“a little kick in the pedestal”
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This week
💦 kylikes, kraters and bas-reliefs
💦 TWO hotly-anticipated new gallery openings
💦 The Worst Art Job Listing Ever Created
Events
Events are back lol! This week is BUSTLING with a host of events and even two new galleries opening: a. Squire and Brunette Coleman have their inaugural exhibitions opening on Friday and Saturday respectively, and we can’t wait! Other highlights of the week include R.I.P. Germain’s first major solo institutional UK show at ICA, Joe Bobowicz in conversation with Emmanuel Shogbolu at Harlesden High Street and, after her insane SS23 presentation this week, we’re dying to go to Mowalola’s first club night, Club Spider, at Colour Factory on Saturday. See you on the dancefloor…x
🧊 21 Feb | 6–11pm | R.I.P. Germain: Jesus Died for Us We Will Die For Dudus, ICA [Charing Cross]
🧊 21 Feb | 7pm | Nino Barraco tasting at Noble Fine Liquor [Bethnal Green]
🧊 22 Feb | 6–8pm | Sam Williams: Deep in the Eye and The Belly (Part One), San Mei Gallery [Stockwell]
🧊 22 Feb | 6–8pm | Leonardo Devito: Piccolo Testamento, The Artist Room [Piccadilly Circus]
🧊 22 Feb | 5–8pm | Spring without End: Stevie Dix, Danny Fox, Norman Hyams, Hannah Barry Gallery [Peckham Rye]
🧊 22 Feb | 6–9pm | Behold (A Show About Touch) curated by Sasha Galitzine and Graham Little, 56-60 Conduit Street [Oxford Circus]
🧊 22 Feb | 6–9pm | Jack Laver, ZÉRUÌ, Unit 10, Vanguard Court SE5 8QT [Camberwell]
🧊 23 Feb | 6–9pm | Finissage & talk by Joe Bobowicz for Emmanuel Shogbolu: Pieces of a SCATTSMAN, Harlesden High Street in partnership with Ridley Road Project Space [Willesden Junction]
🧊 23 Feb | 6–9pm | Aidan Duffy: young coin rite, South Parade [Deptford]
🧊 23 Feb | 6-9pm | Pippa El-Khadi Brown: Walls Who Whisper, Lychee One [London Fields]
🧊 24 Feb | Evangeline: Chaff, A.Squire *new gallery alert* [Shoreditch]
🧊 24 Feb | 9-930 pm | Abakanowicz Today: Tosia Leniarska, Wojchiech Rusin and Anna Jaskiewicz in Conversation, Tate Lates [Blackfriars]
🧊 25 Feb | 6–9pm | Garrett Pruter and Jacky Connolly: PHANTOM EDIT, Brunette Coleman *new gallery alert* , Fitzrovia Chapel [Oxford Circus]
🧊 25 Feb | 11pm | Mowalola presents: Club Spider, Colour Factory [Hackney Wick]
Exhibition of the week
The Moth and the Thunderclap, Modern Art, Helmet Row, until 18 March, information here.
Hot on the heels of Michael Werner inviting Andrew Bonacina to curate for them, Stuart Shave’s Modern Art have roped in Simon Grant to oversee their current show: The Moth and the Thunderclap. The editor of Tate Etc. and co-editor of chic and niche fold-out mag Picpus (with collector and Cabinet gallery backer Charles Asprey) has a goldmine Insta account that has accrued 16.5k followers for his ability to surface rare and unusual artworks – often surreal, often mystical, sometimes creepy – that sit outside of market hype. At Modern Art’s tranquil Helmet Row space, he has installed a mélange of works from modernism to the present. Despite the show being hung so busily – more works feature in the exhibition than Shave usually shows all year in this space! – there is an aura of taste-making authority. As expected, the murky-lonely-brown painting trend was in full force, think Frank Walter, Andrew Cranston, and Justin Caguiat. Classic spittle faves Oscar Tuazon, Co Westerik, David Byrd and Vija Celmins were also on view alongside emerging names-to-watch like Alyina Zaidi and Ever Baldwin. We were particularly fond of lesser-known discoveries such as English surrealists Cecil Collins and Vidya Gastaldon, French artist Vidya Gastaldon, and Belgian self-taught artist Solange Knopf, to name but a few. The titular work by American artist Charles Burchfield, whose paintings recreate landscapes with an intensity we can only assume conveys the feeling of being high on acid, would be in our cart home – if we were that way inclined. Inspired, spittle left the show wondering which writer-curator we would invite to organise a show for our fledgling gallery. readers, if you’re listening, who out there should be tapped into? Xo
Hot links
🧛🏻♀️ “This is the most nightmarish job listing I’ve ever seen in an art industry filled with nightmarish jobs” – writer Emily Colucci delves into a an NYC job listing for Executive Assistant to an ‘Art World Family’ on her blog Filthy Dreams. The successful candidate needs to be adept in ‘dog systems’, Photoshop, event management, gardening, travel arrangements, finance and invoicing, IT, and library reorganisation, social media management, and nannying. The JD - now deleted - can be found here for those interested xo
🧀 “Dimes Square is going to be little Paris very very soon” – Art world fave chef, Gabriel Pryce of Rita’s bar & dining, gets interviewed on the culture-bro podcast How Long Gone. Hear him talk about Frieze DJ Sets, smoking inside, how aperitif cafe culture is taking over the world, strip mall sushi and why Valentines menus are for amateurs.
👾Why the Chimera Is the Monster for Our Uncertain Age – From television to climate change, Aatish Taseer explores how chimeras - organisms containing a mixture of genetically different tissues, formed by processes such as fusion of early embryos, grafting or mutation - are more relevant than ever for The New York Times. ‘In that Neapolitan room, wearing covers on my shoes to protect the mosaic floors,’ she says. ‘I was struck by our enduring need for chimeras, which appear on countless kylikes, kraters and bas-reliefs through antiquity.’
💕“I’m always thinking about someone or I’m in love with myself” – Shy Girl writes a sweet column for frieze about love and heartbreak and how bad boys just provide the little bit of masochism we need in our lives x
🐖“I never chose this. I was born into a family-owned tannery.” – Recently we have become obsessed with the wildly destructive yet arguably very educational videos of Tanner Leatherstein ripping up designer bags, burning the leather, and calling the brand’s bluff. In a recent interview with 1Granary, Leatherstein exposes all - speaking on craft, integrity and sustainability.
🖥️““O hapless me, a simple machine, yet fraught…”” – Andrew Marantz profiles ChatGPT for The New Yorker, proposing such exercises as ‘Write a Shakespearean soliloquy from the perspective of a chatbot who is aware of the many potential pitfalls of A.I. and is struggling to understand why it has been brought into existence at all’.
Add-to-cart
Two major artist collabs LFW this weekend. JW Anderson x Michael Clark and Mowalola x friend of the ‘sletter Inez Valentine! Pick your fighter xoxoxo
Parting Shot
Tragedy struck at this year’s Art Wynwood, Florida, last week. Just moments into the cocktail reception of the chic, hot art fair, a collector ‘accidentally’ gave the perspex plinth holding a $42k Koons balloon dog edition a ‘little kick,’ causing it to crash to the floor. Suddenly, shards of porcelain were strewn among the manolo stilettos. Honestly, Koons probably doesn’t give a shit, as Art News reported that after a similar sculpture broke in 2016, he said ‘It’s a shame when anything like that happens but, you know, it’s just a porcelain plate,’ he said. ‘We’re really lucky when it’s just objects that get broken, when there’s little accidents like that, because that can be replaced.’ #Priceless