SUMMER SPECIAL II (shows NOT to miss + more recs!)
As the second heatwave begins to subside and we face rumours of rainfall, the idea of losing days to the lido/the downs/the heath just isn’t as appealing... But fear not! There are many must-see exhibitions that demand an IRL visit, both in the UK and further afield. To give you a soupçon of what’s out there we’ve asked some of spittle’s favourite chicas to send in their expert recommendations, enjoy!
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Adam Farah, Artist, Composer and Sauce Maker
🏘 Brent Biennial: In the House of My Love by Metroland Cultures, venues in and around Kilburn, Willesden, and Harlesden, until 11 Sept - An antidote to the too cool for school clouty ego-curated international biennial complex, the Brent Biennial brings the soul back to the process whilst speaking with communities and artists, not at them. I dare the art world to venture outside of Zone 1-2 East/South London and come witness the real vibes!
Fiontán Moran, Assistant Curator at Tate Modern
🏞 Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, until 4 Sept - think landscape art is boring? Think again. At Tate Liverpool, this trans-historical exhibition reimagines the enduring tradition of 'landscape art' as inherently political and bound up with our understanding of identity and community. Featuring painting, sculpture, video, zines, photography and installation it covers an impressive range of history from the 1932 Right to Trespass that led to the establishment of National Parks, the Greenham Common Peace Camps against nuclear missiles, all the way through to the climate emergency and rave culture. It almost made me go outside in the sun.
Jordan Bosher, Press and Archive, Michael Werner
🏳️🌈 Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit, Pallant House, Chichester, until 23 October - A real highlight! This is a generous offering of an important artist that injected a real queer sensibility into the notion of a portrait early on. Many works are drawn from private and public collections and have not been seen in decades! It's a shame it isn't touring…
Tosia Leniarska, Curator, Writer, Editor and Cultural Worker
☠️ The Dark Arts: Aleksandra Waliszewska and the Symbolism from the East and North, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, until 2 October - Sweeping in range and volume, a response to the calls for decolonising popular notions of Slavic and Baltic cultures comes in the form of a mad, childish, morbid, sexy, decadently maximalist exhibition in Warsaw. Natalia Sielewicz and Alison M. Gingeras curated a canon-making (worldmaking?) selection of 20th-century Symbolist and folk artworks from Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Czechia, the Baltic and their many ethnic groups, mixed in with the paintings of Instagram icon Aleksandra Waliszewska. Uncanny, silly, thickly hung, they don’t make them (institutional retrospectives) like this in the West.
🗺 World out of Joint: 9 Installations, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, until 14 August (sadly just closed but gorg images here!) - Here, a different form of maximalism: an austerity of the Western canon – yet just as uncanny. After inexplicably having to scramble through the entirety of Kunstmuseum Winterthur’s permanent collection – so deliciously musty their Josef Albers’s might as well be Wes Anderson set props – the patient visitor arrives at the most indulgent contemporary installation show. Each of the nine rooms is an immersive total work, each so clever, the whole thing a clinically nerdy playground – so entertaining.
George Henry Longly, Artist, Designer, Filmmaker and founder of Ridley Road Project Space and Studio GHL
💦 Prem Sahib: Liquid Gold, Southard Reid, until the end of August (activated at night) - A sublime acid yellow lighting intervention in the windows of the new Southard Reid gallery space on Grape Street that will open on 2 September with a show titled Chassi by Lea Cetera. The new gallery marks a major expansion in exhibition space for Phillida Reid and her artists and I’m really excited to see what lies inside.
💪 Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics, Barbican, 8 September - 8 January - Featuring work spanning six decades, this the first major institutional show in the UK of the massively influential and respected radical artist. Barbican is one of my favourite spaces to see art in and I can’t wait to see this show.
🚬 Tommy Xie: hold me again, in the jadeite gaze, Ginny on Frederick, until 8 September -Tommy has a beautiful show of paintings at Ginny on Frederick. The gallery continues to showcase great artists with really exciting programming.
💋 Tom of Finland Arts & Culture Festival 2022, Second Home, London, 8–9 October - Features art installations, performances and presentations including erotic artists, vendors, performers, DJs and galleries.
