"the artistic genius of Carly Rae Jepsen"
"the artistic genius of Carly Rae Jepsen"
All submissions are welcome at spittlesubmissions@gmail.com. Published on Tuesday mornings, click here to subscribe!
spittle is thrilled to share the news of our first monthly column for Elephant magazine!
‘Art Crush’ is a rundown of what we’re loving each month.
From artist pledges to art-fashion collabs, charity donations to virtual tidbits, you’ll also find prints and editions appearing alongside artist-made jewellery, zines, podcasts, books, restaurants and ceramics.
Read Art Crush on Elephant here!
This Week
💦 too much fun
💦 the genius, the savant, and the ideologue
💦 I am not really sure why he's like that, but I do hope he chills out soon
Events
With a spring in our step, spittle will be *gasp* taking advantage of the warmer weather and heading out on the private view circuit in the coming days. From Deptford to Camden, Mayfair to White Hart Lane this week’s already looking to be – as Princess Julia says – a little bit arty, a little bit party!
🧊 15 March | Francis Bacon: The First Pope, Gagosian Davies Street [Bond Street]
🧊 16 March | Vanessa Winship: The Season, Huxley Parlour [Piccadilly Circus]
🧊 16 March | 6–8pm | Ryan Sullivan, Sadie Coles HQ - Davies Street, [Oxford Circus]
🧊 16 March | 6–8pm | The Front Room Show II, D Contemporary [Green Park]
🧊 16 March | 5–6:30pm | ‘it’s not crocs. it’s timeless, it’s Lindy.’ (Performance lecture), Peacocks Catford [Catford Bridge]
🧊 17 March | 6.30–8.30pm | Martin Parr and Corbin Shaw, OOF [White Hart Lane]
🧊 17 March | 6–9pm | BA Fine Art Open Studio, Central Saint Martins [Kings Cross]
🧊 17 March | 6–9pm | Derek Mainella: Too Much Fun and Liam Fallon: The Hotspot, Castor [Deptford]
🧊 18 March | 6–8pm | Thomas Adams: Chemtrails Over Camberwell, Arusha Gallery [Oxford Circus]
🧊 19 March | 11am–12pm | Artist Talk - Alison Katz and Martin Clark (Director, Camden Art Centre), Camden Art Centre [Hampstead]
Exhibition of the week
Amir Dehghan: To Protest, Harlesden High Street, now closed, information here
Amir Dehghan’s recent exhibition with Harlesden High Street, To Protest, was shockingly prescient. Spotlighting the oppression in Iran against civilians – from government corruption to religious extremism – Dehghan’s exhibition was a careful synthesis of unique research, cultural care and attention to aesthetics as markers of shared memories. Centred on a context of country-wide forced religious conversion to Islam, continually contested by a broad Iranian public, Dehghan’s nuanced exhibition highlighted the shocking violence inflicted on protesters peacefully decrying such oppression. A major centrepiece was a tomb-like structure assembled from empty rubber-bullet cartridge containers (used by secret militias hired by state police) – simultaneously resembling a tomb as well as works by Donald Judd and Carl Andre from the times of Minimalism. Most breathtaking of all were two paintings embossed with the segments of the Islamic Penal code of Iran, which distil how draconian the laws and punishments surrounding protesting are in the country. Also referencing Minimalism, on closer inspection, their dark, monochromatic appearance was embedded with skeins and scars in the oil paint; the effect a result of the artist violently whipping and lashing the canvas, inflicting the artwork itself with the pain and humiliation that is a daily experience for so many today… This is another show at Harlesden High Street - one of London’s most radical young galleries - that has blown spittle away.
Inside Out at The Artist Room, until 2 April 2022, information here.
