“It’s a Caucasian Tupac!”
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This Week
💦 a sixteen-ounce Dream of Greenie
💦 the nadir of queer figuration
💦 large espresso-based to-go drinks, Miss Sixty jeans and reality TV
Events
Lots to do this week, with so many of spittle’s faves opening incredible shows! We can’t wait for Laila Majid’s solo at Sherbert Green (with a sister exhibition at Harlesden High Street opening 20th March), group exhibition Violins/Violence at Gathering featuring Cecile B Evans and Sung Tieu, and always-hilarious moving image artist Pilvi Takala’s solo show opening on Saturday at Goldsmiths CCA!
🧊 15 Mar | 6-9pm | Laila Majid: Things to Come, Sherbert Green [Cambridge Heath]
🧊 16 Mar | RA Premiums opens, including Lizzie Munn, Kevin Brennan, Tanoa Sasraku, Fischer Mustin, Royal Academy [Green Park]
🧊 16 Mar | 6pm | Violins/Violence, Gathering [Tottenham Court Road]
🧊 16 March | 6pm | Leon Pozniakow: The Reliquaries of Aquarius, Palatial Projects [Bromley-by-Bow]
🧊 17 Mar | 6-8pm | Aslan Goisum: The Sum of Silence, Emalin [Shoreditch]
🧊 17 Mar | 6-9pm | The Dog Show, Thames-Side Studios Gallery [Woolwich Dockyard]
🧊 18 Mar | 5-8pm | Charlotte Edey: Framework, Ginny on Frederick [Farringdon]
🧊 18 Mar | 7-9pm | Pilvi Takala: On Discomfort, Goldsmiths [New Cross Gate]
🧊 18 Mar | 6-8pm | Hannah Wilson: Last Dance, Grove Collective [Clapham Junction]
Exhibition of the week
RIP Germain: “Jesus Died For Us, We Will Die For Dudus!”, until 14 May, info here. Curator-led tour on Thursday 16 March, 6.30pm, info here.
When we visited RIP Germain’s recently opened exhibition at the ICA, it happened to be the night of the exclusive, invite-only 75th-anniversary dinner of the institution, hosted by Wolfgang Tillmans and the recently-appointed director Bengi Ünsal. At 7.30pm on a Tuesday the kunsthalle was brimming with notable guests: among them, Made in Chelsea’s pseudo-aristocratic Mark-Francis Vandelli, who after taking one look at the artist’s upstairs installation turned on his toes and waltzed straight back downstairs. The installation gave Uncut Gems energy, replicating a Hatton Garden jewellery store - low-lit and plush, a desk to do business on one side and a necklace flooded with diamonds on display in the centre. On the end of the chain, a small Caucasian Tupac (‘ginger hair, white skin’) hangs incongruously; diamond tears on his cheeks and a diamond crown of thorns on his head. The piece is evidently a far cry from Vandelli’s tastes, despite their shared devotion to opulence! Fake-white-Tupac’s crown of thorns references the lores and logic that underpin the story of Dudus - a Jamaican drug lord who exported ‘large quantities’ of marijuana and cocaine into the United States. Protests erupted across the country when Dudus was arrested: like Tupac and Jesus, Dudas was lionised by the community. Downstairs, a series of doors lead us into and through a sparse store and living space, complete with PlayStation, boxes of booze and a La-Z-Boy-esque leather chair. It is a front: in the depths of the complex is a pink-lit, domestically-scaled cannabis factory. RIP Germain plays with the realms that Helen Starr terms “baggy spaces” – quasi-lawless spaces that have distinct formal functions only accessible to those in the know. Everything is specific and layered, seemingly obvious at first glance and then increasingly complex and confusing, no more so than in the projection of muted, looped rap videos. Our take, aided by the wisdom of the merch-clad real-life security guard in the jewellery store, is that the ritualised forms of transgression are part of the mainstream; there's a whole cultural patina out there that isn't accessible - or it is, but only for those in the know.
We are beyond excited for Bengi Ünsal’s future programme at the ICA. Recently, she described her plans to broaden the scope of their exhibition programming to reflect the way that Gen Z are ‘increasingly genre fluid’ in their approach to and understanding of creativity - implying that film directors, fashion designers and the like are also worthy of the ICA’s hallowed stage…! PS: news just in - it turns out a friend of the ‘sletter will be having their first institutional solo show during Frieze! Who is it? Our lips are sealed xoxoxo
Hot links
🐧 “It was capitalism at work” – The Dirt interviews the co-founder of Club Penguin, who admits it was all a ploy to ‘distract the children.’ Expanding on virtual architecture and how parties were key to forging players’ online identities and communities, Lance Priebe reveals the secrets of one of the internet’s first social networks.
❌ “what role [does] this brand of too-cool criticism have in 2023, when subcultures such as Red Scare girls and edgelords wear cynicism as a fashionable shawl” – Chilling critique of Bernadette Corporation's first show in NYC since 2012 by writer Simon Wu, who explains that what once made the collective unique and exciting, is now boring at best, and ‘uncomfortably resembles right-wing trolling’ at worst. It’s rare these days to read criticism that is actually critical, and this review has scratched an itch for a while to come!
🏘️ ‘“The decade’s skeletal aesthetic also made itself evident in the home makeover programmes that helped people throw out as many of their belongings as possible” – Kristian Vistrup Madsen explores the early ‘00s lead-up to woke culture in The White Review. Starting with how low-rise jeans began the ‘decade of cruelty’ he concludes how ‘woke is just the other side of the coin from cruel, as masochism is, at points, almost indistinguishable from sadism’.
🥵 “My Illumina’s day setting confirmed Ruthie’s observation: I was red” – spittle fave Gladstone gallerina-turned-podcaster-turned-writer Alissa Bennett releases a short story for Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula and it’s on one of the (former runway model’s) favourite topics: skincare.
🤘“the sk8er girl blossoms into a f4shi0n girl” – gracing the frow at a multitude of fashion shows over the last month was none other than our absolute favourite rock chick and fingerless-glove wearer, Avril Lavigne. The Face documents her return to the limelight, and asks if a cheeky snog with Tyga is enough to catapult her to Julia Fox levels of muse-ness.
Add-to-cart
Live out your Legally Blonde dreams with this iconic chihuahua bag from London-based designer James Walsh. First seen on the CSM MA runway last year, these lil totes will give you all the joy of carrying a cute pooch around all day, with none of the mess to clean up!! Available on James Walsh’s website from Friday 17th, at £480 a pop, they’re definitely more economical than, like, an actual dog. Count us in! More info on their insta.
Parting Shot
From branding Gustave Courbet ‘slutty’, to declaring Navot Miller’s paintings the ‘nadir of queer figuration’ we are thoroughly enjoying the Twitter feed of Harry Tafoya (arts writer for the likes of Frieze and Hyperallergic, find him @gaykatemoss). Particularly prescient was his observation that Christian Rosa’s market is still touching double digits despite the artist fleeing the USA / the FBI for selling fake drawings by his one-time mentor Raymond Pettibon…