“balls that touch the ground become earwax”
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This Week
🧊 new age, hemp-drenched installations that look like a healing crystals shop
🧊 Ginger box-logo cupids
🧊 a male body-builder called Rob
Events
This week, we’ll be catching the last of the degree shows (Camberwell MA), and soaking up the last of the evening’s sun in Camden Art Centre’s Garden after Tenant of Culture’s much anticipated opening. At the weekend, you can catch us bopping around East for Performance Exchange’s presentation across a host of galleries.
💦 5 July | 6–8pm | The Male Gaze: From Larry Stanton to Now, The Artist Room [Piccadilly Circus]
💦 5 July | 6–9pm | Camberwell MA Degree Show Opening [Denmark Hill]
💦 6 July | 6.30–8.30pm | Lou Lou Sainsbury: Earth is a Deadname, GASWORKS [Oval]
💦 6 July | 6–8pm | Rinella Alfonso: Deep Nap, Project Native Informant [Bethnal Green]
💦 7th July | 6:30–8:30pm | Tenant of Culture: Soft Acid Camden Art Centre [Finchley Road]
💦 7th July | 6–8pm | Through a Glass, Darkly, Niru Ratnam [Oxford Circus]
💦 8th July | Nicola Frimpong: Ding-Dong; Frimpong!, Cell Project Space [Cambridge Heath]
💦 8th - 10th July | Performance Exchange - Emalin, Arcade@4 Garden Walk, Kate MacGarry, Seventeen
Exhibitions
World Famous Babylon, Barbican Arts Trust - ArtWorks Project Space, now closed (info here).
Idealised in the 60s, romanticised in the 70s, and demonised in the late 80s (after a spate of serial killings), truckers have more recently been deplored as ‘fat and ignorant’ and ‘lustful fools blinded by a delusion of male superiority’ (see Thelma & Louise). The wanderlust-fuelled notion of a life of freedom on the open road brings many to such a vocation, and accordingly, truck stops litter American highways - their sole purpose to cater to solitary long-haul drivers. This exhibition is framed by the sleazy charm of truck stops with names like Babylon – which may or may not be associated with fallen roadside angels, the performance of masculinity, greasy diners and obesity culture. Hinting at the theatrics of male power, there are silver wrestling belts with rodeo buckles adorning the walls, complemented by Jake Hasapopoulos’ work centred on a found video rendering an obsese man at a Christian church service trying to break free from shiny chrome chains in a deranged religious frenzy. In contrast, Lucia Farrow’s sensuous clay works represent the female torso as cling-wrapped, brutally bare and subsiding; unglazed clay is juxtaposed with puckered pink rectangles propped onto each body like a winning paint tester swatch. In monochrome on the walls are life-size stickers by Mila Rowyszyn capturing feminine silhouettes in cliché sexy poses – variously wearing stipper heels and a pair of pointed courts, with studs and rhinestones on the straps. Arlette’s web-like, fine-spun silver chainmail was worn at the opening by a male body-builder called Rob in a performance where he stood, shirtless and mahogany coloured, on a plinth and modelled a raunchy collection of looks. This beautifully curated exhibition comes together to toy with the mass confusion (babel) and conflicting cultural forms that permeate US society. A very American mythology is defined as crystallising along interstate highways: those last frontiers frequented by dream chasers just looking for a good time.
Hot Links
⏰ Touting tattoos the auction houses only wish they could flip! - Capturing teenage boredom with a side serving of heartbreak, Issy Wood’s new music video - directed by Lena Dunham and starring Hari Nef - features the latter rolling around a pastel-coloured bedroom, her body covered in motifs taken straight from Wood’s paintings. spittle is here for Wood’s warbling, warped world.
🤐 “Literally banned for ‘Ways of Seeing’ this is beyond parody” - Joshua Citarella was last week suspended from Twitch for streaming the iconic documentary, apparently due to nudity, so watch it here instead (Admittedly pirated on youtube)
🎩 Drysummer; Alice in Wonderland; Tikimentary - A certain spittle contributor admits that even on the balmiest of summer days, nothing beats curtains closed and movie-watching from the sofa, *bed*. Mubi’s new range of free available films tick every niche box, enjoy xx
📌 “It takes a genuinely mind-blowing lack of self-awareness to call a shop ‘The End of Capitalism’” - contrarian critic Eddy Frankel slates Serpentine Gallery’s Back to Earth exhibition with a 1-star review. Harshly concluding it ‘serves no purpose’ and ‘manages to be both esoteric and a bit forgettable at the same time’, spittle looks forward to making our own mind up this weekend…
🦥 “I enjoy examining all the beef on the internet. I mean, who doesn’t?” - spittle fave provocative-videomaking-prankster Wong Ping gets the interview treatment in Spike. ‘Trolling is a way to provoke common sense,’ he revels. Asked if anything is off-limits, one random answer comes straight to mind: ‘Sloths. Their smiles are creepy AF. They remind me of the Japanese horror movie The Ring, which gave me nightmares when I was a kid.’
🧛🏻♂️ “My context is junk… my competition is tough.” - Need inspo for visually-decadent films to watch this summer? Charlie Fox’s deep-dive into the louche, operatic world of costume designer Eiko Ishioka (who designed the costumes for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, no less), is sure to give you endless monstrous options.
Add-to-Cart
spittle cannot deny our penchant for bonkers Supreme products. This week’s collab is with German porcelain manufacturer Meissen - hit up their site for monkey snuffboxes and large sculptures in the shape of macaws. This ornate and rococo-esque angelic mirror with Ginger box-logo cupids is undeniably stupid; and we can’t get enough. Tip-offs regarding the eventual hypebeast purchaser more than welcome! Available here for the ambitious price of £14,000, but at resale…? Who knows!
Parting Shot
It’s summer and for some reason, we can’t stop thinking about slogan t-shirts! This is probably why we are obsessed with the Twitter accounts Shirts That Go Hard and Shirts With Threatening Auras. As Wong Ping encouraged earlier, ‘trolling is a way to provoke common sense’ and t-shirt format is 100% the coolest.
London’s beating ‘art
<3 <3 <3