“their ancestors were supremely milk pilled”
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This Week
💦 Issy Wood at Carlos Ishikawa reeks of dusty, moth-balled luxury
💦 heavy pink impasto to conjure an asshole
💦 dogs are for life—not just for failed movie franchises
Events, 12–19 October
IT’S FRIEZE WEEK! Any gallery that’s any gallery has a new show on. But fear not, spittle has done the hard (diary) work so you don’t have to. We’re most excited to be Instagramming Jack Jubb’s gorgeous paintings at OSNOVA, trend-spotting at the Viscose mag launch party, and working the room at Gina Fischli’s Soft Opening private view. We’re ending the week with a cocktail at Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover’s new restaurant, Tokla’s, rumoured to be featuring a Tomato Tillmans on the wall. Pardy time!
🧊 12 October | 6–8pm | M is for Madonna, M is for Mariah, M is for Mother, India Nielsen, Darren Flook, 106 Great Portland Street, W1W 6PF [Oxford Circus] | Exhibition runs TBC. Free.
🧊 12 October | 6–8pm | Lenore Tawney: Part One, Alison Jacques Gallery, 16–18 Berners Street, W1T 3LN [Oxford Circus] | Exhibition runs through 6 November | Free
🧊 13 October | 7:30pm onwards | Viscose 02 London Launch: A Night of Fashion Research with CG von Platen, Dal Chodha, Jeppe Ugelvig and Tenant of Culture, 2 Arundel Street, WC2R 3DA | Free (rsvp essential, email hi@reference-point.uk)
🧊 14–17 October | Frieze 2021 at Dover Street Market [a plethora of events and launches] | Dover Street Market, Haymarket, SW1Y 4DG [Piccadilly Circus] | Free (to attend)
🧊 14 October | 7–10pm | “de nos jours,” (group show) OSNOVA off-site, W1K 5DR [Bond Street] | Exhibition runs through 26 October | Free (email hello@osnovagallery.com to book an appointment)
🧊 14 October | 6–8pm | Al Freeman: Painting, Carl Kostyal, W1S 3PQ [Oxford Circus] | Exhibition runs through 24 October | Free
🧊 14 October | 12–7pm | Richard Burton & Anne Carney-Raines, Incubator 21, W1U 7PR [Baker Street] | Exhibition runs through 17 October | Free
🧊 14 October | 6–8pm | The Gaze, curated by Louis Wise, TJ Boulting, 59 Riding House Street, W1W 7EG [Oxford Circus] | Exhibition runs through 20 November. Free
🧊 15 October | 6–9pm | Gina Fischli: Deep Water [Opening and Publication Launch], Soft Opening, 6 Minerva Street, E2 9EH [Cambridge Heath] | Exhibition runs through 27 November. Free.
🧊 15 October | 6–9pm | Warm Vessels in Search of Sunset, Harlesden High Street, 108 Fleet Street, EC4A 2AB [City Thameslink] | Exhibition runs TBC. Free
🧊 16 October | 6pm–Late | Hung on a Minute (group show), Platform Southwark [Southwark] | Exhibition runs through 30 October | Free
🧊 19 October | 6–9pm | Toklas, 1 Surrey Street, WC2R 2ND [Restaurant, Bakery and Grocery Shop Opening] | Probably more expensive than Gail’s.
Exhibitions of the Week
Issy Wood: Trilema, Carlos Ishikawa, until 20 November. Information here.
Chic leather, marble-clad clocks, suits of armour. Seedy car interiors and cheerleaders. Issy Wood’s solo exhibition at Carlos Ishikawa reeks of dusty, moth-balled luxury. Often taking inspiration from expired auction catalogues, Wood’s depictions - close-cropped to remove all context - focus on the material qualities of these objects. They become nonsensical, the connotations of status, wealth and class dissipate. Painted on velvet, the works’ surfaces have a soft, absorptive quality, drawing you close. They’re comforting as much as they are disquieting, desirable as much as they are repulsive.
