The Shock of the Now - Issue #158
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 158 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes eighteen Recommended Exhibitions, as well as eight fresh Artist Opportunities.
Thanks again to all those who have signed-up for a paid subscription recently! My exclusive Guide to Condo 2025, as well as all previous full issues, can be accessed exclusively by paid subscribers Here.
I hope you enjoy Issue 158, and if so do forward it along! As always, questions and comments are welcome, so feel free to get in touch, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week :
Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban - ‘Much love I leave behind’ Solo Exhibition - Indigo+Madder, Holborn (30th January - 1st March, opening Wednesday 29th January, 6-8pm)
Indigo+Madder presents Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban’s solo exhibition ‘Much love I leave behind’.
“Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban (both b. 2000) are a British-Asian artist duo based in London. Their collaborative practice is founded upon an open and ongoing dialogue examining their shared experience of being raised in London by Indian mothers. Stories, food, clothes and objects passed from person to person, across houses, hands and borders, find a home in their work. The feminine diaspora and its link to world building is something the duo dissect, creating environments that reference the domestic and acknowledge, yet alter, the gallery space and its atmosphere.” - Indigo+Madder
Alice Neel - ‘At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World’ Solo Exhibition - Victoria Miro, Old Street (30th January - 8th March, opening Wednesday 29th January, 6-8pm)
Victoria Miro presents ‘At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World’, curated by Hilton Als.
“The gallery’s ninth solo exhibition of works by the celebrated American painter further extends an ongoing exploration of aspects of Neel’s work and its continuing relevance today. One of the foremost painters of the twentieth century, and among its most radical, Alice Neel (1900–1984) is known for her daring honesty in her pursuit of what she termed ‘the truth’ – of the individual and the broader society in which individual lives were lived. At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World highlights the artist’s career-long commitment to depicting the human condition and her practice of painting people from many walks of life.” - Victoria Miro
Tanat Teeradakorn - ‘National Opera Complex’ Solo Exhibition - Gasworks, Oval (30th January - 30th March, opening Wednesday 29th January, 6:30-8:30pm)
Gasworks presents Tanat Teeradakorn’s solo exhibition ‘National Opera Complex’.
“A new commission and the first solo exhibition in Europe by Bangkok-based multi-disciplinary artist, musician, DJ and graphic designer, Tanat Teeradakorn. Exploring the parallel histories of Thailand and the UK through references to pop culture, revolution and monarchy, the exhibition will contain an immersive installation mimicking a tourist city souvenir stand, replete with products illustrating instances of refusal and resistance. Inside the stand, a new audio and video work will fuse TikTok-style viral dance routines with Thai folk dance and opera, continuing the artist’s ongoing research on cross-cultural sounds.” - Gasworks
Peter Hujar - ‘Eyes Open in the Dark’ Solo Exhibition - Raven Row, Liverpool Street (30th January - 6th April, opening Wednesday 29th January, 6:30-8:30pm)
Raven Row presents ‘Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark’, curated by Hujar’s biographer John Douglas Millar, and Hujar’s close friend, the artist and master printer Gary Schneider, with Raven Row’s director Alex Sainsbury.
“This is the first exhibition to take on the full breadth of Peter Hujar’s later photography. Hujar was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 80s New York, but at his death in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia his work was largely unknown to a broader art world. Now it is widely admired for its austere elegance and emotional charge. As well as lifetime prints it will include prints of little-known works specially prepared by Gary Schneider, working closely with the artist’s Estate.” - Raven Row
Débora Delmar - ‘Trust’ Solo Exhibition - Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston (29th January - 12th April, opening Wednesday 29th January, 6-8pm)
Stanley Picker Gallery presents Débora Delmar’s solo exhibition ‘Trust’.
“Through her Stanley Picker Fellowship, Débora Delmar explored strategies of working within systems, contracts, relationships and institutions. By incorporating the contractual structure of the Fellowship and exploring how to set up a trust in her own name, she scrutinised artistic labour as a form of currency. As an outcome of her Fellowship, Delmar’s solo exhibition will expand on the multiple meanings of the word Trust, and build on her recent interests in how value is generated through the financial world, as well as through physical and symbolic impacts of architecture present in gentrification, consumerism and surveillance in the urban environment.” - Stanley Picker Gallery