"them's the breaks"
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This week
🧊 heterosexuality is definitely in crisis
🧊 cleaning onions for John Cage
🧊 art cloyingly sweet yet riddled with anxiety
Events
This week we’ve collated some cracking institutional public programming for you, from Tenant of Culture speaking live at Camden Art Centre, to Biblioteka’s book exchange courtesy of ICA, and even an Adham Faramawy performance at Serpentine’s LIVE held at hot new venue Stone Nest. Also not to miss is a new show at VO Curations curated by friends of the ‘sletter DATEAGLE ART, and we’re drooling already at the thought of the Roxy Lee x Martine Rose x Nike collab event at DSM!
12 July | 6pm | It’s all good. Or not. NFTs and the Art Market, talk hosted by Sotheby's Institute of Art, online, book tickets here
12 July | 6.30pm | JOAN Publishing Book Launch: Sam Cottington, Paul Becker & Jenna Collins, ICA [Charing Cross]
*Revealed* 13 July | Roxy Lee x Martine Rose x Nike collaborative installation opening at Dover Street Market [Piccadilly Circus]
14 July | 6–9pm | Hongxi Li: Shaped, curated by DATEAGLE ART, V.O Curations [Angel]
15 July | Chelsea College of Art 2020 Alumni Show [Pimlico]
15 July | 6–8pm | Francesca Hawker: Bad Covers, evening of performance and readings, LOVEDAY [Oval]
16 July | 11:30–12:30 | Tenant of Culture in conversation with Kiera Blakey, Camden Art Centre, book tickets free here
16 July | 2–8pm & 17 July, 11–6pm | Queer Earth and Liquid Matters, LIVE programmed organised by Serpentine Gallery (includes talk by Jack Halberstam and performance by Adham Faramawy, among many other events), Stone Nest [Leicester Square]
16th July | 5–11pm | Bibliotheka: Bookraiser, ICA [Charing Cross] | Entry by donation of a book (or buy a book at the ICA bookstore to donate) all donations go towards growing Biblioteka’s collection)
Exhibitions
Lily van der Stokker: Thank You Darling, Camden Art Centre, until 18 September, information here
From glimpses of images of Lily van der Stokker’s work online – having discovering it in the throes of lockdown, on a deep-dive through CABINET’s website – my perception was that it appeared a joyous and knowing celebration of kitsch and the domestic realm: pastel-hued hippy flowers; giant, scrawled phrases like ‘washing and cleaning’ and ‘organised & tidy’; and mock living rooms which trigger hazy memories of my nursery classroom. Her show at Camden Art Centre – postponed because of lockdown – gave us all of this. But the work is rendered surprisingly profound by an undertone of seriousness beneath her mischievous, playful aesthetic. Van der Stokker’s world-building is a vision of childlike tones and related renderings of domestic life; yet it is this dream, she seems to imply, that many female artists (and beyond) must give up to focus on their career. For example, at the centre of some of her recent work bubbles an anxiety about pregnancy and the specific societal female expectation for women to have children. One painting-cum-sculpture, ‘Childcare’, consists of a massive life-sized whiteboard – totally blank apart from a single flower. The work seems to imply the vastly different ways that raising a child alters a life, as well as suggesting that in response to the question of ‘childcare’ the number of potential answers is infinite. A friend of the ‘sletter understood it totally differently. ‘I just felt like the lost child,’ he said, describing his response, adding that its minimalist aesthetics warrant a meditative viewing like that of a Twombly or Richter. The final room dwells on age and the unglamorous side of administration that even artists must partake in. Family problems like feudal disputes with siblings over inheritance; income tax forms and being ignored or even overlooked as an older artist – all are explored through quasi-furniture-like objects. One work is literally a pile of supersized dishes in a fake kitchen with the tag line ‘don’t like pandemics’. Could she possibly be referencing the impressive amount of housework we all felt we did in lockdown; how it felt like we were washing up all day?! Regardless, one conclusion that I arrived at was that the saturation of seeming positivity felt too much for one experience. Like the feeling of being in a children’s hospital waiting room, cloyingly sweet yet riddled with anxiety.
Hot links
💒“Always, there are one or two bright canvases of abstract splashes that might well have been bought in haste at an IKEA” - Phillipa Snow delves into ‘the architecture and design of porn sets’ for PIN-UP, exploring domesticity as a sexy narrative. Afterall, as Tolstoy once said, “the home is so much about theatre.”
🪲Unmissable: the Margiela’s Cinema Inferno in Paris - Conceived by John Galliano and developed by London-based theatre group Imitating the Dog, Maison Margiela’s Artisanal 2022 Collection was staged as a hybrid theatrical-cum-cinematic experience. Incorporating various cinematic tropes - the show builds a Lynch-ian cinematic loop which confuses as much as it draws you in.
💤“most, maybe all male-female mating could be thought of as a ruse, the basest kind of transaction, the bleakest form of pleasure” - Heterosexuality and its discontents are given a once-over by 4 Columns, positing ‘that heterosexuality is definitely in crisis’ and asking, ‘are we post-post-Hetero yet?’
🐛“naked Madonna CGI avatar gives birth to things other than human babies” - The Madonna x Beeple NFT wasn’t the collab we were expecting to see this year. Ranging from a cohort of metallic centipede robots to Madonna’s reflections on being ‘the source of human existence’, we reckon we won’t be splashing out on what is astutely described as a ‘feral, chaotic experiment in visual culture’.
🧄“I cut garlic and cleaned onions for John Cage, but I don’t think I was his assistant.” - Marina Abramovic gets the profile treatment in yet another publication, this time, The New York Times. ‘I hate the studio. It’s a trap to me.’ she reveals. And, did you know that ‘If you don’t go to the bathroom before sunrise, all the toxins rise from your feet to your brain.’
Add-to-cart
A standout lot at one of our favourite London auction houses, Criterion in Islington (check them out for second-hand furniture deals like YOU’VE NEVER SEEN), is Jamie Reid’s iconic collaged artwork design for the Sex Pistols album Never Mind The Bollocks. Reid, perhaps the most-known artist associated with the ‘anarchy in the UK’ punk aesthetic, is in our view certainly under-recognised and worthy of greater attention – especially in these politically turbulent times. While at £20,000–£30,000 the estimate is way beyond spittle’s budget, collectors, if you’re listening, this is a steal compared to a wet painting of the next artificially stimulated figurative painter. Available here. Xoxo
Parting shot
Keith McNally, owner of New York’s famous Balthazar restaurant, blesses our instagram feeds with slightly-deranged ramblings on love, life and longing. In his most recent post, he generously warns of the dangers of soft lighting in bars (be careful who you take home), in another he divulges the difficulties of using those tiny little red mice in the middle of the ThinkPad laptops (kids these days just wouldn’t understand), and in yet another, McNally gives us his opinion of Monica Lewinsky (yikes!). Follow for more important tips !!
London’s beating ‘art <3 <3 <3