“a crowd is pogoing to The Dreamboats, as they hammer through ‘Misirlou’”
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This week
🧊 Soho House branded lube
🧊 Sean Connery in one of Gaetano Pesce’s provocatively sexual armchairs
🧊 Liquid gold x
Events
Even though it is the last week of July even we are surprised to find out there’s lots to see!
💦 now open | Prem Sahib: Liquid Gold, Southard Reid (nighttime-only activation to soft launch gorg new space at 10–16 Grape Street!) [Tottenham Court Road]
💦 now open | In The House of Babylon (as part of Metroland Culture’s Brent Biennial), Harlesden High Street, NW10 4NJ [Willesden Junction]
💦 26 July | 8pm–10pm | Still Happening, Pushkin House x Kupfer, fundraiser in aid of Ukraine, WC1A 2TA [Holborn]
💦 27 July | 6:30–8pm | All Trace Is Gone, No Clamour for a Kiss, performance by Chris Zhongtian Yuan & Olukemi Lijadu, V.O Curations [Oxford Circus]
💦 28 July | 8:30–9:30pm | Lawrence Lek and Kode9 in Conversation, Reference Point (180 the Strand) [Temple] | £10/25 | Tickets here
💦 30 July | 11am–7pm | Artist’s self-publishers fair, Conway Hall [Holborn]
💦 31 July | 3–6pm | Tommy Xie: hold me again, in the jadeite gaze, Ginny on Frederick [Farringdon]
💦 31 July | 6pm–12am | An Evening of Gentian Cocktails, Café Deco [Goodge Street] | £15 entry
Exhibition of the week
Daniel Sinsel, Sadie Coles HQ, through August 13th. More information here.
At Sadie Coles’ Kingly Street gallery, paintings by German artist Daniel Sinsel adorn the walls, which have been left on a kilter, wonky enough to confuse you but executed sharply enough to perfectly frame the illusionary works in the exhibition. The play between the real objects (shards of glass, hazelnuts) and painted representations in Sinsel’s paintings heightens the sensuality of the works. The compositions are so carefully considered, so well balanced, that the resulting canvasses are brimming with a specific tension, a subtle yet charged electricity, like a summer evening swelling before the rain. The works are imbued with a shy sense of humour; trompe l’oeil abounds and the sexual connotations of the aubergine, a recurring motif in the works, are not lost.
Hot links
📈“The historical relations of up-to-date modern art are the market relations of a capitalist society.” – Yep, things are getting pretty serious over at Artforum, as the editors revisit Ian Burn’s apt essay on affluence and degradation in the art market (1975), in the wake of the recent and unprecedented art worker unionisation. Solidarność!
👾“software engineers should cure themselves of the urge to declare machines sentient by simply reading some effing Heidegger” - Who isn’t obsessed with DALL-E, the AI image generation tool that anyone can have a go at? Tom Whyman delves into the viral phenomenon for ArtReview, musing that ‘at its best, it trades in a kind of online grotesque… showing us things that would not otherwise be’.
💿“I can tell a wrong ‘un a mile away” - The legend that is Kate Moss delivered the goods on this week’s Desert Island Discs. Some admittedly suspect answers were soundtracked by some admittedly great tunes by Kanye West, Neil Young and The Velvet Underground. Asked about that famous cocaine scandal, her answer did not disappoint at 11am on Sunday: “I felt sick and was quite angry, because everybody I knew took drugs,” she is now happy to reveal!
₿ even literature can’t escape crypto - Esquire investigates how web3 technologies could upend how authors make a living. If we considered book series to be like stocks - or *whisper* the wet paintings of emerging artists - readers, investing in their favourite up-and-coming authors, could grow rich as writers gain traction and status. Why not pump the market and ‘start a TikTok account to promote the book via BookTok’ they ask? #eek
🪑“it becomes a muddy mess in the desert when people are traipsing through your home. You have to provide booties” - We loved this article on ‘modernism week’ in Palm Springs where over 150,000 lovers of mid-century furniture, concrete buildings and tasteful right angles flock to the desert to gush over properties The Modern House team would no doubt be sexually aroused by. Read on, and not just for an iconic image of Sean Connery in one of Gaetano Pesce’s provocatively bombastic armchairs…
Add-to-cart
This year’s Venice Biennale must-have accessory was what we are calling the ‘tacky denim ITALY diamante dream cap’ (did you even go if you weren’t seen sporting this look at every other opening in the months since?). For those that missed out, spittle fave Arlette has produced a much classier ‘Teresa Trucker Hat’ featuring a work that was recently on view in the superb group show World Famous Babylon. Get your skates on as only a few of these bad boys are left! Available here.
Parting shot
Holiday season is in full swing and artworld Instagram stories are 90% cliché-chic images of white stone houses with luxurious swimming pools in/around Athens; evening-sun-lit landscape shots of vine-laden verandas in Tuscany; and/or humble-brag post-morning-run selfies in Crete featuring a suspicious lack of perspiration. Apart from fashion designer collector Raimund Berthold’s, that is, who revealed that Soho House now sell to their (increasingly-less) exclusive clientele (via the mini bar) a ‘water-based glide’ alongside classic purple Durex. Happy shagging, spittle-reading SH members!
London’s beating ‘art
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