The Shock of the Now - Issue #178
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 178 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes ten Recommended Exhibitions, as well as twelve fresh Artist Opportunities.
Additionally, with Central Saint Martins’ CSM Shows 2025; Royal College of Art’s School of Arts & Humanities Show; Goldsmiths’ BA Fine Art, BA Fine Art and History of Art, Fine Art Extension; Ruskin School of Art’s BFA & MFA Degree Show; and City & Guilds of London Art School’s BA Fine Art, Conservation and Carving opening over the coming week, you can still access The Shock of the Now's Guide to Degree Shows 2025, an in-depth issue available to paid subscribers providing comprehensive coverage of this year’s art school degree presentations across foundation, graduate and postgraduate courses. The guide breaks down which courses are showing where and when, providing addresses, preview dates/times and full opening hours where possible.
I hope you enjoy Issue 178, 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 :
Harry Freegard - ‘Gorgeous’ Solo Exhibition - Soup, Elephant & Castle (19th June - 19th July, opening Wednesday 18th June, 6-9pm)
Soup presents Harry Freegard’s debut solo exhibition ‘Gorgeous’.
“Following early success in the fashion industry that included collaborations with renowned brands such as Chanel, Balenciaga, Dior and Vivienne Westwood, in the past year Freegard has dedicated much of his time to a compulsive art practice that incorporates drawing and textile collage. Employing an almost automatist approach to making, each artwork is imbued with both anxious energy and hopeful potential as he draws, sketches, cuts, stitches and sews quickly and intuitively until compositions emerge. The practice serving as his connection to a spiritual plane, Freegard aims to alchemise our innermost desires into intimate, empathic depictions of figures and flowers, each a ritualistic offering or textile talisman, manifestations of a meditative need to create.” - Soup
Filip Lav - ‘Formations’ Solo Exhibition - Split Riviera, Haggerston (19th June - 27th July, opening Wednesday 18th June, 6-9pm)
Split Riviera present their inaugural exhibition, Filip Lav’s solo ‘Formations’.
“Filip Lav currently lives and works in London. His practice spans painting, installation, and expanded forms of visual storytelling - often navigating themes of myth, memory, and transformation. He completed the Turps Studio Programme in London in 2024, following an MFA at Columbia University, New York (2016), and a BFA from the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University (2012). His education reflects a rigorous engagement with both conceptual and material processes, informing a body of work that is layered, evocative, and responsive to the tensions between the personal and the political.” - Split Riviera
Rob Branigan - ‘Annotations’ Solo Exhibition - A IS FOR ARCHITECTURE (AIFA), Bethnal Green (20th June - 18th July, opening Thursday 19th June, 6-8pm)
A IS FOR ARCHITECTURE (AIFA) present Rob Branigan’s solo exhibition ‘Annotations’, in collaboration with Sherbet Green.
“Branigan’s presentation responds to the spatial, historical, and material conditions of AIFA’s site, formerly an ironmongers, later a florist, and now a working studio. The artist presents three interconnected bodies of work that explore the symbolism of objecthood and indexicality, investigating how memory and time take shape in the material world. Installed throughout the space, the works draw out its tactile history and shifting uses.” - Sherbet Green
Raha Farazmand - ‘The Centre Never Held’ Solo Exhibition - No Show Space, Bethnal Green (20th June - 19th July, opening Thursday 19th June, 6:30-8:30pm)
No Show Space presents Raha Farazmand’s solo exhibition ‘The Centre Never Held’.
“The Centre Never Held probes the fragility and mutability of allegory in painting. Farazmand combines the abstract and figurative to examine how meaning, once rooted in specific cultural, political, or moral contexts, becomes unstable over time and is revealed as a precarious construct, shifting and fragmenting across time and culture. These evocative paintings are in control of what is revealed and what is left to intrigue and suggestion. This tension is achieved with an understanding and deft handling of the medium, whether oil on canvas or pastel on paper.” - No Show Space
Izzie Beirne - ‘Pick It Out Of Your Teeth Afterwards’ Solo Exhibition - The Second Act, Shoreditch (20th June - 5th July, opening Thursday 19th June, 6-8pm)
The Second Act presents Izzie Beirne’s solo exhibition ‘Pick It Out Of Your Teeth Afterwards’
“Our next exhibition is a new body of painting and sculptural works by Izzie Beirne, imbued with references to imbalances of power, longing and safety. The paintings edit scenes so they might be both dreamlike or nightmarish, limbs are violently cropped, social scenes are abandoned and ghostlike figures guard locked doors. Beirne’s disconcerting cropping and disruption of scale plays with notions of power and safety. Motion blur and soft focus sway between violence, sensuality and comfort.” - The Second Act