The Shock of the Now - Issue #131
Afternoon All,
I hope you’re all well, and welcome to Issue 131 of The Shock of the Now.
This week there are eight weekly Recommended Exhibitions, as well as five fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 131, and if so do forward it along! As always any questions, comments or feedback are welcome, so feel free to get in touch.
All the best, and speak soon, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week:
Violet Dennison - ‘I Just Want a Little Credit!’ Solo Exhibition - Ilenia, Shoreditch (23rd May - 6th July, opening Wednesday 22nd May, 6-8pm)
Ilenia presents Violet Dennison’s debut UK solo exhibition ‘I Just Want a Little Credit!’.
“Flowers, the emblem of natural beauty, are a perineal symbol—within Dennison’s works and within history of humans, timeless tokens of admiration, a codified language of fondness and yearning. Some theorize the attraction to flowers sparked long ago with our ancestors, the blooms offering a prediction of which plant would turn into food during the season to follow. Desire and consumption form a series of endless knots all their own.” - Sabrina Tamar
Emmanuel Shogbolu - Solo Exhibition - Metroland Studios, Kilburn (24th May - 14th June, opening Thursday 23rd May, 6-8pm)
Metroland Cultures presents Emmanuel Shogbolu’s latest solo exhibition in collaboration with Harlesden High Street, curated by Jonny Tanna and Christy O’Beirne.
“The exhibition is an assemblage of research, film and sound that elaborates on faith, resilience, testimony and spiritual grounding in the midst of adversity. Emmanuel Shogbolu (b. 199x) a.k.a. SCATTSMAN is an artist, researcher and philosopher born, raised and based in East London. His work centres around self and hyper-local documentation through photography, moving image, drawing, painting, sculpture and installation. ” - Metroland Cultures
David Micheaud - ‘Unhomely’ Solo Exhibition - Xxijra Hii, Deptford (24th May - 22nd June, opening Thursday 23rd May, 6-9pm)
Xxijra Hii presents David Micheaud’s latest solo exhibition ‘Unhomely’.
“Overlooked details become central in paintings that capture the atmospheric tones of light and delicate shifts in colour of the environments that frame them. They appear to be born of a resistance to the typical pace of looking; a desire to slow down and delve deeper. Micheaud looks to eerie interiors as the backdrop to his own feelings of unease, which then transform into a language of comfort and dependency. His work invites us to slow down and appreciate time and space in a world which increasingly takes both away.” - Xxijra Hii
Harminder Judge - ‘A Ghost Dance’ Solo Exhibition - The Sunday Painter & Matt's Gallery, Vauxhall & Nine Elms (24th May - 7th July, opening Thursday 23rd May, 6-9pm)
The Sunday Painter and Matt's Gallery present Harminder Judge’s latest solo exhibition ‘A Ghost Dance’ across both galleries. A processional performance between the two spaces will take place on the opening night, recalling early performance works by the artist.
“A Ghost Dance is a show that references funeral rites, processions and the presence of ghosts and spirits. It draws on persistent themes in Judge’s work: life, death, ritual and rebirth, creating parallels between the deconstructed body and the cosmos. For Matt’s Gallery, Judge will work at scale, developing a monumental, enveloping expanse of material, pigment and colour for the space and setting this in dialogue with new discreet, floor-based semi-figurative works redolent of funereal urns or totems. For The Sunday Painter, Judge will combine new works on a smaller scale with a new cadaver-like sculpture devised for their space.” - The Sunday Painter & Matt's Gallery
Sunyoung Hwang - ‘The Listened Landscape’ Solo Exhibition + Sanne Maloe Slecht - ‘Among The Billions’ Solo Exhibition - Frestonian, Holland Park (23rd May - 22nd June, opening Thursday 23rd May, 6-8pm)
Frestonian presents Sunyoung Hwang’s solo exhibition ‘The Listened Landscape’ and Sanne Maloe Slecht’s solo exhibition ‘Among The Billions’.
