. Digital c-print 36 x 54 inches Edition of 3)
London and New York take centre stage in this edition of what to see, with huge art takeovers in Peckham, a walk-in womb, seductive domestic fantasies, and Andy Warhol’s dead body on display
FOUR, WE BUY GOLD AT SARGENTS’ DAUGHTERS, NEW YORK
Roving art space We Buy Gold – founded by Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels – recently opened a new show titled FOUR at New York’s Sargents’ Daughters. Featuring four artists working across various mediums to explore “cycles of protection, loss, and renewal … the works in this exhibition seek to unpack cultural objects, complicate their own narratives, and explore the multiplicity of subjectivity.” The artists included are conceptual photographer Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary, visual narrator texas isaiah, and visual artist Shellyne Rodriguez.
FOUR presented by We Buy Gold runs at Sargents’ Daughters in New York until May 27th, 2018
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BRING DOWN THE WALLS, THE FIREHOUSE, NEW YORK
Artist Phil Collins – alongside over 100 collaborators – is currently in the midst of a three-part project which explores the prison industrial complex through the lens of house music and nightlife. Titled Bring Down The Walls, the space acts as a radical school for thought and discussion by day and a dance club after dark, all taking place in a decommissioned fire station in Lower Manhattan. “Bring Down The Walls pulls into focus the dichotomy between the sense of freedom, unity, and joy ingrained in house music, and the punitive control and violence – physical, mental, and emotional – perpetuated by the US prison system”, reads the event’s release. At its core, Bring Down The Walls is helping to open conversations and push education around the injustice surrounding “justice” in America.
Bring Down The Walls runs at The Firehouse, New York. It is free and open to the public every Saturday until 26th May 2018. Register for an event here
GOING BACK TO WHERE I CAME FROM, MAHTAB HUSSAIN, NEW ART GALLERY, WALSALL, UK
For anyone who has been touched by issues of migration or displacement, Mahtab Hussain’s current show, Going Back Home to Where I Came From at the New Art Gallery Walsall, will speak to your soul. Having grown up to immigrant parents in Glasgow, the intricately personal return of the artist to his family’s homeplace of Kashmir, Pakistan, is documented through a set of golden film portraits whose energy oozes the exact nostalgia you feel reuniting with long lost family members and memories. “Going Back Home to Where I Came From, is a powerful and poetic reflection on ideas of home, belonging and displacement,” explains the show’s press release. “It also represents a deeply emotional personal journey of discovery whilst revealing insight into the people and the landscapes of Kashmir.”
Going Back to Where I Came From runs at New Art Gallery Walsall from 25 May – 2 September 2018
HERE DIED WARHOL, UNIX GALLERY, NEW YORK
Ever wanted to take a selfie with Warhol? Specifically with his corpse? If you're in New York, here's your chance. Here Died Warhol looks into our morbid fascination with celebrity as well as mass tourism via artist Eugenio Merino, whose work specifically focuses on creating life-size and hyperrealistic sculptures of history’s most famous artists (he has also created one of Picasso for "Aquí Murió Picasso”(“Here Died Picasso”). Curated by the Málaga-based collective Los Interventores, the show “explores the curiosity and motivation of Adjectival Tourism”.
Here Died Warhol is on show at New York’s UNIX Gallery until 9th June 2018
RELATIVE STRENGTH, PHOEBE COLLINGS-JAMES, ARCADIA MISSA
London-born, New York-based artist Phoebe-Collings James’ multi-disciplinary site-specific installation at Arcadia Missa is called Relative Strength, which borrows its title from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth – a text which analyses the wide-ranging effects of colonisation. Featuring a range of objects that “hold water, soil, plastic, or cacti”, the show’s release explains that the artist’s “strategy of display is akin to that of her making: considering objects outside of western philosophical assumptions and hierarchies regarding subject and object”.
Relative Strength runs at London’s Arcadia Missa until 31 May 2018
SUNKEN GARDENS, ARIANA PAPADEMETROPOULOS, SOFT OPENING, LONDON
In LA-based painter Ariana Papademetropoulos’ current show, Sunken Gardens, viewers are invited into a world of seductive domestic fantasy – like a surreal version of a post-war Americana catalogue. With LA streetscapes and architecture as her inspiration, the show explores how we use visual representation to construct identity. The first of two paintings “Glass Slipper” imagines a perfect Californian interior water-stained and warped in a balmy yellow haze. “In Los Angeles, a single street can boast 30 different types of architecture,” explains the show’s press release. “Exaggerating their proximity to Hollywood, these anachronistic homes allow the creation of false narratives, which demonstrate how easily we erect our surroundings based on how we desire to be perceived by others as well as our ideal selves. If Los Angeles represents a city built on myth, these paintings literally represent portals into a mythology that only once erected, manifest a chance of becoming a reality.”