Stepping into The Artist Room’s group show Inside Out is like stepping into a room of windows into other worlds. Here, in a painting by Max Boyla, a pair of hypnotic eyes peer out from a brimmed hat under a moody purple sky. There, in Scott Young’s work, an amputated corn on the cob lies downcast on a red marble background. Although the word ‘California’ is cheerfully emblazoned across its yellow kernels, the effect is eerie. A textured and metallic work by Kin-Ting Li hints at a moment of conception, of sparks flying; it’s a bit ominous, a bit dangerous, but it’s hard to say why. Elsewhere, a silicone spine dangles from the gallery ceiling above a rippling piece of glass, propped up by jesmonite and fringed with mother-of-pearl-side-up shells. The work is graceful and tranquil, but still post-apocalyptic; like the beached remains of a supercomputer that has been melted down to its constitutive, raw elements. Perhaps uncanniest of all is the face of Sonya Derviz’ silent voyeur. Gazing through hazy, shimmery layers of pure mystery, the face is at once androgynous, youthful and ancient. This show has an undercurrent of nervous energy, presenting works that are pregnant with potential - a trendy, timely exhibition.
Hot Links
🚬“I could barely pull it together to go to personal training” - The Red Scare ladies discuss the latest on Ukraine and how russophobia is gripping the west. Listen for the anecdotal evidence and hot takes that could only come from these particular USSR-born cultural critics: ‘I for one am looking forward to my first brush with russophobia so I can go and cry about it, AOC style’.
💸 Thielbucks, the anti-woke film festival and the death of Trevor Bazile - Peter Theil (big businessman and ardent Trump supporter) funded a film festival in New York last year hosted by a disgraced programmer and Trevor Bazile, black, queer and the child of a Haitian immigrant and by all accounts an up-and-coming genius. Towing the line between post-truth discourse and trolling, and raising questions of authenticity and integrity, the festival shook New York’s film community. Joseph Bernstein traces the history of the most unlikely film festival, and honestly, it’s a RIDE.
👑 “tiaras stolen from Claire’s” - Back at it again with the absorbing cultural analysis, Biz Sherbert takes us on a soft, dreamy walk through 2016 and 2017. Chokers, oversized hoodies and the detritus left from parties remind us of the half-glitzy half-grungy few years which preceded the pandemic, not sure if we miss that era but it’s nice to reminisce all the same.
🧯 Reject the blackpill - Elisha Tawe on why we should resist the art market’s compulsion to make black life easily consumable via an enlightening dive into Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s painting practice for Spike. ‘In Boakye’s shows,’ Tawe crucially heeds, ‘white exhibition-goers are pushed into encounters in which they must confront their carefully suppressed terror towards blackness and find common ground on the basis of shared humanity.’
🛋 The *new* World of Interiors - the legendary British magazine has recently taken on the jet-setting bohemian flaneur, Hamish Bowles, as Editor-in-chief. Expect a new pulse of glamour and an exhilarating frisson of digital content in the next few months on their soon-to-launch newsletter! spittle tip: the physical magazines from Bowles’s early tenure are sure-fire going to be collector’s items too…
🧠 Never call yourself a polymath in public! - Ross Simonini writes in defence of generalism in a culture that forces us to build our identity by specialising – academically, religiously, in career niches and even our sex lives, the list goes on… – for Believer Mag. ‘In a specialist society, the champions are the prodigy, the genius, the savant, and the ideologue,’ he notes. Why is it that ‘we just plain dislike the notion that someone can be [good at] too many things?
Add-to-cart
spittle is drooling over Agata Madejska’s orb-like candle edition just launched for Belmacz. Titled after a 1989 pronouncement by Polish economist Leszek Balcerowicz, ‘The Dream Was To Travel,’ the phrase continues to resonate in uncertain ways. Available here for £380.
Parting shot
Just as the UK public ditches their face masks – no longer are they mandatory on public transport or in shops – Gummo and Spring Breakers director Harmony Korine launches a new range of them in collaboration with Gagosian. Describing their conceptual roots, Korine keenly elucidated in the mega gallery’s newsletter ‘I always run out of masks, so this way I have more.’ well, with a sales pitch like that, who could resist?
All submissions are welcome at spittlesubmissions@gmail.com. Published on Tuesday mornings, click here to subscribe!
London’s beating ‘art <3 <3 <3 <3