"yeah, I think we are increasingly spooked"
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This week:
š¦ A GUEST + A HOST = A GHOST (Duchamp was a joker)
š¦ The goddess of the bread oven in Battersea
š¦ Tentacle-heavy mutations galore!
Events, 2ā8 November
Join friend of the āsletter ChloĆ©e Maugile at the launch of publication Nice Outfit at Donlon Books on Thursday, try a Krauthock on the cheap at Mondo Sandoās temporary Denmark Hill digs, and learn all about the goddess of the bread oven in Greta Alfaroās exhibition at Cooke Latham in Battersea.Ā
š§ 2 November | 6ā8pm | Sex Magazine Issue 12 launch, Tenderbooks, 6 Cecil Street, āāWC2N 4HE [Leicester Square] | Free
š§ From 2 November | 12ā3pm (lunch)/ 6ā9pm (dinner) | Mondo Sando begins their full-time takeover serving food at the Grove House Tavern (soft launch this week), 26 Camberwell Grove, SE5 8RE [Denmark Hill] | Mains from Ā£9
š§ 2 November | 6ā9pm | Greta Alfaro: Fornacalia, Cooke Latham Gallery, 41 Parkgate Rd, London SW11 4NP [Imperial Wharf/Battersea Park] | Exhibition runs through 26 November | Free
š§ 3 November | 6 - 9pm | Ayesha Tan Jones: Dream Sigil, Stone Portal, Harlesden High Street, 57 High Street, NW10 4NJ [Willesden Junction] | Exhibition runs through 12 December | Free
š§ 4 November | 6ā8pm | Nice Outfit publication launch, Donlon Books, 75 Broadway Market, E8 4PH [London Fields]
š§ 4 November | 6ā10pm | Lucky Charm (group show curated by Lisa Boudet), Moosey Art, Hoxton Arches, E2 8HD [Hoxton] | Exhibition runs through 14 November. Free
š§ 4 November | 6ā9pm | Sophie Vallance Cantor: Bad at Life (Good at Painting), Guts Gallery, Unit 14/15, Penarth Centre Ormside Street, SE15 1TR [South Bermondsey] | Exhibition runs through 10 November | Free
š§ 6 November | Opening 12ā8pm | Under Your Spell, Collective Ending HQ, 3 Creekside, SE8 4SA [Deptford Bridge] | Exhibition runs through 4 December | Free
š§ 6 & 7 November | Deniz Ćnal artist led (women-only*) belly dancing workshop and group activity initiated by Muslim Sisterhood. *this event is for all cis and Trans women, as well as non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centres the experience.
Exhibitions
Marcel Duchamp, until 13 November and Ron Mueck, until 27 November at Thaddaeus Ropac.
Thaddaeus Ropacās regal abode on Dover Street has been transformed into an art history 101 crash course with two textbook names: Marcel Duchamp and Ron Mueck. Spittleās visit was peppered with giggling student-led tours, snooping sunday painters and Loro Piana-wearing clients alike, all drawn to Mueckās hypperealistic sculptures that vary vastly in scale. Filling the space is a punctured and suspended chicken; the artistās (dead or just asleep?) father; and a woman (Gillian Wearing?!) giving birth. Whether it was art imitating life or life imitating art, spittle was happy to overhear (*eavesdrop on*) a gallery directorās keen observation that āsome are very small, and some are very large.ā Meanwhile, Duchampās intimate presentation ā like a reified gift shop of surrealistic artefacts ā was similarly and perhaps surprisingly cheeky. āA GUEST + A HOST = A GHOSTā read one printed text-based work emblazoned on a singular sheet of gold leaf. Happy Halloween indeed Marcel!!
Noah Davis at David Zwirner. Until 17 November.
Just down the road from the above show, David Zwirner has given its whole space over to the work of Noah Davis, curated by Helen Molesworth. Davisā brief but expansive and highly-acclaimed career is detailed here with works spanning 2007-15 (he died in 2015 at the age of 32). His paintings are emotive, sensitive and, most importantly of all, deeply generous. The artist gave equal weight to his paintings and his social practice, and an installation showing the history and work of the Underground Museum, a non-profit exhibition space the artist founded in LA, in Zwirnerās second-floor gallery is as captivating as the works downstairs. Davisā generosity is felt in the sensitive, emotional depiction of his subjects, his elevation of the everyday to the mythical and his fervent belief that making art accessible, and revealing what lies beneath the theory, is vitally important to the viewer and the artwork itself.
Hot links
šÆ āForget hooked-nose, pointy-hat-wearing hags of yoreā - the Evening Standard delves into the trending millennial witchcraft movement; from witchcore to bespoke spell services and #WitchTokāthe movement that shows no signs of slowing down despite corporate hijacking. Weāre here for Kate Willsā high octane reporting: āI have to spit on a bayleaf, set it on fire and say āI am worthy of good things.ā Amen ā or should we say, woo-woo?ā
š āItās the mad scientist tradition. Mutation galore! Mix Playboy and nightmare!ā - Make-up & prosthetics avant-gardist Isamaya Ffrench is interviewed by curator/writer (and the art worldās resident occultist) Charlie Fox, on Ffrench's new 70s-horror-esque, tentacle-heavy video work, commissioned by WeTranfer. Watch for your regular >sexy monster writhing in a bath/rotating like a disco ball, upside down in a cave< fix.
š Christian Girl Autumn - Nymphet Alumni are back with a new ep and this time they dive into the Christian Girl Autumn meme, the merits of trad mommy blogging, growing up in proximity to youth group sex cults, and the infallible glam of crypto-Mormon influencers.
š£ āBut also, Iām kind of like, how different can this be from Twitter, where you just start talking at random people and pretend like youāve been in the conversation the whole time?ā - Your nosy spittle correspondent was mortified to read that āAn unspoken rule in the art world is that you donāt ask people what they do or how they know someoneā in Geoffrey Makās first column for Spike. The insider piece dropped all of the usual New York names ā Dean Kissick, Ian Cheng, Eckhaus Latta, Taylore Scarabelli, Paige K. Bradley, Julien Ceccaldi, Kaitlin PhillipsĀ ā yawn. Spike, if youāre listening, spittle is ready to inaugurate a London column xoxo
š¤ Fresh horror from the lab! - Whatās the scariest thing you saw this Halloween?Ours was this interview with Berkeleyās Professor Stuart Russell, in which he explains that the āfield of artificial intelligence needs to grow up quicklyā because a future in which algorithms control us and machines with greater intelligence than humans is, erā¦ scarily close. Russell will lead this yearās Reith Lectures, which air next week on BBC 4.
Add-to-Cart
"It's not just a boys club. We have a sisterhood thing going," said Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara, on her entry into the male-dominated dominion of graffiti writing. For their drop last week, Supreme collaborated with the Ecuadorian-American artist on a range of ultra-collectable decks, hats and trinket trays. Get āem here while they last! From Ā£40.
Parting shot
Facebook became Meta, hot-takes abounded (āthis probably is the future, if Zuckerberg says it is. No doubt in five yearsā time I will be wearing a headset and playing Uno with my friends on top of an erupting volcano or whatever, while we all sit in our increasingly unaffordable rented flats in a Britain with no petrol or foodā), although Zuckerbergās fashion choices were deemed universally lackluster. See some of our favourite suggestions below (courtesy @hftgroup).
Love,