“today’s cinema hunks are nevernudes”
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This week
💦 getting our booties battle-ready to fight in the Great Booty War
💦 alchemizing money into cultural status
💦 crustacean-couture
Events
Some very cool shows opening this week... The first posthumous show of Lee Scratch Perry opens at Cabinet and we’re curious what will be on view in that elusive Vauxhall space. spittle will not be missing friend of the ‘sletter Leo Costelloe’s show at Guts Projects, curated by the incredible Helen Neven xoxox
🧊 8th March | 6:30–8:30pm | Lee Scratch Perry: Art Work, Cabinet [Vauxhall]
🧊 8th March | 6–9pm | Excursion (II of II), Split Gallery [Bethnal Green]
🧊 9 March | 6–8pm | Oliver Bak: Caves in the Sky, Cassius & Co., 63 Kinnerton Street, SW1X 8ED [Hyde Park Corner]
🧊 9 March | 6–8pm | Yoan Mudry: Pollock’s Fault, Union Pacific [Aldgate]
🧊 9 March | 6–8pm | Mohammed Z. Rahman: City of Burrows, Phillida Reid [Tottenham Court Road]
🧊 10 March | 6–9pm | Leo Costelloe & Deividas Vytautas: Soft When Warm, curated by Helen Neven, Guts Projects [Hackney Downs]
🧊 10 March | Leon Pozniakow: The Reliquaries, Palatial Projects [Bromley-by-Bow] (PV: 16th March, details to follow)
🧊 10 March | 12–7pm | VO Curations Open Studios [Tower Hill]
🧊 10 March | 10pm–6am | Club Butt, ICA [Charing Cross] | £25 on the door (unless ur a memba)
Exhibition of the Week
George Henry Longly, MICROGRAVITIES, Nicoletti, until 25 March, information here
Nicoletti, le galerie Française à Londres, as they say, is having a big moment of late. Probably the youngest gallery to participate at both Frieze London and Paris+ Art Basel fairs (write in if you disagree!), its programme is defining itself with cogent explorations of how technology and material culture intersect today – in addition to bringing the chic French avant-garde across the channel. Hot on the heels of Nana Wolke’s cinematic show Wanda’s–a study in surrealism of the Westway Roundabout in North Kensington–is a solo show by Ridley Road Project Space founder George Henry Longly that takes us into outer space. In Microgravities, a body of futuristic new paintings muddle reality and fiction. Real NASA images of outer space appear next to characters from the animated TV show The Flintstones, perhaps suggesting that whatever the official narrative is, space travel and the universe will always be shrouded in mystery and controversy. Or that our understanding of outer space is probably as equally informed by films and TV as it is by books or the news… Immaculately produced as always, and with a lustrous spacecraft-like finish, many of Longly’s new works also incorporate one of his most associative motifs: the stainless-steel ball bearing. While the ball bearing’s relationship with queer subculture goes without saying, here, it takes on a new symbolism, representing planets and stars – the alluring spherical shape a symbol of infinity in which viewers find themselves reflected. An animated video, made on unity gaming software, takes the viewer through the belly of a spaceship – evoking countless galactic blockbusters – which is littered with the nos canisters and steel balls from Longly’s works, and a title of We All Love Your Life floating aimlessly through the scene.
Instagram reveals that Longly is now in Bergen (Norway) making new works using AI that in their texture mirror the orifices and crevices of the moon in the electrifying colours of the Aurora Borealis. In today’s world, scientists look to space for solutions to environmental degradation while the rich look to planets as new holiday destinations; it couldn’t be more prescient for artists to explore this ethereal realm. A curious visit to Wikipedia reveals that a collector is also interested in the moon – Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa (who famously purchased a Jean Michel Basquiat for US$110 million). His hugely ambitious upcoming dearMoon project will invite eight artists selected in a ballot to travel with him for free to the moon on a SpaceX Starship. Our fingers are crossed that GHL is one of them xxx
Hot Links
👒 “More than 40 people, most of them in the art world, were interviewed for this article,” – Dasha Zhukova is profiled in NYT, who declare ‘Ms. Zhukova is what Anna Delvey, the now famous con artist, wanted to be: an ambitious businesswoman and maven of the art world, with family money and social influence that runs as deep as her pockets.’ Ouch x
🎥 “the character radiates overwhelming sex-haver energy” – Both phenomenally absurd and remarkably astute, RS Benedict bounces from Marlon Brando to McMansions to the War on Terror faster than you can say Aerobics in this article lamenting the loss of steaminess on screen. As stars have got sexier they’ve got less horny, much like our sexless, beautiful selves.
👠 “What is it about lobster claws that I’m so attracted to?” - Queen of the screen (and our childhood crush in Cinderella Story) Jennifer Coolidge graces the cover of the most recent issue of W Mag, with a tokusatsu-themed photoshoot to boot. Taking inspiration from camp Japanese horror and action films of the mid-twentieth century, the shoot is a stand-alone work of art, featuring giant lobsters, defeated robots and a Terrence Zhou custom dress to die for. We agree with Coolidge when she says “I don’t know if I will ever be this surprised again.”
🐸 “Social contracts that make the art world a nice place have been broken” – Famed pump-and-dump dealer-cum-gallerist-cum-flipper Stefan Simchowitz gets interviewed by Jerry Gogosian on her podcast Art Smack. Listen to find out fun facts like why buy-one-donate-one museum purchases are usually bullshit !!
🧿 “Spiritual bimboism is kinda like school uniform” – The Nymphet Alumni gals explore spiritual bimboism, a trend characterised by worshipping the healing properties of nature while appropriating other cultures’ clothing in a–you guessed it–slutty way. Listen to find out why
‘we haven't seen the sleazification of the new age’, yet…
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After gracing us with his phenomenal show at ICA, RIP Germain has followed up with the below incredible tracksuit, Security Uniform II. See us swanning around Bistrotheque’s soon-to-open ICA outpost in this hot set (comes with trakkies).
Parting Shot
News just in x
