallery into a mysterious auction-like car boot setup, continuing her eloquently researched investigations into the histories and contemporary significance of museological displays and the nuances of civil decoration. The largest installation (The Days Before The Time After, 2022) appears to be a shrine of disparate wooden props stacked together as if in the aftermath of a crime scene, ready to be photographed with corresponding sterile numbered labels: woodwormed boxes, dusty cleaning brushes and fake roast dinners made from plastic. Another piece that drew spittle’s attention was an archival page of a Christie’s auction house catalogue framed on the wall; from historical times when the purveyors of cultural taste were selling items decommissioned from public service like ‘mahogany sales kiosks’ and ‘Edwardian washbasins with polychrome floral transfers’ instead of Stella Artois-sponsored NFTs and pieces of planet Mars. Closing down signs seemed to hint at an acute awareness that the physical locations of project spaces (such as GoF’s) tend be short-term in themselves – and, as the kitsch ‘closing down’ ephemera slapped on to the front doors of the gallery seems to gesture, the Elizabeth Line may play a catalysing part in closing things down as well as speeding them up…
Hot Links
🏹 “bacchanalian celebrations full of purgative ritual and blood-soaked animal sacrifice” – JJ Charlesworth bewitchingly explores the second coming of magic and mysticism in contemporary art, delving into the historical crossover between creatives and radical spiritualists, as well as the rising tide of attention paid to indigenous cultural systems and precolonial folklores.
🏴 “England as a top-hatted cephalopod” – The New York Times presents an analysis of the Imperial fictions underpinning the Queen’s Jubilee; spittle was gripped to learn exactly how Lizzy fits into Britain’s weaponisation of the rule of law to ‘codify difference, curtail freedoms, expropriate land and property and ensure a steady stream of labor for the empire’s mines and plantations, the profits from which helped fuel Britain’s economy’. A must-read!!
🎰 “The egg’s arc was the epitome of a certain kind of contemporary Internet success” - For The New Yorker, spittle-fave Kyle Chayka further investigates how the internet turned us all into content machines. *cough* guilty. Quoting theorist Kate Eichron, it’s clear we’ve moved from ‘cultural capital’ to ‘content capital’...
💍 “she belongs in an institution, and I don't mean marriage” – The Pope of Trash (John Waters) and Mink Stole dish out relationship advice for Dazed. The bffls of 56 years discuss taking acid and co-authoring a book, shared burial plots, and dreams of Justin Bieber without his Calvins.
😱 (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ – How have we only just discovered that Wet Brain pod’s Honor Levy has maybe one of the most insane TikTok’s ever?! Follow @lowiqhonorlevy for truly unique content which is best characterised – as @loisgriffinshadyfacts put it – as “idk what this is but its serving”.
Add-to-cart
Underground interiors tastemaker – whose instagram account oswalde.shop has sold to the likes of artist Rhea Dillon and singer Bakar – features on the inaugural issue of what looks to be a new interior design bible. Launched by one of spittle’s fave art publications, Kaleidoscope, Capsule magazine looks like it will be bringing the vibrant energy of sought-after designers like Nanda Vigo, Alessandro Mendini, and Mario Bellini into the post-y2k world where togo sofas are being flogged on TikTok. Available here for €48
Parting Shot
Sir Anthony Gormley: Cat Poop Bin Thief
London’s beating ‘art <3 <3 <3