“A smile can mean different things in different cultures”
spittle is a breaking (contemp culture focused) news bulletin for all you curious London(art lov)ers, spotlighting the fantastically diverse and heterogeneous facets of London’s art and art-adjacent scenes. Published on Tuesday mornings, click here to subscribe!
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From left to right: Christopher Hartmann at Goldsmith’s MFA show, Sedrick Chisom at Pilar Corrias, and Uncle Jerry at it again.
This Week
💦 Art is coming home – well, to Tottenham
💦 Rose-tinted censorship in Essex
💦 Eddy Frankel moves into music criticism
Events, 20-27 July
Lots happening on Friday and Saturday this week! We’ve heard of a tonne of events going on, from the opening of the World’s First Ever football themed art gallery literally in Tottenham Hotspur stadium, to a secret-location-show by “artist, alchemist, and witchpoet”, Zoe Bedeaux.
🧊 21 July | Opening 10 am - 5 pm | RCA Contemporary Art Practice Graduate Exhibition, Cromwell Place, SW7 2JE [South Kensington] | Free
🧊 22 July | Opening 6 - 9 pm | A New Art World, Guts Gallery, N16 0NY [Stoke Newington] | Free
🧊 22 July | Book Launch and Exhibition opening | Rene Matić: flags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do, Arcadia Missa, W1U 1LH [Bond Street] | Exhibition free, book £20
🧊 23 July | By Any Means, group show curated by Gray Wielebinski, V.O Curations, W1S 2YZ [Oxford Circus] | Free
🧊 23 July | 7 - 10 pm | Garden Nights: Still House Plants, Bianca Scout and Alpha Maid (DJ), Camden Art Centre, NW3 6DG [Finchley Road & Frognal] | £7/£5
🧊 24 July | Phyllida Barlow: act (site-specific sculpture) Highgate Cemetery, N6 6PJ [Archway] | Until 30 August 2021 | Free
🧊 24 July | Open 6 - 8 pm, Live action at 7 pm | Zoe Bedeaux x K.M.B.A Gallery: Liberty Fraternity Equality Absurdity, Location TBA | Free
Exhibitions of the Week
Sedrick Chisom: Twenty Thousand Years of Fire and Snow, Pilar Corrias (Fitzrovia), W1W 8EF, until 21 August 2021, information here
Chisom’s afrofuturist paintings imagining post-apocalyptic America are vibrant and haunting, futuristic and ethereal— and this exhibition includes one of the most technically proficient and mesmerising charcoal drawings we have ever seen. His first solo show in London is a triumph!
Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art & MA Artists Film & Moving Image Graduate Show, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths University, SE14 6AD, until 20 July, information here
The Goldsmiths MFA show was astounding - props to the whole cohort for even managing to make work in this tumultuous year. Our jaws dropped at Sihan Ling’s ambitious performative installation interrogating Chinese labour conditions; Christopher Hartmann’s hyperreal paintings that, in the words of friend to the newsletter, Joe Bobowicz, portrayed ‘homosocial tenderness at its best’ and Nana Wolke’s sexy and surreal paintings of cars and body parts.
Hot Links
👀 “A smile can mean different things in different cultures” – You can take your curating theory and shove it Hans Ulrich! Museums are now trialling curating by surveillance, using observation time to judge the attraction value of artworks…
💊 Are Gen Z reinventing far-right radicalisation? – Josh Citarella investigates how fan pages with moderate content are incubating unwitting conservatives into extremists.
💩 Capitalism, Climate and Charlotte Church – George Monbiot learns about the unfettered and deliberate pollution of the UK’s rivers, in a world-first live-streamed investigative documentary.
🥵 Too hot to handle – We can’t wait to slather on Comme des Garcons’s newly launched sunscreen scented eau de toilette (available at Dover Street Market).
🥀 Rare rose breed exhibition exposes Britain’s nuclear colonialism – Gabriella Hirst’s rose garden installation in a park in Essex was threatened by Tory councillors before being removed.
🍀 The horticultural implausibility of the tree as art’s eco-symbol – Sukayna Powell gets to the root of the problem and explores the limitations of using trees-as-art to tackle climate change.
🏩 The house that broke the internet! – A castle in Elmira, New York state on sale for a steal at only $99,900. Anyone, please renovate this into a gallery!
Edition of the Week
Let your inner art handler free with Holly Stevenson and Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s tactile exhibition-in-a-box, ‘Hand-Held’, which must be one of the most novel + delightful adaptations to the COVID pingdemic which is currently underway. Holly and Ingrid please let us know how we can get our hands on these…
Parting Shot
The Art World’s Favourite Uncle (Jerry Saltz) upset The Art World’s Favourite Tolerated Cynic And Wannabe Rockstar (Eddy Frankel) who delivered a scathing takedown, meaning the two will never again be seated next to each other at gallery dinners. Was this strategic, Eddy?
Love,
London’s beating ‘art
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