"my rinky-dink twiyt soapbox"
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This week
💦 poring through Bob Dylan's garbage
💦 dicksticks for everyone
💦 Don’t Fucking Care Bear
Events
We can’t WAIT for friend of the ‘sletter Ted Targett’s swansong show with Union Pacific (on Weds) before leaving to cement his new space, Brunette Coleman, with Anna Eaves. On Fri we’ll be at the ICA Shasha Movies screening before topping off the week at Anal House Meltdown’s first day-to-night party at The Glove That Fits - eating pizza one minute and shimmying with Princess Julia the next xo
🧊 26 Apr | 6-8pm | Day by Day, Good Day (curated by Ted Targett), Union Pacific [Aldgate East]
🧊 26 Apr | 6-8pm | Pourea Alimirzaee: Tear Gas, The Artist Room [Piccadilly Circus]
🧊 26 Apr | 6-9pm | Look Mum No Hands 2, Group show featuring Hong Xi Li, Hannah Lim, Steph Huang & more, 9 French Place [Shoreditch]
🧊 26 Apr | 6-8pm | At Dawn: Yage Gu and Bo Sun, Sherbet Green [Bethnal Green]
🧊 27 Apr | 6:30-8:30pm | Reading group for Polly Barton’s Porn, Claire de Rouen [Bethnal Green] | RSVP to lilly[at]clairederouenbooks.com
🧊 27 Apr | 5-8pm | Dan Linden: eavesdropping, Claas Reiss [Euston]
🧊 28 Apr | 8:30pm | The Devil Queen, 1974, Shasha Movies Screening and Q&A, ICA [Charing Cross]
🧊 29 Apr | 5-8pm | Daniel Sinsel, Ginny on Frederick [Farringdon]
🧊 29 Apr | 4pm–4am | Anal House Meltdown, The Glove That Fits [Hackney]
🧊 29 Apr | 6-8pm | Michael Clark, Dancing to The Fall (book launch), Tender Books [Leicester Square]
🧊 30 Apr | 7:30pm | Harmony Korine Lecture by Charlie Fox, Moth Club [Hackney Central] | £15, tickets here.
Exhibition of the Week
Chris Lloyd: I against I, on view at Soft Opening until 20 May, info here.
A statuette of the Virgin crowned with a halo of syringes; ammunition cartridges arranged neatly into a peace sign; a don’t-fucking-care-bear flipping the bird… the visual world created in whimsical watercolour on linen by NYC based artist Chris Lloyd is an avalanche of imagery and texture. Hanging from decorative wrought iron finials, the textiles take on a scroll-like quality in their presentation and construction, while their content is Boschian chaos and complexity.
These works are proto-zeitgeisty, combining the heavy styling, experimentality and folkloric-gothic-nostalgic influences that define the scrappy Fantastic Toiles-core currently dominating London Hardcore. The heavy physicality of the iron brackets contrasts with the delicate fabric, most strikingly in Legacy for human irrelevance, where the bat-winged material seems suspended from its iron mobile by just a handful of threads. This transient feel is reflected by a certain spiritual presence; looking closer, there’s Mark chapter 8 verses 34-38 (‘What shall it profit a man if he gains the world and lose his own soul’), Matthew 16:17-19 (‘The gates of hell shall not prevail’), a work titled To be one with the stars composed of a winged horse (the mythical horse Buraq on which the prophet Mohammed, PBUH, travelled to heaven?), a t-shirt that reads ‘Lord watch over me while I get this money’ … butterflies, wolves, album artwork, clowns, and other cute inanities mingle with the scattered proverbs, either masking meaning in a layer of absurdity or nodding to an untold story; a narrative that makes sense to the artist alone perhaps. Perhaps both are true!
Spending a lot of time in the show might seem a little intrusive. I imagine the swirling, nebulous combination of snapshots and references visualise the artist’s psyche, or what an exorcist would expect to find there. There are so many touch points that could be fitted together like a puzzle, but the very self-awareness that led to their presentation renders the works unknowable. But still spiky and sweet x
Hot Links
💼 This one’s for the History of Art girlies!!! – The NYT do a deep-dive into a book of hours (mediaeval calendar-cum-prayer-book) and it is STUNNING. With super fine details and cute lil explanations for some of the more random scenes, this interactive foray into science and spiritualism asks the crucial question: ‘What does it mean to live a life in time?’
🧼 “I can’t pretend to know what Basquiat would have wanted, but I’m certain he never anticipated his works would end up on a washable rug” – Marv Recinto explores the cringey, posthumous and downright weird Basquiat and Haring collabs in ArtReview
🐐 Would Derrida wear Margiela? – in her first column for Spike, Joanna Walsh explores the meaning of style: examples range from #outfitfail to Afrosartorialism; the difference between Bottega Vennetta and APC flannel; and late Italian fashion journalist Anna Piaggi or 20th-century British poet, Edith Sitwell. This is well worth a peruse and we’re curious to see how this column develops….
🚽 “The Alters, who built their own home, had a septic tank in the yard that they did not replace, or clean out, for 40 years” – The Thief Collector is a bonkers documentary that tells the story of two kleptomaniac retired teachers that steal a $160 million De Kooning by literally scalpelling it out of it’s frame. Watch to find out why guests in their home who asked to use the bathroom were given instructions not to flush anything solid down the toilet. ‘Instead, they would dispose of it themselves...’
💧“he was also super ’eager to learn’ more about the ’country’ of Africa” – A brief history of the notes app apology, which has had a chokehold on celebrities since the mid-teens, is the listicle we never knew we needed. From Taylor Swift to Tati Westbrook, this definitive guide is a hilarious trip down memory lane. Maybe spittle should jump on the bandwagon??
Add-to-Cart
Makeup Artist Isamaya French has released Thee Most Iconique bit of kit, soon to be in every girlie’s make-up bag – a dick-shaped lipstick, a Dickstick if you will. The packaging doesn’t disappoint, a removable shaft reveals the product, while the pair of balls give the perfect grip. Finished in chrome silver, pink or black, the eye-catching design fits comfortably in your…pocket. With red, pink and ‘sheer black’ tones on offer, this lipstick-cum-sculpture comes in shades to suit everyone! At £80 a pop, we’ve had cheaper… but you can’t put a price on pleasure. Available online here.
Parting Shot
Another one from Art Twitter… this week, we give you Raymond Pettibon. The punk artist muses on everything from racing to surfing, conspiracy theories to alleging David Zwirner gallery is somehow tied to investment management company BlackRock. We have no idea what half of these mean but sure as hell loved reading them xo