“The densely layered yet effervescent oils on canvas that form the core of Hwang’s practice are a kind of abstract diary of mood and thought. The seemingly quickly applied, gestural brushstrokes belie a slow and meticulous process, building up of layer after layer of colour and form over weeks or months. Each subsequent layer may cover the full surface of the canvas, or be a single, energetic stroke / form.
The sense of the sculptural is never far from Slecht’s work, nor the sense of the uncanny – and in the subject matter of her most recent body of work she has found a perfect combination of these notions. Working from imagery from online sources, books and documentaries, Slecht presents elegant glimpses of the reproductive cycle of coral – a fascinating and strange process of budding and fragmentation. The otherworldly quality of the imagery is intentionally employed, producing a sense of wonder, as well as a reminder that these fragile and seemingly alien forms are of our world.” - Frestonian
Sophie Goodchild - ‘The Sand In The Pearl’ Solo Exhibition - Trafalgar Avenue, Burgess Park (24th May - 22nd June, opening Friday 24 May, 5-8pm)
Trafalgar Avenue presents Sophie Goodchild’s solo exhibition ‘The Sand In The Pearl’.
“The Sand In The Pearl is a new body of work by Nottingham-based artist Sophie Goodchild informed by the healing and nurturing properties of wool. It is an extension of Sophie’s research into ‘Wool as a Cloak for Survival: The Alchemy of Form and Fabric’ and explores from an interpretive symbolic perspective how the spiral, a motif found in landscape, architecture, and throughout the natural world, emulates cyclical movements and helical structures and its relation to chaos and (dis)order within the mundane.” - Trafalgar Avenue
Matthew Barney - ‘SECONDARY: light lens parallax’ Solo Exhibition - Sadie Coles HQ, Soho (24th May - 27th July, opening Friday 24 May, 6-8pm)
Gladstone Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Regen Projects, and Galerie Max Hetzler present ‘SECONDARY’, an exhibition in four parts by Matthew Barney. Unfolding sequentially across the galleries and staged in concert with an installation at the Fondation Cartier. In addition to a new series of sculptures and drawings, Barney will premier his film, SECONDARY, in London, Paris and Los Angeles.
“Each arm of the exhibition traces back to the artist’s 2023 film, SECONDARY, a five-channel work that draws its inspiration from the infamous 1978 Raiders vs. Patriots game in which defensive back Jack Tatum delivered an open field hit that left wide receiver Darryl Stingley permanently paralyzed. Recalling his own memories of the play, the impact, and the culture of spectacle that continues to inform the incident today, Barney addresses the consequences of a sport that has become synonymous with physical brutality.” - Sadie Coles
Kate Burling - ‘Softness as a Torrent’ Solo Exhibition - Ronchini, Mayfair (29th May - 14th June, opening Tuesday 28th May, 6-8pm)
Ronchini presents Kate Burling’s solo exhibition ‘Softness as a Torrent’.
“In Softness as Torrent (2024), Kate Burling uses painting to investigate ideas of force and divinity, exploring through image-making how potency and gentleness might occupy the same space. The paintings receive dimensions and depth through a set of signs: shapes which repeat and differ. A smooth, disk-like circle reoccurs most often. Sometimes it is falling, flooding the image in swarms. Elsewhere their softened edges give way to another image: the ovular shape of a bell, the roundness of St. Sebastian's nipple.” - Ronchini
Unyimeabasi Udoh - ‘Flood’ Solo Exhibition - Piccalilli, Sydenham (29th May - 29th June, opening Tuesday 28th May, 6-10pm)
Piccalilli presents Unyimeabasi Udoh’s solo exhibition ‘Flood’, accompanied by a text by Casey Carsel.
