"Am I suffering from good taste?"
Clockwise from left: Ceramic sandwich by Erica Eyres; Urs Fischer at Sadie Coles; Sunday Times critic Waldemar Januszczak
This Week
💦 Paintings: highly stylised, slightly brash and somewhat repetitive
💦 New project space opens on Ridley Road, special guests (!!) TBA
💦 spittle is out of office for the hols, see you Aug 17th!
Events, 3 August - 16 August
This week sees a new space opening on Ridley Road, a solo show of works by ceramicist and more, Erica Eyres, and Tosia Leniarska’s curatorial debut at Daisy’s Room.
Don’t miss:
5 August | Opening 2.30-7pm | Too Shy to Party, Erica Eyres, Plaza Plaza, SE14AD [Elephant & Castle] | Exhibition runs TBC. Free
5 August | 1-8pm | Opening of Ridley Road Project Space, organised by George Henry Longly and Prem Sahib, 51-63 Ridley Road, E8 2NP [Dalston Kingsland] | Exhibition runs TBC. Free
5 August | 6-9pm | The Delphian Open Call 2021 (featuring 42 artists), Unit 1 Gallery, W10 6TP [Latimer Road] | Exhibition runs until 15 August. Free
7 August | Opening 2.30-7pm | THE GNOSIS SHOW PART II, Alessia Gunawan & Jack Jubb, curated by Tosia Leniarska, Daisy’s Room, N1 5EP [Shoreditch Park] | Exhibition runs through 29 August. Free
11 August | Opening 10am-6pm | SERVED: The Sarabande Summer Group Show 2021, Sarabande Foundation, N1 5SH [Haggerston] | Exhibition runs through 2 September. Free
Exhibitions of the Week
Never normally a fan of digital ‘paintings’, we were pleasantly surprised by Urs Fischer’s current show at Sadie Coles, comprising large digital screen prints of interiors overlaid with abstract brush marks. Highly stylised, slightly brash and somewhat repetitive… And yet, these feelings give way to an overwhelming and visceral sense of nostalgia, the kind of works that give more and more the longer you look.
Hot Links
📡 ALL TASTE IS DISGUSTING - Borna Sammak lays into artists who engage with ‘the entertainment trash machine’ because ‘the point of being artist class is you want to embody or propose an alternate set of values... If everyone you're surrounded by is watching just as much television as the populace, then what are we doing? I just don't care about it, I think it's lame’.
🔨 Hip hop anecdotes from an unlikely source - Simon de Pury, the auctioneer and 2nd biggest art world networker (after HUO), takes a smise-y photo of himself and Kanye West as his point of departure for this dive into the bridges between art and music. Even handily defining rap as that ‘rhythmic rhyming chanted speech’, and managing to tie in Osama bin Laden.
🏚️ Speaking of the late Taliban leader - OBL’s brother’s Bel Air mansion is finally up for sale! A snip at $28 million, it’s even in spittle’s favourite colour, millennial pink, but some R&R is definitely in order.
💸 Nan Goldin tailed by investigators - A new book sheds light on the art world’s many questionable links to the Opioid-peddling Sackler family.
👺 Goblincore hits the mainstream - The Guardian’s Ellie Voilet Bradley investigates Cottagecore’s dirtier, more mushroom-oriented heir.
🥟“In the Bao world, proportions are cute” - Slade grads and founders of the restaurant BAO get the NYT profile treatment, feat impeccable furniture additions from Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, Perriand and Noguchi.
🪨 “Imagine what else hides inside of us, just waiting to be discovered” - Dean Kissick explores the aesthetic sensibilities of the Neanderthals. Who knew your 2012 infinity tattoo was part of such a long art historical legacy!
💓 Double Tap the Jab - Meme accounts and influencers have been called up by the White House to convince ‘young people’ that the vaccine is the summer’s hottest new accessory.
🎛️ End of an era - Intergenerational favourite Annie Mac’s swan song (mix) for Radio 1. Macmannus will be missed.
Edition of the Week
‘Do opinions come on their own?’ ‘Why does the world afford the luxury of having me?’ ‘Am I suffering from good taste?’ ‘Can I re-establish my innocence?’ Fischli/Weiss are asking the big questions with their new edition for London’s ICA in collaboration with Artek. For £1,200, we’re hoping the answers are included…
Parting Shot
Not sure we agree with Waldemar that education, ‘vision [and] passion’ are mutually exclusive. Solidarity with Gilda Williams!
Love,
London’s beating ‘art
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