What did happen to Norman Buntz anyway? The glue that holds what together? Art, how low can you go? Where were we? Repeating ourselves whilst under stress? I wish you were here to see it, the more I look at it the more I like it, I do think it good, but we said all that last week (and probably the week before and the week bfore that, did you even notice? Do you just cut to the chase?). And well, we could do it again, we could? Shall we? The Five Art Things thing? We said all this last week didn’t we? And the week before, have we got a roadmap? Can we see a way out?. Other than things happening on-line, we rather obviously can’t really feature or preview forthcoming shows at the moment – we did say all this last week with the previous Five Art Things post and all the “oh, I don’t know, this five art things to go check out feature is kind of shot to pieces now. The regular feature was supposed to be about five upcoming art shows that we were excited about, five recommended art exhibitions that are about to open, five shows we were looking forward to putting on our coats and going out to, a selection of the five most exciting openings selected from the many (many) coming up…

Five more recomended art things coming up or happeningnow or ending soon or opening in the next few days then, adjectiveadjective: recommended advised or suggested as good or suitable. Do what you will with it all

1: Peter Kennard – The Concept of History at Richard Saltoun Gallery, 8th March – 10 April – “The second exhibition in the gallery’s year-long programme On Hannah Arendt, ‘The Concept of History’ features a solo presentation by Britain’s most important political artist Peter Kennard”. We’re told we can “Explore the physical show online through a virtual walkthrough with the artist, available on 8 March”. Gind out more here or maybe find out more, there’s no time to proof read here, find out more via the gallery website and let me go make a cup of tea. Do like the programme at Richard Saltoun Gallery, a little more tha nflogging you the latest Ben Eine print release if you know what I mean.

“The exhibition, the first physical show with Richard Saltoun Gallery since announcing his representation, highlights Kennard’s extraordinary contribution to politically-informed art over the past 50 years. ‘The Concept of History’  demonstrates Kennard’s engagement with the course of history and key moments over the past five decades through three distinct bodies of work: his little-known STOP paintings from the 1960-70s informed by events such as the Paris student riots, The Prague Spring and Vietnam War protests; his series of Pallets from the 1990s, with traces of human images and figures barely visible on battered wooden pallets; and a new series of works on paper Untitled (2020).

‘The Concept of History’ draws on the second essay in Arendt’s 1968 publication Between Past and Future around which all exhibitions in the programme are based. Join our ‘On Hannah Arendt: Virtual Reading Group‘ with Roger Berkowitz, Founder of the Hannah Arendt Center, and special guest Ken Krimstein, cartoonist for The New Yorker, on Wednesday 10 March at 1pm EST / 6pm GMT to discuss the essay. Click to register.  That video, or those videos are a good place to start, I;ve made my cup of tea now, not the best one I;ve ever made and I make no excuse for using one of those studios shots from back iat the Martello Street Studios open day back in 2017. I do miss studio opens days/

Further reading via these unproofed fractured pages….

ORGAN THING: The taste of paint, the smell of history, Martello Street Studios open day, like we we said last week, these kind of days are vital. Peter Kennard, Throbbing Gristle, Walid Sati, Zoe Benbow, Jamie Boyd, Doyle and Mallinson…

ORGAN THING: ‘Britain’s most important political artist’ Peter Kennard joins London’s Richard Saltoun Gallery…

ORGAN THING: Cultivate Presents The Accidental Marks Made While Making Art, an on-line exhibition

2: Pieter Jennes at Public Gallery – “We are pleased to announce 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺’𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘥, the first UK solo exhibition of Belgian artist Pieter Jennes. Staged in collaboration with Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp, the exhibition brings together eleven ambitious new works by the artist and will be on view from March 16 – April 14”

3: Sarah Lucas – Hurricane Doris at Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin until March 13th – Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin presents Hurricane Doris by Sarah Lucas. The presentation will focus on new sculptures from her series of “Bunnies”. A video tour of the exhibition is available online.

As early as 1997, the first anthropomorphic figures were created for the installation “Bunny Gets Snookered”, formed from nylon stockings filled with cotton. Meandering in the perception between lascivious and lost, they sat on simple chairs, their long legs stretched out. Connected to these, instead of a torso and head, were the eponymous rabbit ears, alluding to the logo of an American men’s magazine, which stretched out over the back of the chair.

The new, equally surreal-looking figures, developed from these bunnies, appear in more self-confident, almost flirtatious poses. Based on the motif of the art-historical odalisque and at the same time mocking it, they loll on midcentury designer armchairs or on the floor. They have clearly shaped breasts and the rather reserved, fleshy tone of the earlier bunnies has given way to a colourful mix of colourful stockings and fashionable stilettos.

These soft sculptures made of cotton and silk tights, which are clearly endowed with female stereotypes, are mixed up by the hermaphroditic figure “DICK ‘EAD” cast in bronze with breasts and an erect giant penis, which seems to aggressively defend itself against any gender attribution. See a video tour of the exhibition Here

4: MCR Sew Social say they “will be hosting their first online exhibition for womxn artists and textile makers based in Greater Manchester in celebration of International Women’s Day. The theme is What does International Women’s Day mean to you?” well for me it means my birthday but hey more importantly

The exhibition will launch from Monday 8th March 2021 online with an opening night event from 7pm via a free Zoom event open to the public via Eventbrite. Mcr Sew Social was established in 2018, now run by textile artists Rowan Bridgwood and Louisa Hammond. MCR Sew Social is a community of textile and fibre artists who meet in Greater Manchester. Their ambition is to create a community of makers, bringing people together to create socially to enhance a sense of well-being.  As a group composed mainly of womxn it has been a goal to showcase local textile artists’ work. International Women’s Day is a perfect opportunity to celebrate the collective voices of these womxn. They will host their first online exhibition from Monday 8th March, the link to which will be shared on their social media channels. You can find MCR Sew Social on Instagram and Twitter The exhibition website link will be shared to MCR Sew Social’s social media channels on Monday 8th March 2021.

We need more textile art, no, actuallt there is lot of texile art, we need ot take textile art and artists a little more seriously, the art of colour within the fabric rather then just on the surface, the art of movement…

5: Self – a group show currently on-line and brought to you by Cultivate – the Self show is on now, it opened, on-line last week, there are no plans ot close it and if we don’t blow our own trumpets and tell you about it then who will? The Artlysts or the Fads? The self appointed London art critic? It is an excellent show even if we d osay so oursleves. Self, a show alive with artists challenged to produce self portraits.”beautifully apposite ‘Self’ – enclosed/enclosing concept for these times” (Paul Sakoilsky). a show brough t oyou by Cultivate (and you do know that Cultivate and Organ are brought to you by the same team? And yes some of us really do live with the vonstant sound of blowing trumpets.

Self is a carefully curates show of self portraits from 33 invited artists, over 130 pieces of art to explore on line. “Self is about inviting artists to produce self portraits. we invited artists who you’d maybe expect to produce self portraits, we might have challenged one or two unexpected people to come up with something, “let’s see where this one goes, maybe we’ll ask people to dig deep into old sketch books, we’ll ask painters, printmakers, sculptors, photographers”, we asked a fashion designer called Suki”.

And those Peter Kennard studio shots did bring to mind the Accidental Marks show that you can still explore via these fractured pages. I can see no reason why an on-line show sohuld have to close, you can explore all the Cultivate on-line shows here.

more of this kind of unhecked thing in a few days I expect, but then you should maybe never expect the expected. unless of course its another Jealous Mailout and another predictable Ben Eine print release. Rember now, be careful out there, let’s do it to them before they do it to us, don’t end up like Norman Buntz. Art? it is a thankless thing, a selfless thing and Norman did dress so well, I came to admire his sense of style in the end, where did he get those endless jackets and times from, did he ever wear the same one twice? In the Heights they call him Guido, not on the hill though…