“there is plastic in my blood”
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This Week
💦 Tom Hardy is a fake
💦 deep-fried memes
💦 syzygy
Events
Some high calibre exhibitions are on the cards this week… White Cube is showing trendy, earthy painter duo TARWUK; Jon Rafman returns to London with an installation arriving straight from Berlin; and Ingela Ihrman presents new wearable works that explore how invasive weeds, intestinal flora, and extinct amphibians are interconnected at Gasworks. spittle is particularly buzzing for friend of the ‘sletter / previous contributor Tosia Leniarska’s debut show at Emalin, which includes works by Ana Viktoria Dzinic, Diamond Stingily and Carolyn Lazard among many others!
🧊 31 Jan | 6-8pm | Tarwuk: Posadila sam kost u zimskrom vrtu, White Cube, Mason’s Yard [Green Park]
🧊 1 Feb | 6.30-8.30pm | Ingela Ihrman: Nocturne, Gasworks [Vauxhall]
🧊 1 Feb | 6-8pm | Linder | Hannah Wilke, Alison Jacques [Oxford Circus]
🧊 2 Feb | 6-8pm | World as diagram, work as dance, curated by Tosia Leniarska, Emalin [Shoreditch]
🧊 2 February | 6-8pm | Jon Rafman: Ebrah K’dabri and Gretchen Bender: Image World, Spruth Magers [Green Park]
🧊 2 Feb | 6-9pm | Night, Light. Cob Gallery [Camden Road]
🧊 3 Feb | 6-10pm | Durian Revolution, Studio Chapple [Deptford]
🧊 3 Feb | 6-9pm | FETISH, Mama [Whitechapel]
🧊 4 - 5 Feb | 11am-7pm | Fantastic Toiles Pop-Up [New Cross]
Exhibition of the Week
Jenkin van Zyl: Surrender at Edel Assanti, info here.
You’ve seen the pics all over insta; a giant silver-shiny inflatable rat head with buck teeth frames the gallery entrance. Streams of gallery goers disappear inside its jaws, to find the normally pristine white walls of Edel Assanti transformed into a red-lit warren of industrial corridors. Pipes wind across the walls and ceiling in all directions - inspired by tubes found in Japanese love hotels utilised to anonymously transport x-rated goods. At the end is a room with an entirely mirrored floor, exposing anyone in a skirt. Words are scorched into the ceiling and cans labelled ‘limitless growth’ are stacked high and topped with rat-faced trophies attached to rusted pipes… every detail is highly finished and of high production value, creating a sense that each object has a purpose and a provenance. Doubling back, we come across a room with three sparse single beds set up to face a film, projected onto the opposite wall. On screen, rat-human hybrids in red latex dance till they drop, in a universe so thick with detail and reference it’s impossible to look away and impossible to take it all in. A heavy soundscape ASMRs my scalp and I’m gripped; this is a film for the short-attention-spanned. Bodies and prosthetics become indistinguishable, writhing and transforming, maxxed out to their limit. There’s a sense of conspiracy between and against the characters, as well as sex, poetry, exhaustion and bondage (in both senses of the word). This big budget show at Edel Assanti reverberates straight off the back of the artist’s hot solo show at Rose Easton and everyone’s obsessed, even readers of The Guardian. When we first saw Jenkin’s iconic MA grad show in 2021 - an ambitious installation involving the disco-ball decked fuselage of an actual aeroplane - we knew they were one to watch. We’re placing bets on a Jenkin van Zyl British Pavilion happening before long - perhaps for Venice 2026. Anyone in? xo
Hot Links
🃏 “Corecore bears a striking resemblance to… Dada.” – Rhea Nayyar asks how our obsession with ‘cores’ might resemble the attribution of meaning to the meaningless that characterised the 20th Dada art movement. Apparently TikTok is surrealism central but if you’re looking for ‘weirdcore’ this is still most likely to be found on the ‘depersonalisation and trauma sides of Tumblr.’ Confused much?
🇬🇧 What is the British nepo baby? – It’s Tom Hardy affecting a working class accent to seem less posh is what it is ! Vice compiles a starter pack that shows just how deep the nepo rabbithole goes and delivers a hefty report on how Nepotism in the UK is different to the US.
👩👦 “Dated and Related walked so that milf Manor could run” – Naomi Fry watched Milf Manor - ‘a May-December dating show haunted by the spectre of incest’ - so we don’t have to, and asks when reality TV producers can ever be stopped from making horned-up, vacation-resort-based dating series…
🍕 syzygy and the apocalypse – For Dis, Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman uses the concept of syzygy - the moment when three celestial bodies align - to tell the story of the real and manufactured causes behind the fall of Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlour which ‘epitomises the rise of the leveraged buy-out in corporate America.’
🙃 “We will cringe at the thought of how we swiped away our soul mates…” – The New York Times explores the notion of ‘futurecringe’ which attempts to predict which of our current behaviours we’ll look back at and: cringe. Examples include having your first name selected by your parents, gender reveal parties, gorp-core, the pandemic, and the monarchy. Editors, if you’re listening, we think a similar piece on the art world would make for good reading xoxo
🔫 “thirst traps inside choppers and pouty selfies with assault rifles” – It’s no surprise, given the ubiquity and influence that TikTok and other online platforms have on today’s youth, that the military have started using influencers to galvanise the kids. In this article, Günseli Yalcinkaya explains ‘the real psy-op is the normalisation of military recruitment through social media.’ #pewpew
Dirty Talk
spittle are pleased to launch a new segment inviting readers to submit their most compelling conversations of the week. We want to hear your most honest, candid, and weird dialogues that get to the heart of the strange and beautiful world in which we live. First, we give you a snippet of Adam Farah-Saad and Alfa Bransfield negotiating the paint colour of Farah-Saad’s newly opened exhibition at Palatial (fka Woodsy’s). Less-saturated baby blue promises to be the colour of the season. Thanks queens xoxoxo
Add-to-cart
Ikea is SO hot right now. Even Dinner Party Gallery hosted Casa Billy (spittle’s fave hawker of vintage Ikea furniture) at their Clerkenwell digs last year. Their latest collab is with uber-trendy designer Sabine Marcelis, who has created a range of lighting and tableware; come for the infinite doughnut fruit bowl, and leave with the Dan Flavin-esque lighting installations. Available from February 2023, prices starting at £5. Info here.
Parting Shot
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Rafael Nadal ‘suspended in harness for hours as body is sculpted’ by Ugo Rondinone, as reported by the Daily Mirror. ‘In order to capture his 3D figure, he had to endure hours inside full-body moulds, hanging from a harness - in his underpants.’ It’s a shame that, after going to such lengths to capture his likeness, the sculptures were hung so high his features were hardly recognisable...