“We have always been obsessed with the apocalypse for a long time.”
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This Week:
💦 Copperfield Gallery defies the contemporary painting trend
💦 Balenciaga + Luke Edward Hall = Cocaine Decor
💦 A story so large, so mythologised, and so cliché it seems impossible
Events:
🧊 10 November | 6–8pm | Not Painting, Copperfield, W1S 3NX [Borough] | Exhibition runs until 29 January 2022. Free
🧊 10 November | 6–8pm | Danny Fox: Brown Willy, Saatchi Yates, W1S 3NX [Green Park] | Exhibition runs TBC
🧊 11 November | 7pm | Mixing It Up: Slippery Images Panel Discussion (panel discussion with Alison Katz, Caragh Thuring, Issy Wood and Vivien Zhang), Southbank Centre [Waterloo] | £7
🧊 13 November | 5–8pm | Seb Patane: Glee, Ridley Road Project Space, E8 2NH [Dalston Kingsland] | Exhibition runs until 20 November
🧊 13 - 14 November | Screenings 11am–6pm, check website for talks and events | Film London Jarman Award Weekend 2021, Whitechapel Gallery Online
Exhibitions (or, this week, films!)
Moments Like This Never Last, Directed by Cheryl Dunn, available to watch on Mubi, and screening at various cinemas
Cheryl Dunn’s documentary explores the near-mythical life of Dash Snow, graffiti artist turned artworld darling. Descendant of the de Menil fortune, Snow escaped an emotionally abusive mother in his early teens and lived in the underbelly of New York, embedding himself in the city’s graffiti subculture, before rising to artworld fame and falling victim to drug addiction. For a story which is so large, so mythologised, and so cliché it seems impossible that it’s real, there is the worry that it would fall into the usual tropes, but Dunn’s telling of Snow’s incredible life is nuanced, emotional, forgiving and complex. Moments Like This Never Last gave us nostalgia for times we’d never experienced and places we’d never been.
Hot Links:
🇬🇧 “maybe it’s our god-given right to wait an hour for the (still late) bus” - #britishcore has been hashtagged over 11 million times on TikTok. But what is it? The post-brexit turn to nostalgia is characterised by crumpets, walking to the local Co-Op, cul-de-sacs, and – of course – Y2K fashion. “Rich or poor, every Brit can relate to these photos,” @we_need_a_new_plague explained to i_D. Apparently, the comforting fabric adorning London bus seats is named Wotsit-above-the-ocean. Who knew?
🤳 9 PER CENT OF GEN Z WANT TO STAY ON SOCIAL MEDIA - Dazed gives their take on life in the year 2031 in a juicy 68-page PDF report. An at times bleak read, the text covers everything from post-internet anxiety and cloud-based fashion to techno-capitalism and transhumanism. *gulp*
🍭 Take vitamins (A, B, C, E, E, Zinc, Ginko Biloba, Keratin, Triple Ginsa) and eat candy! - artnet’s latest listicle – purely designed for workplace procrastination – asks artists for their recommendations on self-care! Spittle has signed up for a Zoom reiki class but warns: don’t try it all at once!
🏢 Twitter’s Bubbling Architecture Community - Forget Wallpaper Magazine, The Modern House and Grand Designs, for a real insight into the state of today’s building fails, head to Twitter where no prisoners are taken. See: Hate New Build; Architects Against Humanity and Cheapo Crappy for some hilarious gestures toward decoration and ornamentation. But if you want to see the architecture trends sure to dominate 2022, head to Cocaine Decor for Balenciaga meets Luke Edward Hall vibes.
🧑🎨 “When you look at public perceptions of corruption, it has already failed.” - We can’t say these are the worst artworks we’ve seen from a politically-related person (George W Bush’s outrageously insensitive portraits of US veterans takes that title) but artistically, Hunter Biden’s paintings aren’t up to much. The New York Times investigates.
🦇 “champagne and black truffle risotto… which smelled of silage and polythene” -The Guardian’s Grace Dent takes down a “Gotham City” themed restaurant in London’s Park Lane which – although alluding to the Batman franchise – strangely (presumably for rights reasons) avoids mentioning film franchise itself. Dent deftly compares it to one of the most #britishcore images around – a failing UK Christmas Grotto, “where the elves smoke Marlboros behind a foam-spitting snow machine next to a donkey with conjunctivitis that makes the kids cry.” Ouch.
Add-to-cart
To channel both the burgeoning neo-medieval knightcore trend and guarantee Covid-19-free handshakes at Art Basel Miami Beach, look to Balenciaga’s FW21 Black Steel Armour Gloves (of the two pairs in existence, one reportedly resides in Yeezy’s private collection, no less). Price on application, no URL shopping link for this one, soz!
Parting Shot
We can’t help agreeing with David Rudnick’s observation that Ettorre Sottsass looks slightly loose-on-the-juice in his publicity headshots. But come on, someone had to make sure those beautifully designed Memphis bar cabinets, decanters and wine glasses worked OK?!
Love,
London’s beating ‘art <3 <3 <3 <3