“Legibility, the void, and visibility are some of the key themes in Udoh’s practice, as they work with the everyday and often culturally invisible language around us. After a summer spent on long road trips, Udoh became fascinated by traffic signs: taken in isolation, they’re fairly strange, yet they often have the rigor and beauty of geometric abstraction. The titular piece, Flood, builds on Udoh’s past sign works, here rendered in a cold wax and retroreflective glass technique that they have been developing over the past several months.” - Piccalilli
Artist Opportunities:
Open Call, Boundaries, outhouse Gallery. Deadline - Thursday 23rd May.
outhouse are excited to announce a new Open Call for their next exhibition ‘Boundaries’, curated by Siyan Zhang. How to submit? Email: mirrormirrorart2020@gmail.com. Include: Artist’s name; Title; Short description (a brief intro of the artwork); Dimensions; Medium. outhouse require all the selected artists to deliver their artwork to the gallery by Sun 26 May 2024 12- 3 pm. For digital artworks, please send the video/photo to outhouse, and they’ll try our best to accommodate the digital formats.
Open Call, Shapes & Things. Deadline - Saturday 25th May.
Shapes & Things presents an open call for artists with a 2D, 3D, and moving image background. This open call is for a virtual exhibition titled ‘Public’. Further information on the exhibiting dates coming soon.
FLAMIN Animations, Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network. Deadline - Monday 27th May.
FLAMIN Animations is a commissioning programme for early-career Black-identifying artist animators living in the UK, offering £3,000 to create a new 2-3 minute animation, in addition to development support from the FLAMIN team and a bespoke workshop programme. Part of Film London Artists' Moving Image Network, FLAMIN Animations looks to commission Black-identifying* practitioners as a considered acknowledgement of the underrepresentation of Black artists within the art, film, and animation industries.
Open Call, ‘Resurrection Charms’, Well Projects Anthology 2024. Deadline - Wednesday 29th May.
Well Projects produces a yearly anthology book that explores ecology through a broad range of contributions including (but not limited to) academic or visual essays, fiction, poetry and interviews. For their 3rd Anthology book, Resurrection Charms, Well Projects invites proposals for texts that engage with ecology in relation to: resurrection, time travel, rewilding, restoration, science fiction, intersectionality, ghosts, hauntings and histories. This open call is for emerging writers with an idea for a new, unpublished text between 1000 - 4000 words. Successful applicants will receive a £300.00 fee, support whilst writing their text, and will be published in Resurrection Charms. The book will be distributed internationally.
Michael O’Pray Prize 2024, Film and Video Umbrella. Deadline - Friday 31st May.
The Michael O’Pray Prize is an award for new writing on innovation and experimentation in the moving image. The prize is open to all early-career writers based in the UK and is free to apply to. Applicants are invited to send a proposal or pitch for a new text, alongside an example of previous writing. Three of the applicants will be selected to realise the proposed text. From these, there will be a £750 prize for the winner, with £350 each for two further awardees. All three awarded texts will be published by Art Monthly and FVU.
Open Call, Performance Revue. Deadline - Saturday 1st June.
Billy Parker & Jaya Twill are curating a revue which will take place at the end of June (exact date TBA). If you’re interested in putting your work on, please send your pitch and writing sample to dontlookround@gmail.com. All work should in some way involve text (open to interpretation).
The Mick Bateman Memorial Award, Bow Arts x London Sculpture Workshop. Deadline - Monday 3rd June.
Bow Arts and London Sculpture Workshop are pleased to announce the Mick Bateman Memorial Award. In 2022, the artistic community suffered a profound loss with the unexpected passing of Mick Bateman, a dedicated artist and sculptor. The Mick Bateman Memorial Award is a new award set up with specific intention to support and encourage emerging artists working in metal. Each award offers: Two years of financial support towards the whole cost of a professional artist studio at Bow Arts. The award is up to a maximum of £2,000 in any one year. Up to £1,000 (equivalent to 8 days) access to courses and/or workshop time in the London Sculpture Workshop.
Thanks to support from the British Council, Delfina Foundation and Foundation Art Divvy are delighted to offer opportunities to three artists to develop their practices through residing in and engaging with the rich artistic and cultural landscapes of London and Lahore. One Pakistan-based artist will be selected for a twelve-week residency at Delfina Foundation in London, taking place between 23 September and 15 December 2024, as part of Delfina’s autumn residency season. Two UK-based artists will be selected for a three-week residency with Foundation Art Divvy in Lahore, taking place between 15 September and 8 October 2024.
Open Call, SET Film Festival 2024, SET Social. Deadline - Sunday 16th June.
