“I had my head shaved after the solar eclipse”

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Venny B aged parmesan; Inigo with his ankle tag x

This Week 

💦 venny b  

💦 natty pavs

💦 Stingeldamus (Inigo) and the Nxivm sex cult

Events 

🧊 24 April | 6-8pm | Hannah Uzor and Laila Majid, Niru Ratnam [Oxford Circus]

🧊 24 April | 6-9pm | Anna Clegg⁣: Stainless⁣, Soup [Elephant and Castle]

🧊 24 April | 6-8pm | Panel discussion: Adam Farah-Saad, Peter Brock, Xin Liu in conversation with Natalia Grabowska & moderated by Nicole Estilo Kaiser, Public [Aldgate East] RSVP hello@public.gallery

🧊 24 April | 6-9pm | Closing party for Isaac Julien: Who Killed Colin Roach?, Harlesden High Street [Willesden Junction]

🧊 24 April | 6-9pm | Natural’s Not In It (Goldsmiths MFA group show) The Carpet Shop [Peckham Rye]

🧊 25 April | Dean Sameshima: being alone, Soft Opening [Cambridge Heath]

🧊 25 April | 7pm-midnight | Plaster Magazine John Akomfrah Issue Launch Party, Reference Point, 180 Strand [Temple]

🧊 25 April | 6.30-9.30pm | Matthew Krishanu | Andrew Omoding, Camden Art Centre [Finchley Road & Frognal]

🧊 25 April | 6.30-8.30pm | Sam Bakewell: Dream Backed, Corvi-Mora [Kennington]

🧊 25 April | Emanuel de Carvalho: code new state, Gathering [Piccadilly Circus]

🧊 25 April | Funny Dread: Dhurga Menon, Edie Flowers, Francesca Dobbe, Hongxi Li, Kialy Tihngang, Laura Sutton, Noel Hensey, Yue Yin, SET [West Ealing] 

🧊 25 April | 6-8pm | Xenia: On Tenderness & Time (group show including Gillies Adamson Semple & Marcus Cope, curated by Jenn Ellis), Daniel Katz Gallery [Green Park]

🧊 24 April | 6-8pm | PAPER CUTS - ART, BUREAUCRACY, AND SILENCED HISTORIES IN COLONIAL INDIA, Birkbeck, University of London [Bloomsbury]

🧊 25 April | 6-8pm | Losing Home: Expanded Realities (group show including Alice Bucknell & Nick Smith, by Open City Docs), Rich Mix [Shoreditch High Street]

🧊 26 April | 6-9pm | Stranger Within: Hatty Buchanan & Cecilia Sjoholm, Rochelle School [Shoreditch High Street]

🧊 28 April | 8pm | Cinematography - an evening of films & discussion curated by Margaret Salmon, ICA [Charing Cross] register here

VENICE BIENNALE SPECIAL

In case you missed it, we drunkenly reported from the Venice Biennale for our column in Plaster magazine in what ended up being a 2000 word, 15 minute read… it truly is incredible what the human brain can achieve on 6 negronis. TLDR (not really) below:

MONDAY: Amidst reports of planes stuffed with art people wearing sunglasses and pretending not to see each other (as one journalist observed: “I couldn’t help but think that if this flight goes down over the Adriatic, there won’t be a single PR left in London”) there was talk of new haircuts (“I had my head shaved after the solar eclipse”) and of sightings of Hans Ulrich Obrist seen jumping up and down outside the opening of Guglielmo Castelli’s show at Palazzetto Tito, nearly crushing Michèle Lamy who was making a swift exit – presumably from second-hand embarrassment.

TUESDAY: The most haunting work we saw all week was Diego Marcon’s CGI video installation of a young boy hanging with a rope around his neck, soundtracked by yodelling as part of Fondazione In Between Art Film’s stellar Nebula. Building up to what would eventually be 15 miles of walking that day, we shuffled off to the gorgeously dilapidated Palazzo Tiepolo Passi for Fabio Cherstich’s group exhibition pairing a group of East Village artists from the 80s with a group of contemporary Milanese artists. A triumph! We loved the horny drawings of naked men in platform heels by Patrick Angus, and a spider web faux pearl work by Arch Connelly… at Palazzo Grassi’s Pierre Huyhge show, a sleeping visitor and a group of Chanel-clad HNWIs blinding us with their phone torches couldn’t ruin what was the knockout show of the Biennale. Bumping into Brits all over the shop we popped into the very good Peter Hujar show backed by Pace, and wound up eating aged parmesan for the fourth time that day at the party for Sarah McCrory/Svetlana Marich’s glam group show.

WEDNESDAY: Diane Abbott’s attendance of the (already star studded) British Pavilion launch had everyone a fluster, thankfully distracting from the UK Minister for Culture’s “global conflict” gaffe. Pavilion queues were unbelievable, but we persevered – in part inspired by a young collector who told us they were determined “to vape in every pavilion I go to”. Sadly never catching this in the act, we did notice a faint scent of Watermelon Bubblegum in several pavs – most notably South Korea, mingling not unpleasantly with the “scent journey” promised by artist Koo Jeong A. We would be remiss not to mention some other highlights from the Venny B: WangShui’s otherworldly hand-etched metal panels from the last room of the Arsenale main exhibition; Aleksandra Denić’s immersive (in a good way) Serbian Pavilion; the small Dean Sameshina work that was IG storied many times; Iva Lulashi’s ghostly, sexy paintings representing Albania; hand-carved wooden sculptures by Chaouki Choukini in the main show; Șerban Savu’s Romanian Pavilion; and young Libyan artist Nour Jaouda’s rich wall-based textile works, watched over by proud parents Grace Schofield and Nigel Dunkley, holding court nearby.

THURSDAY: “By Thursday”, one battle-scarred gallerist told us, “biennale week is just about survival” – and the vibes were uncouth to say the least, with one PR, espresso in hand, brazenly announcing, “I’m so done, I need to have sex tonight” while an editor, watching their videographer pack up, said “God, I filed my Venice review after blitzing round in 20 minutes last night, it’s utter shit, but hey-ho, I’m getting fucked UP tonight”. Classy! Stories of bosses catching hard-working employees “smoking in pyjamas at a random hotel at 5 am… networking” were rife, with many unfortunate individuals falling foul of the inescapable inaccessibility of Venice, i.e. “I accidentally slept with someone on the wrong side of the island and had to make it 40 mins across town for 9 am to meet an Italian art dealer dropping off some collages”. Taking it easy, we drifted around the tranquil Peggy Guggenheim Collection for their Jean Cocteau survey charting the artist’s bohemian life – including a Coco Chanel-funded spell in rehab after a spell of opium addiction… we looove Cocteau.

Head to the full piece for our Rick Owens ‘HUN80’ party special report … chaos 💋

Parting Shot

“Greed is a natural human state,” says Inigo Philbrick, who was profiled in the The Times this weekend. This is one of the less favourable articles on Philbrick (we’ve read them all), and alongside grilling him about his “erstwhile taste for prostitutes” the feature brings to light crazy facts: “He called himself ‘Stingeldamus’, a riff on Nostradamus, for his ability to foretell the market” and in prison was “locked up alongside Keith Raniere, the leader of the Nxivm sex cult whose ‘slaves’ were branded with his initials.” Hilariously the happy couple thought this profile might be an opportunity to call in designer garb for their nuptials - a quickie ceremony without guests - an idea quickly shut down by the paper: “They suggest we supply bridalwear for our photoshoot. We decline.” #ouch

xoxoxo