“Not even babies are authentic”
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This week
💦 spittle vs Tatler
💦 wealth and power… art and truth
💦 Žižek toilet analysis
Events
Lots of lovely shows to *leap* between this week! X x x x
🧊 28 Feb | 6:30pm | Conditions sessions: Gary Zhexi Zhang (talk), ICA [Charing Cross] £8
🧊 29 Feb | 6-8pm | Max Boyla: Crying like a fire in the sun, Workplace [Oxford Circus]
🧊 29 Feb | 7-8:30pm | Women in Revolt! panel discussion on Lesbian and Queer Art/Action in 1980's Britain, moderated by Studio Voltaire curator Dr Maggie Matić, Tate Britain [Pimlico] £10
🧊 29 Feb | 6–9pm | Luca George: Off Grid Industrial Complex, Finsbury Square [Moorgate]
🧊 1 March | 6–9pm | Gillies Adamson Semple: Eighty Seven Steps, Zerui [Denmark Hill]
🧊 1 March | 6–9pm | leafmold paradise, Union Pacific [Tottenham Court Road]
🧊 1 March | 6–8pm | The Corporate Gaze, ASC Stockwell Road, SW9 9SP [Stockwell]
🧊 2 March | 6-9 pm | Èter Space, (Group Show, Featuring Marisa Müsing, MilkyMothTeeth (Gabi), Virginie Tan, Nina González Park, Ester Freider and more...), Ethereal Maison, Angel, [Highbury and Islington] | Free tickets here, RSVP.
spittle picks a bone with Tatler
In place of an exhibition review this week, we felt compelled to bring you the most bonkers piece of journalism you may ever read – yes, even worse than that ES Magazine piece from last summer… no, we’re not joking. spittle was checking its Google alerts one day when something caught our eye: a publication known for catering solely to pre-teens and the jobless perma-blow-dried: Tatler. Fascinated by what late-stage obsolescence looks like, we clicked through - to an article titled ‘The Gallery Girls: from Mayfair to Bethnal Green, nepo-babies to new kids on the block. Who are the ‘gallerinas’ of today?’
Exploring how the ‘gallerinas of today’ have come a long way since the ‘Sloane Rangers of Sotheby's in the 80s’, reader, we were transfixed. A potted history of… women in the arts… the piece splits the aforementioned women into two distinct types - Carolines (upper-middle class) and Traceys (not upper-middle class). Wonderfully illustrating this classism with a totally oblivious quip from former Tatler editor Emma Soames (‘In those days it was worth having a job to use the office telephone’...) and another quote which sums up the terrors of life under the patriarchy for white, upper-middle class gallery girls (‘I remember regularly being patted on the head by a particular dealer’...) we gear up to find out who has broken that glass ceiling?? Tell us Tatler, who are the gallerinas we deserve??
Moving onto the contemporary scene, the writer observes that there ‘continues to be women who combine both focused grit and fortunate breeding, nerve and nepotism, to make big waves in the art world’. Oh Dear. Reading like some sort of AI-generated horror story in the voice of RuPaul, Tatler crowns today’s most ‘prim, permed and primed for a private view’, including Phoebe Saatchi Yates, of course.
With gaffs like ‘Ronald Judd’ and celebrating the fact that apparently ‘King Charles III's former equerry’ (an officer charged with the care of horses, we learn) once attended a private view, we can’t believe this isn’t a masterclass in satire. At one strange point, Victoria Miro and Maureen Paley are described as ‘permed party girls ready to take the art world by storm’ by attending ‘launches and private views, Silk Cuts and champagne in hand.’ Despite some weak references to combatting sexism – and two clunky lines about the black experience via a tantalisingly brief mention of the AYB movement – this whole piece is ridden with a good too many -isms for our liking. Call the police !!! Tatler, we suggest you do a lil homework and at least read some Kimberlé Crenshaw before your next #feminist feature... xo
Hot Links
🍦“I ate a yoghurt every day for a hundred days instead of going to the studio” – spittle-fave artist Dani Marcel speaks to Jacob Barnes for Curatorial Affairs. They talk about their ‘counter-method to approaching art through solely this lens of identity’, how they paywalled their application to the Rijksakademie, and recently spent a whole month riding London buses…
🌸“Turato did a deep dive into therapy, breath work, meditation, yoga, and psychedelics” – Meanwhile spittle-fave Nora Turato gets profiled by cutting-edge arts publication, The Hollywood Reporter, ahead of her show at Sprueth Magers LA. ‘I saw a billboard for Jennifer Lopez’s new album, ‘This is Me…Now,” which seems to be selling an identity,’ she says. ‘What is authentic? Not even babies are authentic, which is a very simple and basic thing. It’s not Jennifer Lopez. Authentic is being sold to us as an identity, like an egoic interpretation of how you should be…’ We love
🚽“The act of opting for Not White Toilet is RADICAL” – the best interiors ‘sletter FOR SCALE explores the loo as a reflection of certain broad socio-cultural mindset via Slavoj Žižek, Stanley Kubrick’s monolith, and Wim Wenders. Why? As they say: ‘Because brainy people do, in fact, love to “TALK SH*T”’.
💧“At least the haptic sensation wasn’t too astringent” – Ever since she created what was arguably the first social media performance artwork in 2014, we have been entranced by Amalia Ulman’s is-she-serious-we-can’t-really-tell practice. Her next foray as a water sommelier feels no different, and we have been thoroughly enjoying her reviews popping up on her insta. Someone get her a bottle of London tap water ASAP!!
Add-to-cart
Calla Henkel’s first novel Other People’s Clothes was an artworld favourite for portraying the experience of two artists moving to Berlin who engage in a carnivalesque, hedonistic and self-destructive quasi-performance in a bougie author’s flat. Or, in The Guardian’s words: “A whirlwind of screwball comedy, murder and friendship that examines the cannibalisation of experience to feed social media.” Her second book is now available to pre-order and looks equally tragicomic: ‘Laced with pitch-black humour and conspiratorial unease, Scrap is a razor-sharp examination of wealth and power, art and truth, of the line between justice and revenge - and who gets to cross it.’ We can’t wait to dive in x available for £16.99 here
Parting Shot
The artworld was in mourning today when the founder of iconic Insta account ‘whos____who’ announced the page is coming to ‘the_____end’.
In honour of the much-loved account, some of our faves here: