Never mind whatever we said last time, that was then, this, once again is about this week and next and cake and yes you are right, we are well past Frieze week and all that came with it and has London’s art scene gone a little flat again? Here, for what any of this is worth are five more art things. five art things, five more art things happening somewhere around right now (or any moment now). Five art shows to check out in the coming days. An (almost) weekly round up of recommended art events. Five shows, exhibitions or things we rather think might be worth checking out. Mostly London things for that is where we currently operate and explore, and like we said last time, these five recommendations come with no claims that they are “the best five” or the “Top Five”, we’re not one of those annoying art websites that ignore most things whilst claiming to be covering everything and proclaiming this or that to be the “top seven things” or the “best things this weekend”. This Five Things thing is simply a regular list of five or so recommended art things happening now or coming up very soon that we think you might find as interesting as we think we will…

And we should add, that entry to these recommended exhibitions and events, unless otherwise stated, is free.

1: Sin Wai Kin. Portraits at Soft Opening – 27th October until 16th December –   In Portraits, Soft Opening presents five moving-image character portraits from Sin Wai Kin (b.1991 Toronto, Canada). Portraits continues the artist’s exploration of storytelling as a means to interrogate binaries and create fantasy narratives, which interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. Drawing on personal experiences of existing beyond categories, Sin’s practice pivots around performance, moving image, writing and print to question idealised images, constructed identities and binary conceptions of consciousness.

Extending their ongoing project of using drag as a medium of embodied speculative fiction, Sin presents a multitude of characters who personify different themes and research. Found across various existing films and performances, these imagined figures reappear in different contexts, creating new constellations in the artist’s expanding universe with each work. Drawing on traditional roles in Cantonese and Peking Opera, Sin presents five characters in nearly life-size filmed portraits: “The Universe”, a warrior god embodying the binary of an individual and its context; “Change”, the embodiment of the constant of change; “Wai King”, an exploration of unbridled masculinity; “The Construct”, the embodiment of the binary of good and evil, and “The Storyteller,” Sin’s iconic personification of the role of storytelling in culture. Upon close reflection, these living portraits reveal the strain of holding one position — or existing as a single selfhood.

Theatricising the walls of the gallery, softly folded and flowing white velvet curtains run across all three walls of Portraits from floor to ceiling. Displayed in front of this, each of these new silent films loops continuously. The gesture of lifting screens onto the walls situates them within a lineage of painting, thereby historicising new narratives and identities via a continually expanding and developing cast of characters. The films themselves each reference a famous artwork from history, including Man Ray, Kiki with African Mask (1926); Caravaggio, Narcissus (1597–1599), Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940); Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1503) and Lu Zhi, Chuang Tzu Dreaming Of A Butterfly (Ming Dynasty). Inserting their characters into an art historical lineage allows Sin to self-historicise their own practice while interrogating the positionality of the storyteller as a creator of histories. By blurring the boundaries of fantasy and reality in this way, the artist seeks to challenge the hegemonic narratives of history and asserts that image-making offers both the representation and creation of reality.

Enveloped in recognisable chroma green, the colour used in filmmaking that enables an actor to be lifted out of context and inserted elsewhere during post-production, the second space in the exhibition comes to represent a space of potentiality. A group of five faceless portrait busts gaze outwards, nobly displaying the wigs used during filming. At once everywhere and nowhere, the viewer becomes implicated within the artist’s acknowledgment of an individual’s relationship and reflection of their shifting context.

Soft Opening is found at 6 Minerva Street, London E2 9EH. The gallery is open Wednesday through to Saturday, midday until 6pm

Previously on these pages – Tenant of Culture at East London’s Soft Opening, disassembling the warp, looking through the weft…

2: Max Hooper Schneider, Twilight at the Earth’s Crust at Maureen Paley – 27th Oct – 17th Dec 2023 with an opening evening on Friday 27th October, 5pm until 7.30pm – “Maureen Paley is pleased to present a new exhibition by American artist Max Hooper Schneider. This will be his first solo exhibition in London, installed both at Maureen Paley and Studio M.

