“pedal to the metal”
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This week
💦the high you get from a recently bleached floor
💦the best way to put someone in a chokehold
💦a few financial frogs falling from the sky
Events
Despite the looming long weekend, two new galleries – Dovetail and Shipton Street – are opening before the Easter break! Congrats xoxo
🧊4th Apr | 7pm | Ever Gaia: James Lovelock and Hans Ulrich Obrist ISOLARII book launch, Reference Point [Temple]
🧊 4th Apr | 6:30–7:45pm | Curatorial Affairs Issue 2 Launch, Waterstones Gower St [Goodge St]
🧊 5th Apr | 7pm | Screening: Michael Haneke’s 2006 film Caché, Rose Easton [Bethnal Green] email info@roseeaston.com to reserve a seat
🧊 5th Apr | 6:30–8pm | Screening showcase: Exterior / The Science of Collective Consciousness, Tate Modern [Southwark]
🧊 6 Apr | 6–9pm | Michael Pybus: A Dangerous Lesson, Shipton Street Gallery *new gallery alert* [Hoxton/Cambridge Heath]
🧊 6 Apr | 6–8pm | Chris Lloyd: I against I, Soft Opening [Bethnal Green]
🧊 6 Apr | 6–8pm | Andrew North: Surfacing, South Parade [Deptford]
🧊 7 Apr | Steve McQueen: Grenfell, Serpentine South [South Kensington]
🧊 7 Apr | 6–8pm | Boredom is the root of all evil: Stefania Batoeva and Manuel Corneliu, Dovetail *new gallery alert* [Deptford]
🧊 7 Apr | 6–9pm | There is Nothing New Under the Sun, Lewisham Arthouse [Lewisham]
Exhibition of the week
Pilvi Takala: On Discomfort at Goldsmiths CCA, through 4 June 2023, information here
I am sat watching Close Watch, created for the 2022 Venice Biennale, which shows footage from workshops with Takala’s colleagues conducted after she spent 6 months working as a security guard in a Finnish shopping mall. The guards talk through issues of racism, sexism and prejudice in the workplace; demonstrate the best way to put someone in a chokehold; and discuss the need for offensive jokes to form a bond with your colleagues.
A man comes to sit down next to me, as he approaches he pulls the wheelie office chair further away, so as not to sit too close to me. A considerate act, perhaps, but after seeing all the works on the first floor of the exhibition, I can’t help but chuckle to myself.
Employing sociological theory, Takala’s practice is rooted in the workplace, and the disruption thereof. One of the artist’s earliest works, The Trainee, sees her taking up a placement at Deloitte in Helsinki. Through hidden camera footage, we see the artist using her time at the company to do ‘brainwork’ – staring into space, without a laptop or marketing deck in sight. When questioned by her colleagues, she explains that she’s thinking – easier to do in a moving elevator, apparently – followed by awkward laughs and concerned glances from those sharing the confined space with her.
Space is also the subject of The Stroker, filmed in London’s Second Home, a futuristic office space of curved glass walls and exposed concrete. Posing as a wellness worker, whose job it is to gently touch her colleagues as they shuffle around the corridors, we see their reactions grow increasingly suspicious throughout the day. On the video’s other channel, workers discuss the discomfort in hushed tones in elevators and meeting rooms.
Takala works to disrupt social norms, gently pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable, what is ‘weird’, and what will really piss people off. Undercurrents of surveillance, and confusion between reality and the artist’s manufactured games creates suspicion and distrust between Takala and the subjects of her films. We watch, laughing at the discomfort of her colleagues – how silly they are for being so compliant to social etiquette, how rigid, how weird of them – before we shuffle to the edge of the bench to avoid sitting too close to a stranger in the gallery.
Hot Links
🏎️ “Yngve Holen’s HEINZERLING is vroom vroom and shiny, it’s bending metal and was sent to this planet from the future... Pedal to the metal” – spittle fave writer Natasha Stagg reveals her favourite tumblr accounts as well as ‘five artworks to make you feel again!’ in what she dubs the age of meaningless on her new ‘sletter, nuda.
🐩 “Like the high you get from a recently bleached floor” – Frieze have published a lovely obit for cultural icon and nation’s sweetheart Paul O’Grady, famed for blonde bombsite drag act, Lily Savage, and for helping to ‘bring gay culture into the mainstream’.
🆘 “you’re so much better at this than me, so why don’t you just do it?” – writer Sammi Gale crosses the border to GQ to pen a fascinating piece titled ‘I’m a boyfriend who uses weaponised incompetence. Can I change?’ upon discovering the #weaponizedincompotence trend on TikTok…
🚫 “two sets of eyes and oversized dates is inscribed with DATE RAPE in capital letters. The pun isn’t particularly clever, let alone funny, and exuded a whiff of poor taste that contaminated the rest of the show” – Two new shows by Gilbert and George, the ‘pro-monarchist, Turkish cuisine-loving, anti-elite, Brexit- and Boris Johnson-avid, ever tweed-clad, reportedly civil-partnered and unwaveringly together’ fail to impress Benoît Loiseau in ArtReview.
🧢 “the ‘primal scene’ of the current political panic about transness” – Sophie Lewis considers the transgender child for TANK, and how juvenile transness threatens everything that underpins the cisheteropatriarchal family. Perhaps kids need liberating from a politics of innocence that masks so many vested interests… a gr8 and thoughtful read.
🦇 "it's like your bleedin bat soup innit" – BBC Archive twitter has posted just the cutest time capsule segment of the British public trying ‘exotic’ flavoured crisps for the first time… hilarity and disbelief ensues.
Add-to-cart
spittle fave Sophie Mei Birkin is selling two gorgina new editions (one on pearlescent paper & the other on mirrored aluminium dibond) titled 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘪𝘱𝘦, 2022. Prints £175 and £300, DM her here to purchase x
Parting Shot
This last week was hot for courtroom drama, but Gwyneth’s skiing extravaganza wasn’t the only case that piqued our interest.
Dutch Artist/Filmmakers KIRAC have been fighting a legal case relating to their latest film, which features French Author Michel Houellebecq allegedly having intercourse with two students. According to a press release from KIRAC, the film blurs the lines between fact and fiction, reality and constructed narrative, in order to confuse viewers as to whether Houellebecq actually engages in the recorded erotic acts. As KIRAC and the judge rightly point out, there will inevitably be less confusion over whether a body double was used, after the case.
The case continues in Dutch courts on 18th April at 2pm, if you’re interested in attending the case, you can fill out this form here.
xoxoxo