Sunken Gardens runs at Soft Opening until 3 June 2018
AND NOW IT BEGINS, VARIOUS ARTISTS, X GALLERY, LONDON
For the past two months, creative platform Brooks & Groves has been collaborating with 12 artists on research, workshops, and conversations. And Now It Begins is the culmination of this period, a show currently running at GX Gallery until Saturday. Featuring Hamed Maiye, Kobby Adi, Max Jefcut, and Jess Heritage, to name a few, the artists have created works, alongside collaborative pieces, in response to a series of overlapping narratives, such as authority, community, and ownership.
And Now It Begins runs at London’s GX Gallery until 19 May 2018
GLUT, CHRISTABEL MACGREEVY, LAMB ARTS, LONDON
An exploration of female identity and “what it means to identify as gender non-binary” takes centre stage for Christabel McGreevy’s second solo exhibition Glut – curated by Lucinda Bellm. Taking Virginia Woolf's Orlando as a jump-off point, MacGreevy utilises LAMB Arts cave-like space as a womb – painted pink, and turned into a “fertility chamber” with added “phallic-shaped sculptures”. Playful yet sexual, MacGreevy displays her multi-disciplinary approach to creation through drawing, tapestries and quilted pieces, as well as sculpture.
Glut runs at London’s LAMB Arts until 9 June 2018
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10TH ANNIVERSARY WEEKEND, GUEST PROJECTS, LONDON
From Friday 25 May, London’s Guest Projects – founded by Yinka Shonibare MBE – will celebrate its 10th birthday with a three-day art take-over curated by Cairo Clarke and Linda Rocco which will include workshops, music, theatre, and performance. The event will blur the lines “between art and celebration”, explaining that “the concept of an art ‘opening’ or ‘private view’ comes with its own performative rituals and anxieties, and so the evening has been programmed to stay in keeping with Guest Projects ethos, whilst celebrating the space it provided us all at times of experimentation and developing our practices.” Artists showing will include Larry Achiampong, TANGLE, Doug Fishbone, Suzannah Pettigrew, Harriet Middleton-Baker, Zinzi Minott, Ilona Sagar and Raju Rage, with DJ sets from AJ Kwame aka Peter Adjaye (Music for Architecture) on the opening night.
RSVP to the events here
PECKHAM 24, VARIOUS ARTISTS, LONDON
Head to south London on Friday night for the launch of the weekend-long event, Peckham 24. A collaboration between artists, curators, and local galleries, Peckham 24 will not only showcase the works of over 30 artists, such as Campbell Addy, Juno Calypso, Natasha Caruana, and Hannah Hughes, but a series of live discussions, talks, and events at spaces such as The Bright Rooms and Hannah Barry Gallery, too. Check out the website for all the info.
Peckham 24 will run in various venues in Peckham, London until 21 May 2018
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12TH SUMMER PROGRAMME, VARIOUS ARTISTS, BOLD TENDENCIES, LONDON
Not-for-profit venue Bold Tendencies has launched its 12 Summer Programme with a series of newly obtained and newly created art commissions from Sterling Ruby, Irina Kirchuk, and LawrenceLek. This year, ecology is at the programme’s core, with artists looking not just at the natural world, but beyond – “be it cultural or natural; language or weather; objects, subjects, processes, networks”. See the full list of artists and their commissions here.
Bold Tendencies 12th Summer Programme run 18 May – 22 September 2018
OFFPRINT, VARIOUS EXHIBITORS, TATE MODERN, LONDON
Offprint returns to London’s Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this weekend to showcase 130 independent and experimental publishers who work across photography, contemporary art, and graphic design. Its fourth iteration will also see a series of free events and performances take place in celebration of the fair.
Offprint runs at Tate Modern from 18 May – 20 May 2018
SENSATIONS, VARIOUS ARTISTS, CAMA, LONDON
Iranian art has one of the richest heritages in the world, deeply rooted in mediums like calligraphy, weaving, sculpture, and painting. Despite this, London has never had a gallery solely dedicated to Iranian artists, until now. CAMA (Contemporary and Modern art) gallery opened its doors in April and it represents only Iranian artists, many of whom haven’t had the opportunity to so outside of Iran before. To celebrate the launch, the gallery hosts its first exhibition Sensations, which unites 22 artists who collectively show 51 artworks across many mediums. Notable artists include painter Bita Vakili, one of the Middle East’s most sought-after female artists who broke the record at Christie’s Dubai when she sold a piece for 45,000USD. Renowned sculptor, painter, and ceramist, Maryam Salour, also features in the show. Salour has owned her own galleries in Iran, directed art fairs, and produced programmes on Iranian artists for BBC Worldwide.
Sensations runs at London’s CAMA until 20 June 2018
. Acrylic on canvas 59 1/10 × 39 2/5 in; 150 × 100 cm)
