"Vermouth is the Amy Schumer of Negronis"
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This Week
💦 Gargoyle-faced squishy little pugs
💦 one of the wobbliest seats in London
💦 minesweeping the Garibaldi
Events
🧊 26 April | 6-8pm | Vivien Zhang: undo undo undo, Pilar Corrias Savile Row, W1S 3PA [Piccadilly Circus]
🧊 26 April | 6-8pm | Jeff Wall, White Cube Mason’s Yard, SW1Y 6BU [Green Park]
🧊 27 April | Hope You See Me As A Friend, curated by Cem A., Barbican, EC2Y 8DS [Barbican]
🧊 27 April | 6-9pm | Damned If I Do, curated by Ariane Hughes, Gallery 46 Whitechapel, E1 2AJ [Whitechapel]
🧊 27 April | 6-8pm | Rafal Zajko: Song to the Siren, Cooke Latham Gallery [Battersea]
🧊 27 April | Mary Lucia Stephenson, Incubator [Marylebone]
🧊 28 April | 7-9pm | ATLANTIC CRUISES, curated by Nimco Kulmiye Hussein with a live performance from Ebun Sodipo and Chloe Filani, arebyte Gallery, £5 tickets here [Canning Town]
🧊 28 April | 6-8pm | Shamiran Istifan: Precious Pipeline, Moarain House, E2 0EL [Bethnal Green]
🧊 28 April | 6-8pm | Andreas Gursky, White Cube, Bermondsey, SE1 3TQ [Borough]
🧊 29 April | 6-8pm | Rhea Dillon: The Sombre Majesty (or, on being the pronounced dead), Soft Opening [Cambridge Heath]
Exhibition of the week
Hongxi Li: Dream Rich, Harlesden High Street, until 10 May, information here
How easy is it to source a freebie from a London casino? Shockingly, not very – but also not impossible as one spittle reporter found out on Saturday… Preparing for her current show with Harlesden High Street, Hongxi Li called up every casino in Leicester Square, asking for any available spare chairs used for slot machines or card games. Only one casino responded, offering a 20-year-old bar stool, and Li – an artist with a unique sculptural practice centred on modifying seating as a lens to understand forms of oppression – set about work. Removing the rigid bar between the seat and the base, and replacing it with a giant spring (laboriously hand made over a period of months), the stool became transformed into a comically flaccid, bouncy seat that would make any kind of game – gambling focused, or not – impossible. Surrounding the seat were framed ‘cash out’ tickets from Harlesden’s local Silvertime casino, 5 out of 6 of them documenting the artist’s slot machine losses. ‘Stripping out the glamour of gambling,’ another visitor dryly and keenly noted on the intentionally stark and fairly soulless feel of the room. Separately, spittle couldn’t help but draw comparison to gambling and the creative process – money and intellect thrown at opportunities, waiting for luck to stick – it’s never that easy and we can’t help but dream rich! Disappointingly (yet understandably), one of the wobbliest seats in London (Slot Chair, 2022) was for eyes only and not to be perched on by spittle’s eager reporter. We have our fingers crossed that a Hongxi Li-designed playground to crop up at a museum/biennial imminently. Until then, watch out for Li’s upcoming show, Shaped, at V.O Curations in Angel.
Hot Links
🥃 Vermouth is the Amy Schumer of Negronis - Talk Hole take on the ‘corporeal amalgam of dead-eyed selfies and lukewarm takes’ that was the Oscars, somehow working in the Andy Warhol doc (‘I'd like to Jed his Johnson. I heard it’s thick. Soup can vibes’), Ukraine (‘Putin’s injecting more troops into Ukraine than fillers into his face’) and even vibe shift discourse (‘AMY SCHUMER: Did I miss something? I feel the vibe shifted in here’).
👤 Society’s greatest downfall: the intensification of viral dynamics - In The Atlantic, Jonathan Haidt declares the past 10 years in America have been uniquely stupid; social media’s destructive capabilities have been tearing down social capital, strong institutions, and shared stories – and that it should be compared to a dictatorial neo- Tower of Babel. We’re all ‘putting on performances and managing [our] personal brand—activities that might impress others but that do not deepen friendships in the way that a private phone conversation will,’ he notes.
🐩 Inside “The World's Greatest Dog Show” - 032c sent Charlie Fox to document the latest in CRUFTSCORE developments. He acutely describes how our relation to the show characterises numerous British sensibilities: ‘the weird fealty to tradition in all its forms, the adoration of animals above all else, and the immortal affection for anything eccentric.’ Don’t miss friend of the ‘sletter [Sophie Mei Birkin]’s equally dazzling – and scary – accompanying photography.
🚇 “Expressionism embarrasses me” / RIP Metro Pictures - this piece, first published in 1987, is a conversation between Metro Pictures founders, Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer, and writer Paul Taylor. Metro was instrumental in the postmodernism / appropriation theory explosion in the late 70s & 80s, spawning the ‘Pictures’ generation artists. Flash Art’s re-run of this piece pays tribute to a stalwart gallery that closed its doors for the final time in December 2021.
🐢 “you’re arguing about whether or not the Fisher Price turtle sandbox identifies as non-binary” - Ian Davies’ twitter account gets a deep-dive, as Inside Hook discuss Ian’s ‘he/they of the day’ posts, which bring joy and silliness to the often fraught topic of gender-identity on the platform. Check it out to experience fictional cartoon characters and well-known inanimate objects being hilariously re-framed within the non-binary discourse.
🌭“Why is it that whenever I see Curtis, he’s surrounded by a big table of incels?” - Vanity Fair’s exploration of Peter Thiel’s funding of the ‘New Right’ in America - a group of young conservatives more concerned with overthrowing the thrust of progress than upholding family values - offers a deep look into the state of politics today, and the anti-media-machine youtubers, podcast hosts and writers at its helm.
Add-to-cart
In a recent instagram post, Nora Turato (who recently opened a stellar show at David Zwirner’s 52 Walker space) addresses the age-old struggle of finding a nice pair of jeans that actually fit properly. As she says ‘How did we get to the point where any kind of jeans… without a wash… without a logo or any kind of embroidery… you have to pay 700 bucks for?!’ Watch on for a nuanced critique of hypercapitalism. Similar jeans available here. & Jonah Hill obviously also repping The Row, here.
Parting Shot
Direct from minesweeping the Garibaldi we bring you our first Parting Shot Carousel! Please enjoy this summary of the best quips n’ memes from this year’s Biennale…
All submissions are welcome at spittlesubmissions@gmail.com. Published on Tuesday mornings, click here to subscribe!
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