The Shock of the Now - Issue #182
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 182 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes eleven Recommended Exhibitions, as well as fourteen fresh Artist Opportunities.
Additionally, thanks once again to all those who have signed-up for a paid subscription recently! Last week I released The Shock of the Now’s Guide to Deptford X 2025, an in-depth issue providing a comprehensive breakdown of London’s longest-running visual arts festival. I covered the eight Deptford X festival commissions and all associated talks, tours and workshops; as well as a curated selection of thirty-five highlights from the festival’s Fringe - that assembles artists, community groups, students, local galleries and unique venues. For those who missed out and wish to catch up, Deptford X continues until July 27th, and my guide can be accessed with a paid subscription Here.
I hope you enjoy Issue 182, 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 :
Varshga Premarasa - Solo Exhibition - Niru Ratnam, Fitzrovia (17th July - 9th August, opening Wednesday 16th July, 6-8pm)
Niru Ratnam presents a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Varshga Premarasa.
“Varshga Premarasa’s paintings bring together disparate dreamlike elements; in one painting we see a man sleeping, a woman in a sari, birds, a tractor, and a comic frog, creating surreal yet unsettling scenes. This deliberately disjointed imagery reflects not only a modernist surrealist tradition but also the complex cultural inheritance of the artist, a British Tamil born in London with roots in Sri Lanka. Her work gestures toward the silences and fragmented memories surrounding the Sri Lankan civil war, particularly the trauma left unspoken within diasporic communities. Through layered storytelling and visual metaphor, Premarasa navigates mediated memories - those told, withheld, or forgotten - offering a perspective shaped by distance, silence, and inherited trauma.” - Niru Ratnam
Jane and Louise Wilson - ‘Performance of Entrapment’ Solo Exhibition - London Mithraeum, Bloomberg SPACE, Bank (17th July - 17th January)
London Mithraeum’s Bloomberg SPACE presents Jane and Louise Wilson’s solo exhibition ‘Performance of Entrapment’.
“London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE showcases a series of contemporary art commissions, responding and bringing fresh perspectives to the site’s archaeological history. Our next installation will be Performance of Entrapment by Jane and Louise Wilson. Central to the installation will be 2,000-year-old oak stakes discovered during excavations for Bloomberg’s European headquarters. The Wilsons use high-resolution microscopic imagery of the oak’s grain as a starting point for a new body of work. Blending screen-printing, resin, and carved wooden forms, and drawing inspiration from the wood’s structure, patterns and DNA sequencing to create large-scale, visually layered artworks.” - London Mithraeum
Coco Capitán - ‘Studio Debris: A Little of Everything, A Lot of Nothing’ Solo Exhibition - Maximillian William, Fitzrovia (18th July - 16th August, opening Thursday 17th July, 6-8pm)
Maximillian William presents Coco Capitán’s latest solo exhibition ‘Studio Debris: A Little of Everything, A Lot of Nothing’.
“Studio Debris will present a full range of the artist’s photographic work, including the large-scale Erik Rolls a Cigarette (2017). In an otherwise everyday room, a young man lounges in his underwear on a bright blue carpet, staring directly at the viewer as he rolls a cigarette. At over two metres wide, the scale of the photograph and the position of the figure serve to echo depictions of women in art history, from mythological figures such as Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) to Manet’s Olympia (1863). Capitán inverts convention, presenting us with a male figure, recumbent and at ease as his gaze meets the viewer’s. In contrast to this substantial tableau, across the room will be steel plates festooned with a variety of prints, including polaroids, loose and unframed, reflecting a wide variety of Capitán’s photographic oeuvre, from magazine work and editorial portraits to pictures from the artist’s frequent travels to Japan.” - Maximillian William
Kate Gottgens - ‘The Blue of Distance’ Solo Exhibition - Huxley Parlour, Swallow Street, Mayfair (18th July - 13th September, opening Thursday 17th July, 6-8pm)
Huxley Parlour presents Kate Gottgens’ latest solo exhibition ‘The Blue of Distance’, at the gallery’s Swallow Street location.
“n this new body of work Gottgens investigates nostalgia, journeying, and the expressive qualities of the colour blue. The exhibition title - The Blue of Distance - taken from Rebecca Solnit’s book, 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost', is suggestive of a space between two points, fading perspective, and the movement across both. Caught between past and future, Gottgens explores the duality of loss and longing, her figures poised in a liminal realm between that which came before and that which they have yet to experience.” - Huxley Parlour
Bernice Mulenga - ‘LMK WHEN U REACH’ Solo Exhibition - Auto Italia, Bethnal Green (17th July - 26th October, opening Thursday 17th July, 6-8pm)
Auto Italia presents Bernice Mulenga’s first major institutional solo exhibition ‘LMK WHEN U REACH’.
“Mulenga’s work documents and honours Black queer life in the UK and beyond, offering a conduit for visibility, collective memory and meaningful connection. The exhibition marks the ten-year anniversary of their ongoing photo series #friendsonfilm. This ever-growing archive celebrates contemporary LGBTQ+ BIPOC places of collective celebration as spaces of resistance, where dancefloors become sites of intimacy, solidarity and community. Through Mulenga’s lens, club cultures are framed as critical contemporary sites where marginalised bodies can express themselves freely and where the people who hold, animate and shape them are foregrounded. In this way, Mulenga’s work shines much-needed light on the overlooked and unseen stories of these individuals and their communities.” - Auto Italia