The Shock of the Now - Issue #171
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 171 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes nineteen Recommended Exhibitions, as well as fourteen fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 171, 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 :
Tulani Hlalo - ‘Silly Bitch’ Solo Exhibition - Soup, Elephant & Castle (1st May - 8th June, opening Wednesday 30th April, 6-9pm)
Soup presents Tulani Hlalo’s solo exhibition ‘Silly Bitch’, curated by Georgia Stephenson.
“Comprising textile, moving image, performance, sculpture and installation, Hlalo’s recent bodies of work borrow from the niche subculture of competitive dog grooming as a visual language to explore how identity is at once defined and changeable. Employing playfulness and humour, as well as bizarre or otherwise unconventional imagery, her research examines a search for one’s sense of belonging and explores what it might mean to exist between cultures. The outlandish, fictional grooms present in her tufted textile and film works raise questions about consent, expectation, categorisation and the physical representation of identity, while reflecting on staged or constructed performance within societal, racial or cultural contexts.” - Soup
Michael Dean - ‘Kicking Die (To Scale With a Ladder)’ Solo Exhibition - Herald St, Bethnal Green (1st May - 8th June, opening Wednesday 30th April, 6-8pm)
Herald St presents Michael Dean’s solo exhibition ‘Kicking Die (To Scale With a Ladder)’.
“This presentation continues Dean’s two-decade-long exploration of transposing language and experimental forms of typography into three-dimensional sculpture, often resulting in physical environments and immersive installations. His ideological interrogation inextricably binds symbolic histories and socio-political vicissitudes with his own quotidian narrative and personal history. The artist describes the act of an exhibition as an artifice, theatre, or stage, whereby ‘the gallery is a white page; the viewer is a protagonist; and the exhibition becomes a publication.’” - Herald St
Judith Dean - ‘New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace?’ Solo Exhibition - South Parade, Farringdon (1st May - 14th June, opening Wednesday 30th April, 6-8pm)
South Parade presents Judith Dean’s solo exhibition ‘New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace?’, accompanied with a text by Lucy Rose Cunningham.
“Through expanding-containing perspectives and spaces within spaces - sometimes empty, un-roofed and leaky, or dripping beyond borders - Judith Dean disrupts the cartographic project, of mapping time, history, and distance, with a sense of dis-placement. New-placement. Re-placement. Sensed via stretched frames of imagery, at times one frame isolated, others in potential dialogue with neighbouring ones. Disorientation, through the sheer vastness of subject matter - jerking across hemispheres and cycles - and the lack of total control in the artist’s making, with a use of non-writing hand, freed through Chinese brushes offering bleeding swathes of colour.” - Lucy Rose Cunningham.
Marie Harnett - ‘Were you dreaming?’ Solo Exhibition - Cristea Roberts, St. James's (2nd May - 8th June, opening Thursday 1st May, 6-7:30pm)
Cristea Roberts presents Marie Harnett’s solo exhibition ‘Were you dreaming?’.
“Were you dreaming?, Marie Harnett’s fourth solo show with the gallery, brings together intricate works on paper depicting tender, decadent and dream-like scenes inspired by contemporary film, Greek mythology and Old Master paintings. Best-known for pencil drawings that are hyper realistic in style, the artist’s practice always begins with film stills sourced from a diverse range of trailers. Films are a conduit for the artist, who sifts through hundreds of trailers, intuitively selecting certain frames that encapsulate a particular atmosphere.” - Cristea Roberts
Ro Robertson - ‘Holder Up’ Solo Exhibition - Maximillian William, Fitzrovia (1st May - 14th June, opening Thursday 1st May, 6-8pm)
Maximillian William presents Ro Robertson’s solo exhibition ‘Holder Up’.
“Drawing upon a working-class history of bodily engagement with the materials of heavy industry, Robertson channels the physicality of industrial labour through performance, drawing, riveted steel collage, and welded steel sculpture, reinterpreting its gestures into rhythmical abstract form. The exhibition’s title is drawn from the artist’s great-grandfather’s role in the shipyards: a ‘Holder Up’ – someone who was responsible for bracing red-hot rivets in place while they were hammered overhead into steel structures. Within a contemplative process of working with generational memory, Robertson considers the sculptural legacy of working-class people.” - Maximillian William