Submissions are now open for the second edition of SET’s annual festival of contemporary, artist, and archival film. They’re interested in short films (under 30 minutes in length) of all genres and production techniques, including animation, documentary, experimental or artists’ films, and projects spanning low to high budgets. Films must have been completed after 1 January 2019. Screenings will take place every Thursday from 7 November to 5 December 2024 at SET Social in Peckham.
The FLAMIN Fellowship, Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network. Deadline - Monday 17th June.
Film London and Arts Council England with the support of The Fenton Arts Trust present The FLAMIN Fellowship, a major development programme for early-career artist filmmakers living in England. Part of Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), the Fellowship aims to support the most exciting, innovative and challenging moving image practices from filmmakers at the early stages of their careers, with development and funding for new work. The FLAMIN Fellowship offers a unique opportunity in developing professional artistic practice with a series of monthly workshops, which cover key areas including selling artwork, film festival strategy, writing funding applications, archiving your work, sound design, insurance, copyright and sustaining a practice.
In October this year, Bow Arts will present In the footsteps of the East London Group – an exhibition exploring the past and present of east London, bringing together the historical paintings of the East London Group with their 21st century contemporaries. For the exhibition, they are inviting artists with a connection to east London to submit their proposals for a new, contemporary sound piece to be exhibited in the show. The piece will activate the gallery and provide an atmospheric soundtrack which will immerse visitors as they move through the exhibition and encounter the streets, scenes, and communities which make up the fabric of east London, then and now.
Bow Arts are looking for proposals for sound artworks in a range of different formats – from soundscapes, field recordings, conversations, and interviews, to community radio broadcasts, audio experiments, songs, chants, incantations, and more. There are no explicit requirements for format or length of the audio artwork – they only ask that the work must be suitable to be played/looped throughout the exhibition, but they are open to different interpretations of this and more experimental installations too.
Open Call, Ethereality, Photobook Cafe. Deadline - Thursday 20th June.
A photographic one evening group exhibition and print/publication sales event curated by Alice Campos. In response to Lyle Rexer’s Antiquarian Avant Garde, Ethereality brings together artists using photographic forms of image making to transform the physical world, and the acquisition of power-the power to separate out spirits of metals.
International Curators Forum (ICF) is accepting applications for an emerging or early career UK-based Black or Brown researcher/curator with an interest in working on an exciting, new project addressing the legacy and contemporary relevance of Ten.8 Magazine. Their research into the Ten.8 archives will inform their development of a public event which they will curate and produce with the ICF programmes team, at The Photographers’ Gallery in London to correspond with an archival exhibition on the legacy of Ten.8 in January 2025; a major exhibition at The New Art Gallery Walsall activating the Ten.8 archive and bringing it into dialogue with artworks and other materials set to take place between April and September 2026; digital programming or outputs activating the Ten.8 archive; a contribution to a new publication on the legacy of Ten.8, bringing together key existing texts and new commissions.
The Hari Art Prize 2024. Deadline - Sunday 23rd June.
A Space For Art is delighted to announce the Third edition of The Hari Art Prize, celebrating the global roster of artistic talents attracted to London. A Space for Art is pleased to collaborate again with award-winning luxury hotel The Hari in Belgravia for the return of The Hari Art Prize for 2024, with a cash prize of £10,000 awarded to the finalist. The two runners-up will receive £3000 in second place, and £1000 in third place. The prize is open to applicants who have graduated within the last five years (2019-2024) from UK art colleges or Art Students who are currently studying at a UK Art College. All shortlisted artists will be invited to exhibit a work in The Hari Art Prize Shortlist exhibition which will be on view at The Hari Hotel in September.
The Muse Residency Competition 2024, The Muse Gallery. Deadline - Wednesday 26th June.
