"Dizzee Rascal playfighting"
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This week
💦 a brawny, nearly featureless oaf
💦 regular people, like bimbos, porn stars, Katie Price
💦 trying to get out from pizza and out from music and out from law and into vodka
Events
The group shows continue with input from Brooke Benington (featuring faves Harriet Gillet and Tim Noble) Modern Art (curated by Tate Magazine’s encylopaedic Simon Grant) and Collective Ending’s Belly Talk curated by friend of the ‘sletter Pascale De Graaf.
🧊 24 Jan | 6–8pm | Scott Covert: C’est la vie, Studio Voltaire [Clapham Common]
🧊 25 Jan | 6–8pm | The Picture, Brooke Bennington [Great Portland Street]
🧊 25 Jan | 6–8pm | Perminda Kaur: The Room, Niru Ratnam [Oxford Circus]
🧊 25 Jan | 6–8pm | Paolo Salvador, Goodman Gallery [Green Park]
🧊 26 Jan | 6–8pm | Gillies Adamson Semple: Volumes, Cedric Bardawil [Tottenham Court Road]
🧊 26 Jan | Adam Farah-Saad: Nobody Gets Too Much Heaven No More, Woodsy’s [Bromley-by-Bow]
🧊 26 Jan | 6:30–9pm | Atiena R Kilfa: The Unhomely and Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 at Camden Art Centre [Finchley Road]
🧊 26 Jan | 6–8pm | The Moth and the Thunderclap, Modern Art Helmet Row [Old Street]
🧊 28 Jan | 6–9pm | Belly Talk, Collective Ending HQ [Deptford]
🧊 28 Jan | 4pm | Nana Wolke: Wanda’s, screening and talk with Vanessa Murrell, Nicoletti [Cambridge Heath]
Exhibition of the Week
Emmanuel Shogbolu: Pieces of a Scattsman, Harlesden High Street in collaboration with Ridley Road Project Space, Harlesden High Street [Willesden Junction]
The only painting in Emmanuel Shogbolu’s exhibition is titled Now or Never. Small in scale, and mounted in an outdated frame (by contemporary gallery standards), the work combines inky black abstraction with harsh red lines that function like ominous doodles in a dramatic vista. The show, titled Pieces of a Scattsman, is an immersive exhibition, combining metaphorical conceptual tools employed by the likes of David Hammons and Rhea Dillon with an intuitive form of photographic display that we might liken to Wolfgang Tillmans (see his diaristic show at Morena di Luna back in 2021). Autobiographical, Pieces of a Scattsman explores Shogbolu’s viewpoint of the mid-2000s in the London Borough of Newham. An early newspaper clipping describes a ‘Family Forced To Flee After Chair Ignites’; reading the text one realises that the 18-month-old was, in fact, the artist who escaped alongside his mother and sibling when an armchair in their home was set alight by a gas fire. Hung amongst images of the artist’s friends and closeups of pedestrian scenery given a beautifully close inspection, the show paints an intimate portrayal of the artist’s life and community. One photograph of a concrete stairway, rotated 90 degrees on the wall to become almost abstract, shows a bin liner at the top of the steps. What appears like trash is, in fact, a makeshift seat a friend would place on the stairs to avoid a wet – and presumably cold – bum. The video projected onto the wall is satisfyingly deceitful. What looks like found footage of a pavement fight turns out to be rapper Dizzee Rascal playfighting, with loud accompanying music adding to the general vibe. A standout work is a piece of the artist’s hair placed on a gilded frame that is inverted to function as a plinth. The artist’s favourite gold and diamond ring – removed from daily use for the length of the exhibition – is worn on the lock of hair like it is a finger. Shogbolu picks up the piece and explains that it can be seen as an image juxtaposing spirituality and materialism. Hung next on the wall is a single part of the artist’s dreads, stuck through the middle of a simple white sheet of paper. It is a strangely moving object, and Shogbolu explains the covenant he has with himself: he only cuts his hair once he has achieved one of his goals (writing a book, travelling, health, fitness, *opening an exhibition*). It’s now or never.
Hot Links
💥 “He later expressed some shock at the aggression shown towards the cars” - You’ve read the book, and you’ve seen Cronenberg’s screen adaptation, but did you know that early iterations of J G Ballard’s Crash included an exhibition and a play staged at the ICA? In this article from 2005, Simon Ford delves into the depraved, devious and decadent behaviour that spawned Ballard’s most famous work.
🍆 “He’s kind of loving his very big dick, and I’m giving him the space to enjoy it.” - Tala Madani is the most recent artist to receive Calvin Tomkins’ prestigious New Yorker profile. Read on to hear more about the ‘wildly imaginative innovator with a gift for caricature and visual satire’ and her depictions of men with ‘testicles hung from their chin.’
🎨 ‘How much is too much?’ - Roberta Smith raises concerns regarding the estate of Philip Guston donating over 200 works to one institution: The Met, NYC. “The Guston gift gives the Met something it has never before had, nor needed: a one-artist museum within the museum. How good will this be for the Met, Guston’s legacy and the art-viewing public everywhere?”
💸 “I remember drinking sugary deli coffee while people paid in thousand dollar bills and tipped in edibles” - Ann Manov wistfully unwinds the story of the (mainly Greek) Furriers of New York for The Paris Review. She reflects on her foray into the dying industry.
⬛ It's a Dream Matte Mousse revival – Makeup artist Alice Dodds is profiled in The Face wherein she describes drawing inspiration from ‘regular people, like bimbos, porn stars, Katie Price’ and also Norwich being the Goth capital of the UK.
Add to Cart
André Leon Talley’s staggering collection of luxury bags, clothes and artworks go to auction at Christie’s next month, and we have been drooling over the catalogue all week. Heavy on the Kaftans and Louis V Luggage (as expected), there were some more surprising objects of desire hidden among the lots. Take this lambskin Chanel hot water bottle cover (complete with an actual hot water bottle and, of course, dust bag), which we’ll be smuggling from our cosy Tekla bedsheets to work and back again thanks to its convenient and stylish gold chain. Bidding starts at USD 500 – Good Luck!
Parting shot
Courtney ‘I’ve been living in a vendome of late stage capitalism’ Love gives us a wealth of advice in this iconic video filmed outside Rick Owens’ show last week in Paris. Channelling ‘our estranged aunt has had too much to drink at Christmas’ vibes, advising us to ‘stay the f*ck offline,’ and sharing her Paris itinerary, which included seeing Courbet’s ‘Giant Vagina’ and France’s famous ‘cool unions and protests’ – Rock on, Queen Court!
