Five art things, on we go then and never mind whatever we said last time, Five more? Snakes on a steam train? Everything must go and no, we never do and the proof of the pudding is in that proof reading and that was then, this, once again is about this week and maybe next week and needing more (just more, nothing less) and yes you are right. 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. We do aim to make this 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.
We are in the middle of Summer now, there are a lot of galleries on their Summer breaks, still lots to see, lot of shows on, maybe not five we can honestly recommend without seeing them, go check the listing sites, there isn’t one that covers everything, between them the (sometimes cranky) Art Rabbit and Seb’s Art List almost get there, although we hae put on 193 Cultivate shows now and Seb hasn’t managed to list one yet…
1: Compost at Terrace Gallery (a nomadic gallery that now mostly seems to be operating at Lea Bridge Library, London E10) – Opening on 21st August and on until 15th September. A group show focused on painting and curated by David Caines who says “Compost is a rich and heady mix of work by eighteen contemporary artists engaged in the mucky business of painting. A fertile compound of creative organisms bringing together scraps of ideas, wasted thoughts and recycled dreams. In times of environmental crisis when humanity itself seems to be a decaying organic substance, we take a poke around in the undergrowth. We dig into themes around death, decay, plants, regeneration and new growth, hoping that in time new and surprising forms will emerge from the darkness.
Artists: Amanda Houchen, Anna Levy, Caroline Thomson, Cristina Reyes, Dan Williams, David Caines, Donna Mclean, Elizabeth Magill, Grant Foster, Joe Pepper, Kat Lyne-Watt, Laura Wormell , Lindsay Mapes, Luke Dowd, Mari Fujii-Pratt, Rosey Prince, Sheila Rennick and Vesna Parchet
There’s also a zine called Compost that will be be launched that the exhibition – “I’m excited to announce that Issue 1 of the new independent art zine Compost is coming in August! We intend to showcase a diverse and exciting range of painting, sculpture, photography, performance and writing from a huge network of creatives from all stages of their careers in a beautifully designed publication. The theme of issue 1 is ‘Notes from the Undergrowth’ and it features art, writing, poetry and ephemera from a host of artists (more when we get hold of a copy)
The gallery is found at Lea Bridge Library, London E10 7HU. Open Midday until 4pm daily so it says here, do check those times out though, do libraries open seven days a week? More about Terrace Gallery
2: Makiko Harris, Lacquered Rebellion at Kristin Hjellegjerde, London Bermondsey – 23rd August to 21st Sept 2024, with an opening on 22nd August, 6pm until 8pm – “Makiko Harris brings together a bold new collection of sculptures and mixed-media paintings that unravel Harris’s own experiences as a biracial woman while also reflecting on the ambiguities of contemporary feminism”.
“Oversized fingernails, giant knitting needles, chains and aluminum stockings. These are all recurring motifs in the work of American Japanese artist Makiko Harris whose practice explores the performance of identity, femininity and ideas of belonging. Lacquered Rebellion, her first solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, brings together a bold new collection of sculptures and mixed-media paintings that unravel Harris’s own experiences as a biracial woman while also reflecting on the ambiguities of contemporary feminism.
While studying for her MA at the Royal College of Arts in London, Harris inherited her Japanese grandmother’s sewing kit containing a variety of needles which had been used not only to make clothes but as a form of creative self-expression. Fascinated by the intimacy and tactility of these tools as well as their relationship to the feminist history of textile arts, Harris began to reimagine the needles at a monumental scale. The resulting sculptures, ranging from one to two metres tall, take on an almost figurative presence, simultaneously fragile and confronting, elegant and brutal. They are weapons in the fight towards reparation, creativity and feminist power.
Meanwhile, sculptures of painted fingernails similarly blown up to a larger-than-life scale, balancing in space or attached to the edges of painted canvases evoke the appearance of shields. Like the needles, they are tactile objects which are associated not only with the female body but with a certain type of femininity – one that is required to comply with patriarchal ideals. And yet, Harris’ nails are not passive accessories: as sculptures they are both armour and body while in the paintings they enact a form of powerful self-possession, gripping what appears to be abstracted, oozing flesh.
This juxtaposition between vulnerability and strength, sensuality and violence, exposure and censorship is also articulated in Harris’ Stockings series. In these works, fleshy body parts bulge suggestively against what appears from a distance to be fish-net tights but on closer inspection, the netting reveals itself to be a kind of rigid armour, made of galvanized steel. In this way Harris both articulates women’s ongoing struggle for agency while also reclaiming narratives that fetishize stereotypes of submissiveness and compliance around Asian women. As such, the fish-net stockings become not just a symbol of self-empowerment but one of rebellion in which the sensuality of the female body is both reclaimed and heightened for women’s own pleasure.