Florian Krewer: Ride or Fly, Michael Werner, until 13 November. Information here
Krewer’s visceral paintings formed the most sexually explicit show of the year yet for spittle. Heavy pink impasto to conjure an asshole? Check. Wilderness rimjobs? Check. Beastiality?! Check. Not one for the faint-hearted (or for a parental visit). This show - which also featured tender/dramatic/searching moments - portrays youth, queerness and the messiness of sex in an earnest and exciting way. More please!
Hot Links
⚰️ London’s underground art scene is dying! - According to Chris Fite-Wassilak, who notes how we are leaving behind ‘the postindustrial, squatting legacy-model of taking up physical space with group shows in massive crumbling warehouses or old shopfront locations’, and moving towards ‘smaller, itinerant and more events-based ways of working, a hybrid collective and popup model that might equally organise gigs, print a zine or hold a one-night show in a community café’. spittle feels nostalgic for the 90s
🃏“Memes are the new art criticism” - Jerry Gogosian (aka Hilde Lynn Helphenstein) got the profile treatment in the Wall Street Journal. For someone so droll and provocative, this interview was a total disappointment. The basic Q&A set-up read like a sanitised textbook primer on the contemporary art market—completely lacking her characteristically sardonic voice. A wasted opportunity... Jerry, if you’re listening, spittle is available for round two.
🙀Cats (The Movie) Caused Covid - The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage conjectures that the global pandemic may have been a karmic response to the notorious ‘plotless film about nightmarish horny feline monstrosities who eat children’ that was released last year. Andrew Lloyd Webber (the musical’s composer) ‘says he was “emotionally damaged” by the ordeal’ and in need of an emotional support dog. spittle wants to remind Webber, dogs are for life—not just for failed movie franchises.
🦑 Anish Kapoor on vaginas - Lockdown doesn’t seem to have done Anish any favours, as Jonathan Jones finds on a visit to the artist’s London studio, finding ‘stacks of blood-soaked canvases depicting huge wounded bits of bodies and purple organs spattered on the walls’. Anish explains; ‘I’m not doing it intellectually. I just wanted to make a many-breasted quasi-female figure and see what happened’.
🖊️“Without [semi-colons], we are just human-skinned information processing appliances”- Mitch Speed contemplates the state of art writing today, condemning it as, ‘a synthetic imitation of the radically alive criticism we need’. For a recent example of what Mitch is talking about, look no further than the 2-star review of Anicka Yi’s Tate Turbine Hall commission which The Times ran yesterday. With no coherent argument to be seen, Campbell-Johnston’s lacklustre take - which popped up in the article’s very last two lines - consisted purely of outrage without insight.
🥛“Trads and esoteric health enthusiasts are fanatical about dairy” - blogger holly-o walks us through the ongoing (Twitter-based) Milk Wars, with discussion ranging from the Right Wing Body Builders (RWBBs) who think that ‘through nutritionally-informed lifting in combination with crypto grindset they will become ripped and quickly afford a Lamborghini’, to the unfortunate Oatly social-media manager who has to deal with a daily onslaught of redpilled dairy supremacism in their feed. Entertaining! Although, as holly-o points out, ‘this moment also captures an assortment of deeply-felt sentiments surrounding our relationship to food production and personal diet in a consumer economy’.
Add-to-cart
Drawn from his cheeky poetry, John Giorno’s aphorisms—often emblazoned onto monochrome and multichromatic backgrounds—have graced the walls of galleries and museums alike. Almine Rech has designed some extremely desirable merch for their current show of the late artist, his first in the UK. One of spittle’s favourites unfortunately hasn’t made the cut for this collaboration: DON’T WAIT FOR ANYTHING. THANKS 4 NOTHING is available here for €50, or pick it up at Rech’s London space from tomorrow if you’re planning on wearing it to Frieze.
Parting shot
The Art Newspaper’s Kabir Jhala has been on a roll recently! Cutting to the quick of what the commercial art world’s all about:
Love,