Intermission from Lara Johnson-Wheeler, Writer, Editor and Broadcaster 💖
📚 Reading and flicking through and thinking about - I'll Wear It Until I'm Dead: The Song Fashion Collection by Myung-il Song and Dominique Nzeyimana, thinking about a time we can go to Vienna and visit their amazing store, SONG. Myung-Il is the mother of one of my dearest and chicest and her archive is irreverent and considered and SO joyful in this documentation of 10 years of the store. Also Worms Magazine, I bought all the back issues a few weeks ago. They hold some of the best, most considered explorations of bookwormishness and womaning I've found in writing.
🍒 Eating - cherries on ice and Diet Coke in the day, this cold noodles with tomatoes and radishes NYT Cooking dish at night while watching Love Island and sweating bullets from the mugginess (pun intended).
🍦Listening to - amazing new releases from Sofie Royer who is a perfect princess Pierrot. Baker Miller Pink is such a fun, sweet, lilting song to deep-throat a Twister to.
🦾 Recommendations of things to see include… - The new Claire de Rouen store on Globe Road!! An evolution from the Soho space is full of such brilliant buys from Lucy and Lilly, well worth a visit. And then down the road is Maren Karlson's Cypher at Soft Opening - now extended to September, it's so disturbingly beautiful and peaceful. I really felt the sensation of how mechanical our insides can be, looking at the paintings.
🐠 Other good summer things - Just going to The Rio for some air con and before/after eating good Turkish at Mangal 1 / 2 if you're feeling fancy or Umut 2000 or sitting outside Café Cecilia for hours and hours, drinking White Port & Tonic and eating their sage & anchovy fritti which I will ensure is served at my wedding or funeral, whichever comes first.
Kabir Jhala, Associate Editor, The Art Newspaper
🎈 Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2 September - 11 December - Can you believe this is the first-ever exhibition on Pop Art from South Asia anywhere in the world? Wild but true! The show looks set to do more than expand the Pop Art canon to fit in some subcontinental players. It will also offer a new and distinct definition of the movement by incorporating many more histories, time periods, practices and artists than before, such as Bhupen Khakhar and Bharti Kher. Although this approach risks a sprawling and perhaps unfocused show, it also feels like the cleverest thing that Global south curators can do: not just insert overlooked artists into existing narratives, but rethink the boundaries of art history in exciting and generous ways, so that western perspectives naturally shift. The presentation - which contains a not insignificant number of Pakistani artists - will then travel to Delhi in February. I’m unsure if all the works will make it considering current political tensions between the two neighbouring countries, so watch this space for a potential news story too!!
Daré Dada, Curator and Archivist
⏰ Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom: Before: Socialized, Circularized, Linearized, Artificialized, Corrupt Time, Southwark Park Galleries, until 4 September - Appau’s exhibition takes a glance into what we deem to be collective memory through the fragmentation of ‘cultural moments.’ An exhibition utilised as a space for interdisciplinary happens…
😈 Nicolas Deshayes: Gargouilles, Modern Art, until 17 September - Delicate, Delicious and Delirious. Deshayes deft body of work invites us to be reminiscent of the undergoing changes in our bodies.
Ted Targett, Curator, Writer, Founder of Numbered Editions and Painters Painting Paintings
☃️ Snowman by FISCHLI/WEISS, Foundation Beyeler, Basel (permanent installation) - This piece took me by surprise when ambling for the exit. Nestled in the hedgerow, a snowman in a freezer appears suddenly smiling back at you behind the glass. A real palette cleanser from the serious Mondrian’s inside, like a crisp spoonful of lemon sorbet…
Louise Benson, Deputy Editor, Elephant
🪲 Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness, Whitechapel Gallery, from 20 September - I’m looking forward to Zadie Xa’s new exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery this autumn, which will be her largest institutional show in the UK to date. I first met Zadie about a year ago over a couple of beers (we later went for an incredible meal in Chinatown that involved around 12 of us miraculously securing a table with no booking on a heaving Friday night around midnight), and I think she’s one of the most generous and hardest working artists out there.
🐩 Lydia Blakeley: The High Life, Southwark Park Galleries, until 4 September - I am also dying to catch Lydia Blakeley’s solo exhibition The High Life at Southwark Park Gallery, where her paintings from holiday booking websites mingle with deck chairs and cool boxes. Lydia was on the cover of Elephant previously with a very early work of hers, and I have loved watching her go from strength to strength ever since, including showing multiple works at the Hayward last year, alongside a giant painting on the side of the gallery during lockdown. Her sense of humour and eye for the weird disconnects of both the British class system and digital culture are unparalleled.
With thanks to all of our glorious special contributors! spittle will resume in our usual format on tuesday 30 august xo