Hooper Schneider works within the realm of art and science and divides his studio time between Los Angeles, Santa Fe and Belgrade. He received his Landscape Architecture MA from Harvard University in 2011, whilst also holding degrees in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, Zoology at the University of Hawaii, and Marine Biology from Santa Monica College. The simultaneous understanding of material technologies and biological systems continues to foreground his artistic practice.

In June 2023, he took part in the Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition titled The Underworld of Hydrothermal Vents. The project considered the role of underwater shafts to disperse larvae, fungi, and bacteria throughout the ocean to foster novel microcosmic communities. Six years prior, he also embarked on a maritime exploration which spanned the coral reefs of the Fukushima disaster reef in Japan. This research informs the sculptures within the forthcoming exhibition which occupies a total embeddedness within the nonhuman sphere, embracing the toxic and poisoned within his examination of the tragic results garnered by humanity’s interference with ecology.

Maureen Paley is found at 60 Three Colts Lane, London, E2 6GQ. The exhibition is also happening at Maureen Paley’s Studio M, Rochelle, Friars Mount House, 7 Playground Gardens.London, E2 7FA

3: Aliki Karveli, Deathless Spells at The Crypt Gallery – St Pancras Church – 27th October in til November 1st – A site-specific exhibition in the crypt of St Pancras, this interdisciplinary body of work spanning the years 2017-present showcases Karveli’s work on transformational rites within an esoteric journey of creation, inviting the viewer to project their own personal transformation upon the process.

“Aliki / Alice Karveli (originally from Athens, based in London since 2014) is an interdisciplinary mixed media artist. Working with painting, collage, photography, installation, poetry, music, sound and dance Karveli integrates these disciplines into performances live/film, with a visceral kinesthetic approach.

Approaching art as a transformational tool, her performance works become rites of esoteric alchemy, transmuting intense psychological and physical experiences (constriction, entrapment, struggle, damage etc.) to protective and creative power; exorcizing fears and integrating aspects of the shadow self as a through-route to liberating the ‘true self’. Deathless Spells will sbowcase Karveli’s large scale mixed media and oil paintings, smaller works on paper, interactive sculptural installations with mobile and sonic elements, projections and spoken word soundscapes, as well as a cinema room with a looping reel of performance films”

LIVE PERFORMANCE EVENTS

Sunday 29th of October. 4-9pm – ‘ S o n i c  S p e c t r e s ‘ a collection of invited artists showcasing site-specific sound art and performance alongside Karveli, working with the natural resonance of the Crypt and the hauntology of noise it evokes.

P e r f o r m i n g A r t i s t s :  Black Arrows (Alice Karveli), raxil4 (Andrew Page), Luxul (Emilie Newman / De’Ath), B E O R H T A  (Winter James), IL SANTO BEVITORE (Nicola Serra), TROJΛNOVSKX (Vit Trojanovsky), Ona Tzar and Jose Macabra.

Tuesday 31st of October  6-9PM – ‘ R e a d e r O f B o n e s , W e a v e r O f L i f e l i n e s ‘ a night of performance art involving Butoh-inspired movement and interactive sonic sculpture featuring more invited artists (Andrew Page, etc) which will contain elements of Karveli’s transpersonal magic in a ceremony to mark Samhain and the closing of Deathless Spells as a long awaited culmination of a 7 year creative cycle.

Crypt Gallery Is at St Pancras Church, Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA

4: Anna Uddenberg, Home Wreckers at The Perimeter – Haven’t had time to get to this one yet, hey we can’t be everywhere, we cover more art shows than most people do, lot of hype around this one. Open now and on until Friday 22nd December – “The Perimeter is proud to present Anna Uddenberg: HOME WRECKERS, the first UK solo exhibition by the Berlin-based Swedish artist. Working primarily in sculpture, installation and performance, Anna Uddenberg’s practice reflects on taste and class, appropriation and sexuality, and explores systemised relations of power and conventions of control in the context of a technology-bound consumer culture”.

The Perimeter, 20 Brownlow Mews, London, WC1N 2LE

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5: What We Did This Summer is an online group show brought to you by Cultivate and yes, this is us blowing our own damn trumpets again. The eight artist show opened last Tuesday night, it has already been viewed thousands of times by people from all over the globe, here’s the link should you wish to join them.. The show is once again hosted here on the Organ website.

xxx