"I bagged a few pink Monsters and snuck away"
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Over the weekend, spittle’s roving reporters were out and amongst it – snapping pics and jotting down quips on the sprawling London Gallery Weekend offering. The results are in: brace yourselves for £12 hot dogs, neurotic polka dots, industrial cooling systems, ageless twinks, cans of pink Monster and packs of Velo polar mint nicotine. All vital ingredients in making this year’s LGW the most iconic yet… With a line up of London’s hottest gallerinas, we bring you a BUMPER special. Enjoy, cuties!
Alex Arauz, Ginny on Frederick
Image of the weekend: Tosia reading her essay about lying at Ana Vic’s book launch at Nicoletti.
Exhibition highlight: I.W. Payne’s polka dot cutout silhouette sculpture at her show with Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff at The Shop at Sadie Coles - polka dots and neuroticism are both very close to my heart.
Benedict Winkler, Emalin
Image of the weekend: Judith Bernstein’s Screw 5 (2014) at Emalin’s Holywell Lane space.
Exhibition highlight: That’s a tie between Dean Sameshima’s reflections on cinema spaces at Soft Opening and John Baldessari’s assemblages at Sprüth Magers.
Carolyn Stocker-Seiler, Sprüth Magers
Image of the weekend: The only pic I snapped during LGW was unfortunately this. Here you have all the essentials: Velo polar mint nicotine strength 2, Wrigleys extra ice and the catalogue for John Baldessari's maquettes The Story Underneath!
Carla Schöffel, Sprüth Magers
Image of the weekend: mobile desk this weekend so I can be on my feet chasing visitors around the gallery.
Exhibition highlight: Brunette Coleman’s Survival Bias by Brianna Leatherbury. Crispy hot and icy cold, an impressive intervention into the gallery space which explores hierarchies of preservation through industrial cooling systems and personal tokens, 10/10.
Billy Parker, The Artist Room
Image of the weekend: Me sulking on the perimeter gallery stairs after discovering that the ‘complimentary’ hot dogs are in fact £12 and because I wasn’t allowed to roam the gallery in only my socks (this boy wanted a glizzy).
Exhibition highlight: Linnea Skoglösa at Neven. An empty fish tank stands proud in the middle of the room, recontextualising the gallery as itself, a fish tank. Empty tanks are the ghosts of my childhood (my dad was a moderate aquatic enthusiast that was supplanted and vesseled through me). I am reminded of returning from the caravan with a bucket full of live crabs that I would dump into a tank full of table salted water (RIP). When Helen Neven wasn’t looking, I did the unthinkable and buried my nose into a hole at the top, deep inhaled. It smelt of chemicals and buried obsession. The robotic amphibian-esque sculpture housed within the fish tank is the un-earthly creature of my dreams that childhood me would have loved to hold captive. I bagged a few pink Monsters and snuck away.
Fergus Wiltshire, Matt Carey-Williams
Image of the weekend: A.Squire. XXL Young Stars being put to bed.
Exhibition highlight: I’m always intrigued as to how commercial galleries try to break the mould of a traditional show and to what success. More often than not this results in aesthetically pleasing instagrammable moments but little else. Don’t get me wrong the sexy wet look bar by Joe Sweeney and the Rick Owens esque / George Rouy furniture in ‘Sin’ are definitely good IG content but the exhibition did much more than that for me. Paul B. Preciado’s stunningly written essay invites us to think of a library as a personal biography and a book as a one-night stand that could have the potential of blossoming into a long relationship – I liked this. The installation left room for visitors to leave their own books as invitations for others; each book dedicated to their donor with a gold sticker denoting the donors name (this was also quite fun to see who had donated some of the more/or less interesting additions to the library - no pressure…).
Ella Slater, Union Pacific
Image of the weekend: Cycling is my newest personality trait & the best way to hop from gallery to gallery to the nearest pub.
Exhibition highlight: Nina Davies: Becoming the Edit at Seventeen Gallery. There are no pretty paintings here, just your own face mapped back at you by voyeuristic smartphones, and garish purple LED lighting which reminds me of bedrooms I’d rather forget. It’s kinda creepy and totally fascinating – a speculative glimpse into the (near) future where technology and the body live side by side.
Sophie Barrett Pouleau, Harlesden High Street / Mimosa House
Image of the weekend: I was ill during LGW so missed almost all the parties, special events and openings. So here is a picture taken by HHS director Jonny Tanna during the all day breakfast event for Marcus Jefferson’s new show Free Cuzzy. From left to right @eden__edeen, Marcus Jefferson and Louis Morlae.
Maria Dolfini, Lisson Gallery
Image of the weekend: Performance rehearsal of A Whole Population Housed Inside a Single Body by Anna-Lena Krause and Joshua Woolford at Guts Gallery on 2nd June. Echoing the theme of the exhibition The Future of Loneliness, Krause and Woolford’s performance expands upon the roles of digital and organic interfaces as mediators toward a shared existence by exploring how the boundaries between people become fluid and entangled, while also being separated by multiple barriers – be it a wall or a digital screen.
Exhibition highlight: AX-D. US. T, Adriano Costa at Emalin Clerk’s House: a gem. Unfolding within the specific architecture and character of the Clerk’s House, the works – to be found on the floor, chimneys and by the windows – poetically put in dialogue discarded materials with spiritual objects. Walking around the exhibition feels like ritually re-discovering and re-valuing what we left behind in our life journey through a process of grounding ourselves to these patched, understated materials. Vulnerable and immortal at the same time, Costa's objects speak to the relationship between trash and spirituality.
Jordan Bosher, Michael Werner
Exhibition highlight: i love these works on paper by hardy hill at cassius & co: sensual, dark and sexy 🔮
Image of the weekend: here's melanie pocock artistic director of exhibitions giving a tour about our show 'raphaela simon: phantom'.
Saskia Hubert, Gagosian
Image from the weekend: Danny Fox at Hannah Barry: the spider together with the flower lamp shade is a spicy combination and offers much to love!
Exhibition highlight: Nan Goldin - Sisters, Saints, Sibyls, Gagosian off-site. I did not know what to expect when I first walked into the church where the video work is currently being shown. I also didn’t read anything ahead of my visit, as I wanted to keep it a surprise. Walking out, I felt very touched and emotional. I was grateful for Nan’s generosity in sharing her pain with others in a way that allows me, as the viewer, to process it on my own terms. It also made me feel grateful for the life I have and the way I have grown up. Nan is very powerful in her ability to share things about her own life, causing you to pause for a moment and enabling you to reflect on your life and the times we live in.
…we love! xoxo spittle