Since 2004 The Muse / Gallery & Studio has supported a residency program, offering recent graduates subsidised studio space, a gallery to show and the means to cultivate both client and industry connections. Each year they host a group competition show, awarding the residency positions to a few successful artists; they appeal to all disciplines, with a BA minimum qualification from the previous two years. Artwork is then reviewed by their panel of esteemed industry professionals, curators and collectors, with an emphasis on professionalism from the onset. Their curators will award three or four artists with a residency from 13th January to the 30th June 2025. The residency will begin with a group show in January 2025 and conclude with a second group show in June 2025. Further to the residency program, a chosen artist will be awarded a three-week solo show during their 2025 calendar year.
The Zsuzsi Roboz Scholarship, Morley College London. Deadline - Saturday 29th June.
This Scholarship is offered in memory of the celebrated painter, Zsuzsi Roboz. Funds have been made available to support contemporary figurative artists of promise working primarily in painting and drawing to study for one year at Morley College London, thanks to the generosity of the ‘Alfred Teddy Smith and Zsuzsi Roboz Art Trust’. In this context Figurative primarily refers to drawing and painting or sculpture related to human form and other forms of figuration that depicts people and considers the politics of representation. The Scholarship offers the recipient one year’s part-time programme of free classes at Morley College, personal tutoring and mentoring from a professional artist and teacher, and an opportunity to exhibit work in their Gallery at the end of the year.
Turps Correspondence Course, Turps Art School 2024/25. Deadline - Sunday 30th June.
Turps Correspondence Course is an innovative programme of online mentoring facilitated through critical, supportive written reviews delivered by a dedicated mentor. The course is aimed at painters who want to develop or reinvigorate their work, whether recently graduated from art school, mid-career or those without any formal arts education. The course is designed and structured to be delivered entirely online so that painters, based anywhere in the world and at any stage in their career, can participate and receive informed, critical feedback from a mentor who is practising painter selected by Turps. There are 5 review points throughout the year when you will be required to upload images of your work and a short statement or ‘letter’ to your mentor. Your mentor will then review what has been uploaded and write their response. It is a very different type of feedback from more conventional face-to-face tutorials but Turps believe this is what makes the correspondence course such an appealing and sought-after professional development course.
MASS Correspondence Course, MASS Art School 2024/25. Deadline - Sunday 30th June.
Mass Correspondence Course is an innovative distance-learning programme of online mentoring facilitated through critical, supportive written reviews by a dedicated mentor. The course is aimed at sculptors based anywhere in the world and at any stage in their career who want to develop or reinvigorate their work, whether recently graduated from art school or those without any formal arts education.
Artists’ Collecting Society Studio Prize 2024. Deadline - Sunday 30th June.
The Artists' Collecting Society (ACS) is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company that administers intellectual property rights on behalf of visual artists. ACS is offering a recent graduate the chance to win £6,000 to contribute to the cost of an artist’s studio in a UK city of their choice. ACS has once again partnered with Gurr Johns International, a global independent art advisory and appraisal group, to offer this year’s five finalists the opportunity to take part in a group exhibition at Gurr Johns. The exhibition will take place in their St James’s first-floor gallery in autumn 2024. If you are a UK or EEA national and are an undergraduate or postgraduate university student on an accredited art course who is about to graduate, or if you have graduated from a university accredited art course within the last four years, and you work in pictures, collage, painting, sculpture, tapestry, ceramics, glassware or photography, then you are eligible to apply for the prize.
The Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University is seeking to appoint two contemporary practitioners to the Stanley Picker Fellowships in Design & Fine Art 2024. Each Fellowship provides up to £16,000 and valuable access to the extensive material workshops, technical resources and expertise within Kingston School of Art and the wider University departments, to support a practice-based, innovative research project that will result in an exhibition of international standing at the Stanley Picker Gallery.
DoBeDo Book Award, DoBeDo Projects. Deadline - Monday 8th July.
The DoBeDo Projects Book Award will be accepting submissions for the publication of a photo book by photographers at any stage of their career with an unpublished photographic project (that is complete, or close to completion). This award offers start-to-finish production of a photobook for those selected by the jury; edited, designed, printed and published by DoBeDo Projects, which also includes distribution, press and promotion of the publication. Different publication formats and budgets will be awarded on a project-by-project basis up to £50,000. Winners will be selected by a jury of established industry professionals.