“He’s the highest paid lover in Beverly Hills”??
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This week
💦 richard gere spotted in bethnal green
💦 a hazy, sepia-toned ride through the Millenium dome
💦 an orgy of grievances
Events
An eclectic mix for u pussycats this week…
🧊 29 Jan | 6:30–8:30pm | Tanat Teeradakorn: National Opera Complex, Gasworks [Vauxhall/Oval]
🧊 29 Jan | 6-8pm | | Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark, Raven Row [Liverpool Street]
🧊 30 Jan | 6-8pm | Thomas Ruff: expériences lumineuses, David Zwirner London [Green Park]
🧊 30 Jan | 7-8:30pm | yasamin ghalehnoie and sass popoli: Lip Service [performances], PEER [Hoxton]
🧊 31 Jan | 6.30-8.30pm | Christina Kimeze: Between Wood and Wheel, South London Gallery [Peckham Rye]
🧊 31 Jan | 6-8pm | Jihyoung Han, Jungwook Kim, Mike Lee, Moka Lee: Karma II, Jason Haam at Frieze No.9 Cork Street [Green Park]
🧊 31 Jan | until 9pm | Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism [opening Tues 28 Jan], Royal Academy of Arts [Green Park]
🧊 2 Feb | 4pm | CURRENCY Magazine issue 6 launch, Sico Carlier & Queer Street Press, Ginny on Frederick [Farringdon]
Exhibition of the week
The Nest: H M Baker, Freja Sofie Kirk and Shinoh Nam, at Neven until 22 Feb, info here.
Gazing at the simulacrum of Richard Gere in the promo poster for iconic 80s film American Gigolo, which is taped to the wall of Neven in Cambridge Heath, we catch a breathless whisper from across the gallery: “UNDOUBTEDLY GIGOLO WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST MENSWEAR MOVIES EVER MADE”. We are transported back to a time when the film’s costume designer, Armani, was little known in the US but whose first ready-to-wear line (released timed to the film) would come to define the decade, thanks to Gere’s aspirational performance in double breasted power suits. Gigolo bridges the sexual revolution of the previous couple of decades - with full frontal nudity from its leading man - and the macho materialistic deregulated capitalist conservatism that was to come. Like American Psycho (2000), the film tweaked something in sigma men who immediately began to imitate Julian Kay (Gere’s character) – and his Italian cotton wardrobe. Titled Jullian Kay and To share fear is the greatest bond of all, the two works on the wall next to the poster show a supine dove. The dove’s heart has been gouged out, we are told, by a Peregrine Falcon. That these predators nest on corporate skyscrapers is a fact not lost on H M Baker, whose works are screen printed on grey carpet tiles. The corporate neo-noir aesthetics are reflected on the gallery’s opposite wall, where a vertical sculpture by Shinoh Nam hangs. Beautifully sleek, the work’s metal frame encases Herman Hesse’s bright blue novel Demain (1919) and a shredded nest of Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) in acrylic glass and raw plasterboard. Both are writers who depict the struggle against appearances and the conventions that constrain individual freedom. On a slip of paper hidden within the body of the work is a line from Demain, only readable if the sculpture were broken apart: “The bird fights its way out of the egg”. Reflected in the work’s front pane is a film on a large TV, playing in front of a boxy office chair. Compounding the exhibition’s throughline of simmering, barely masked violence is Freja Sofia Kirk’s moving image work, Killing, Kidding, Colliding (2022) in which a bird flies into the window of an office block. Inside the office’s deserted lobby are potted plants and professional flowers; birds often fly into windows when drawn to what appears to be a natural habitat inside. Spliced through the sequence are shots of natural landscapes and forests, and footage of the bird being taxidermied – a clashing, sickening mix-up of horror and beauty which perfectly throws the illusory nature of the choreography of late capitalism into sharp, sharp contrast…
Hot links
🍻 “I think that, in watching this community grow over the last two or three years, and seeing the things which people are beginning to achieve, I can only see it being looked back upon as an important moment within contemporary fine art in London.” – Just when we thought we couldn’t love artist, Slade teacher and spiritual leader Peter Davies any more, we find him in the trenches with Dean Kissick, in defense of emerging art and the London scene. We love you Peter… a must-read for catharsis, back pedalling and some scorching takes from stone-cold realist Jack Self x
🫦 “SexualAlpha did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.” – Is your online marriage counsellor actually an AI chatbot designed to promote sex toys? Ashley Abramson dives into the confusing world of Sophie Cress, a suspiciously upbeat councillor with zero irl footprint. New passive income stream unlocked!
👶 Who CJ knew there was so much dome-lore? – Thinking about public memory, the promise of new-labour and XXX, the most recent episode of cursed-objects takes you on a hazy, sepia-toned ride through the Millenium dome – featuring arms traders, ET and giant babies.
😶🌫️ “(his essays contain gleeful descriptions of his own and others’ bouts of flatulence)” - what happens to us when we no longer put pen to paper? What do we lose when we trade the tactility of handwriting with the efficiency of typing? Christine Rosen’s long read for the guardian answers all this and more in a scathing take-down of the qwerty keyboard.
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Spittle-fave curator Linsey Young IG’d this T-shirt by the iconic late Pippa Garner and we’ve been lusting after it all weekend, can someone reissue, plz?? <3
Parting shot
Final word on the Kissick article, we promise (!) comes via the fab previous Artforum EIC David Velasco’s letter to Harper’s…
Xo