The Shock of the Now - Issue #175
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 175 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes fifteen Recommended Exhibitions, as well as twelve fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 175, 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 :
Shiraz Bayjoo - ‘To Desir, Mo Lamor’ Solo Exhibition - Copperfield, Borough (29th May - 2nd August, opening Wednesday 28th May, 6-8:30pm)
Copperfield presents Shiraz Bayjoo’s solo exhibition ‘To Desir, Mo Lamor’.
“While Bayjoo’s work is critical of human intervention — and predominantly European interference in the name of profit — it also carries with it a nod to the other side of humanity. Somewhere right now there is a person nurturing and tending to a plant that otherwise would not exist. With a little consideration humanity could have avoided the need, but nonetheless someone cares and has continued to care from the point these preserved species no longer existed in the wild. It is with this same kind of care that Bayjoo carefully immortalises each plant in installation, on canvas, in ceramic and in sculpture.” - Copperfield
Paul Thek - ‘Seized by Joy. Paintings 1965–1988’ Solo Exhibition - Thomas Dane, 11 Duke Street, St James's (29th May - 2nd August, opening Wednesday 28th May, 6-8pm)
Thomas Dane presents ‘Paul Thek: Seized by Joy. Paintings 1965–1988’, curated by Kenny Schachter and Jonathan Anderson.
“Spanning three decades of the artist’s career, featuring paintings, works on paper and previously unseen sketches and writings, this will be the first exhibition of Thek’s work in the UK for over a decade. Paul Thek sketched and painted throughout his life, portraying friends and loved ones, documenting his surroundings and giving form to conscious and unconscious thoughts and desires. Painting and drawing seized the artist with joy, and beyond, provided a form of idiomatic religious fervour. Unlike his sculptural works, which often confront the viewer with their visceral physicality, Thek’s paintings offer a quieter, more delicate meditation on life and experience.” - Thomas Dane
Chaney Diao & Juliusz Grabianski - ‘Knotted Timeline’ Two-Person Exhibition - Seager, Deptford (29th May - 14th June, opening Thursday 29th May, 6-9pm)
Seager presents ‘Knotted Timelines’, a two-person exhibition by Chaney Diao and Juliusz Grabianski.
“Bringing together distinct yet intersecting practices, the exhibition moves through layered symbols, parallel narratives, and technological terrains. Grabianski navigates speculative futures and algorithmic image production, while Chaney explores the tension between simulation and sensation, structure and desire. Across digital renderings, sculptural gestures, and narrative video, their works trace constructed realities and overlapping visual vocabularies.” - Seager
Ruby Dickson - ‘Rarity Is Commoner Than You Think’ Solo Exhibition - Loop, Hoxton (29th May - 28th June, opening Thursday 29th May, 6-8pm)
Loop presents Ruby Dickson’s solo exhibition ‘Rarity Is Commoner Than You Think’.
“Drawing on her Jamaican and Irish heritage, Dickson’s new body of works explores the modes of circulation and representation of Caribbean floriculture, focusing on flowers that have been transplanted from Jamaica to the UK for the purposes of decoration, agriculture, or commerce. These plants, viewed through a western gaze, carry with them a layered history of displacement, nostalgia, and transformation.” - Loop
Margarita Gluzberg - ‘Factory Outlet’ Solo Exhibition - Alma Pearl, Haggerston (30th May - 5th July, opening Thursday 29th May, 6-8pm)
Alma Pearl presents Margarita Gluzberg’s solo exhibition ‘Factory Outlet’.
“The show will feature new works on paper and a sound installation from the ongoing birdsong recording series, the first of which took place at the MAC/VAL Museum, Paris, 2009. Together, these works expand on the artist’s investigation around consumerism, nostalgia, beauty and desire. The exhibition’s title takes inspiration from the physicist David Bohm’s metaphysical notion of the ‘implicate order’, a deeper and more fundamental system of reality.” - Alma Pearl