“there’s metafiction in the air here”
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This week
🧊 sexy and inviting gym equipment
🧊 a ‘slightly drunk’ visitor commits arson at Newport Street gallery
🧊 Larry Stylinson
Events
The calendar is jam packed this week with openings and here are some we are defo not going to miss. This week also sees some fabulous shows close: Lea Cetera at Phillida Reid Grape Street, Max Clendinning at Sadie Coles and Jatinder Singh Durhailay at The Artist Room – get to them all while you can <3
💦27 September | From 7pm | Macarthur Park, curated by Will Ballantyne-Reid in association with Ridley Road Project Space, Pavilion Gallery, Cromwell Place [South Ken]
💦28 September | 6 - 9pm | Gianna T: Life if Beautiful opening & performance, curated by Hector Campbell, 9 French Place [Shoreditch High Street]
💦29 September | 8-11pm | Who Are You Wearing? featuring Daria Blum, Tommy Camerno, Racheal Crowther, Enver Hadzijaj, Ariel Helyes, Michael Ho, Jack O’Brien, Garrett Pruter, Francisco Zhan, Kupfer Project Space [London Fields]
💦29 September | 6:30-8:30pm | Forrest Bess: Out of the Blue & Dani and Sheilah ReStack: Cuts in the Day, Camden Art Centre [Finchley Road]
💦29 September | Veronica Ryan, Alison Jacques [Oxford Circus]
💦29 September | 7pm | BitterSweet Review inaugural launch with performances and readings, ICA [Leicester Square]
💦29 September | 6-9pm | Marieke Bernard-Berkel, Sherbert Green [Cambridge Heath]
Exhibition of the week
Anne Imhof: Avatar II at Sprüth Magers, until December 23 2022. Info here
Stepping into Sprüth Magers’ ground floor gallery is like landing in the middle of a film set. The scene is staged with lines of uniform storage lockers that beat a path through the gallery spaces along a backdrop of giant aluminium panels, demonic etchings incised into their chromey green-black planes. Cold and industrial, the locker line leads into another room and turns back on itself, becoming a maze of identical metal doors peppered with breeze blocks. At the final twist of the maze the path abruptly stops and we find ourselves facing four teen heartthrob posters – their Peter André baby-faces are ridiculous but human and endearing. Upon discovering them, an unexpected wave of nostalgia rolls over me; I feel giddy and weird. In another room, the white walls are loaded with macho gym equipment that somehow feels sexy and inviting – and believe me, gym equipment has never appeared tantalising to this spittle reporter before. The punch bag reminds me of the artist’s first performance: a live boxing night in the red light district, where the fighters fought to the tune of a band, lit red by light and blood – ‘one way to create a picture’ Imhof later mused. In this multi-floor show across Sprüth Magers’ rambling London gallery Imhof has again used staging to create a picture, this time putting us squarely in the frame. We are dominated by the crushing physicality of the space and its sheer industrial indifference, but this simply magnifies the clichéd glimmers of desire, be they pin ups or the carnal implications of a gym obsession. The work is aesthetically seductive, hypnotic in its repetitive elements, but deals with an undercurrent of what can only be described as… cringe. As I watch Imhof’s muse Eliza Douglas lick her own shoulder on film, mouth noises excruciatingly amplified by commercial tower speakers, I realise the cringe is all my own.
Hot links
🧪 “We need Taylor Swift to read Hegel” – If you also wondered what the hell was going on in the media in the 10 days before last week’s bank holiday then please draw yourself a bath, relax, and listen to this podcast which offers philosophical musings on our suffocating, totalitarian news cycle and why we need to start seeing intriguing bikini shots of Astrophysicists in the tabloid press.
🐈⬛ “in art historical terms… there is more than a touch of hubris in the swagger” – Sensationalists: The Bad Girls and Boys of British Art premiers tomorrow night on BBC Two and traces the rise and fall of the ‘90s gang including Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst et al. Beyond further satiating our current penchant for indie sleaze, we’re hoping that the programme - described as ‘unapologetic’ - delivers the juicy goods.
🔎 “Collective-confirmation-bias gossip is back” – Kenzie Bryant turns her analytical gaze onto our increasing involvement in celeb micro-drama (see Harry Styles’ spitgate), detailing how the ‘bunk science’ of body language analysis migrated from Youtube onto TikTok as a consequence of the Depp-Heard trial, and even referencing spittle’s favourite fan theory, that of ‘Larry Stylinson’.
🎬 “I did go down the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell rabbithole” – Helen Molesworth speaks to The Art Newspaper about her new podcast that takes a deep-dive into the fatefully tragic night Ana Mendieta died while in the presence of her partner Carl Andre. Asked if it might make its way into a film, she says ‘Hollywood has not really been successful at portraying the art world, hence people in art are skittish about selling their rights to Hollywood…’ we think that means yes.
🔮 “The whole city is trapped inside a self-authored Substack” - Musing on The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder’s new show for HBO which sees the actor repeatedly playing out scenes from his life in ever more elaborate sets and increasingly self-reflexive situations, Dean Kissick explores the ‘flatness’ of the current moment, in which we soullessly reenact the debauchery of modernity ‘like the Romans by the end of their Empire, in the ruins of our own past’.
Add to cart
spittle is drooling over Gaetano Pesce’s day-glo chair designs for Bottega’s latest show. Going on sale at Design Miami this December, sadly they’re guaranteed to be financially out of reach. We’ll settle for one of his super-chic resin vases instead! Available here from Koibird
Parting shot
In The Art Newspaper, Kabir Jhala delivered a scene report on last week’s chaotic Damien Hirst opening at Newport Street. Victor, a ‘slightly drunk’ visitor wearing a trilby, smashed one of Hirst’s spotty ceramic plates before proceeding to set Hirst’s new HENI catalogue alight outside the gallery. "If [Hirst] is burning his art, why can't I?," he questioned, before being asked to leave by security. spittle slightly regrets not being present at the opening for this spectacle, which made the Anne Imhof opening look quaint.