A series of mixed-media paintings encompassing metal plates and chains further plays on ideas of fetish, control and weaponized femininity. Here again, the hard, shiny surface of metal appears in contrast to fluid, dripping brushstrokes in opaque, fleshy tones. For Harris, the chains are also symbolic of generational links and inherited identities. ‘I was taught what it is to be a woman by the women who came before me. There is a sweetness to that memory and connection to a loved one, but there is also a more sinister edge that relates to intergenerational trauma,’ she says. Significantly, in all of the works the chains are left loose and open ended, perhaps symbolising a sense of breaking free from oppressive gender expectations of the past.
Presented together, the works in Lacquered Rebellion put forth a powerful portrait of contemporary femininity, one that reclaims and subverts stereotypes to celebrate the female body and the collective liberation of sensuality and gender expression”.
Kristin Hjellegjerde, London Bermondsey is found at 36 Tanner Street, London, SE1 3LD. The gallery is open 11am until 6pm Monday to Saturday, a short walk from London Bridge station.
3: Cranio, Stop War at BSMT Gallery – 22nd Aug until 8th Sept 2024 with an opening night on the 22nd (6pm until 9pm) where people will talk of things being the bomb and smashing it in that way street art fans do and now if only it was a simple as some random artist that most people haven’t heard of saying stop war and above only sky, no possessions, imagine, well no possessions besides a bloody big piano in great big house and some overpriced generic urban art on the white wall. Thankfully Cranio’s art has a bit of character, a finger print, far from generic, actually it has characters, cartoon-like at times, that blue faced figure. Alas the show is at BSMT Space and there is no love between us anymore, it was a lot more friendly a place when it was actually a basement space, but then so was most of this E8 part of London…
“Cranio, one of the most important names in Brazilian graffiti, is set to return to London for his upcoming solo show Stop War at BSMT Gallery this August. Cranio, which means ‘skull’ in Portuguese, is the pseudonym of Fabio de Oliveira Parnaiba, born in Sao Paulo, Brazil – a city with a strong Graffiti culture. A self-taught artist, he began painting the grey walls of his home town in his late teens, inspired by his roots and his environment. Cranio’s murals prominently feature a trademark blue character with a distinctive shape, often depicted in humorous and topical situations.
Stop War will feature a new collection of original drawings and paintings, as he continues to evolve as an artist with the larger task of challenging his audience to engage with issues outside of the Art World. This exhibition explores the pervasive wars of capitalism, the struggle for the Amazon, and the ideological battles shaping our world. Cranio’s vivid and thought-provoking works highlight the complex interplay between economic interests, environmental degradation, and cultural conflicts”
BSMT Gallery is found 529 Kingsland Road, London E8 4AR. The space is open Wednesday through to Sunday, 10am until 5pm (11am on Sunday, lazy bastard, having a lie in when people want to go look at art on their way to church)
4: Haysom Smith, Whatsoever at Tension Fine Art, 24th Aug until 31st Aug 2024 – Now who can resist things painter ultramarine blue? Well maybe Alice in Hackneyland? – “Found objects painted dead flat ultramarine blue with commercial grade special effects paint, the final proposition of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”), manipulated live stream of the installation.
“For this work I wanted elemental objects which look so much like themselves they function both as the sign signifying the thing and the thing signified. It felt violent to paint them blue, depriving them of their properties, gagging them. I wanted them to look unreal and hyper-real at the same time, to be undeniably analog and yet vibrating at the threshold of the digital.”
Haysom Smith is a conceptual artist exploring the dissonance between analogue and digital objects, the elasticity of the real, and the dialectics of the digital imaginary. Haysom works across installation and sculpture, often incorporating sound, text, and moving image…”
Tension Fine Art is at 135 Maple Road, Penge, London, SE20 8LP, The gallery is only open on Fridays and Saturdays so not really much chance of seeing it, 11am until 5pm
5: The Art Car Boot Fair Goes Into Space, Kings Cross, London, 7th September – We might have mentioned it before but we are now just 16 days away from the Art Car Boot Fair’s main event at Kings Cross, London. Always a big day in terms of the London art calendar, this year it happens on 7th September 2024, more – ORGAN PREVIEW: Always a highlight of the London art year, the date for the 2024 Art Car Boot Fair has now been announced… And the full artist line up has now been announced – ORGAN PREVIEW: Space is the place, the full line up for this year’s Art Car Boot Fair has been announced, things blast off on 7th September 2024, more than just another art fair, this is an artist-led art party and always one of the highlights of the London art year…
You do need a ticket to get in, the fair is big, you do need most of your afternoon, there’s various ticket deals, price gets cheaper later in the day, under 16s get in free, more here
Previously
THE ORGAN 