The Shock of the Now - Issue #188
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 188 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes seven Recommended Exhibitions, as well as twelve fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 188, 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 :
‘Subvert Your Gaze to Meet Mine’ Group Exhibition - Twilight Contemporary, Dalston (28th August - 13th September, opening Thursday 28th August, 6-8pm)
Twilight Contemporary presents ‘Subvert Your Gaze to Meet Mine’, a group exhibition curated by Téa-Anya Earle, featuring Saint Takyi, Aarony Bailey, Maria Calliste, Monica Okello, Yvadney Davis, Natalie Charles, Emily Alice Mitchell, Natasha Muluswela, Khadija Cecile Niang and Kandre Arámide Hassan.
“Twilight Contemporary presents Subvert Your Gaze to Meet Mine, a group exhibition which invites you to experience the explorations, memories, dreams and imaginings contained within the worlds of an assemblage of black women and non - binary artists. Guided by a speculative and liberation-focused framework put forward in Lola Olufemi's work and specifically ‘Experiments in Imagining Otherwise’. Olufemi blends poetry and manifesto to reframe resistance. Resistance is reconstituted as a collective practice, where process triumphs over outcome and conflict is replaced with collective refusal and care. Within this imagination becomes a site of resistance, the ability to dream and experiment are repurposed as liberatory tools in the face of the overbearing hegemonies we live under. Olufemi invites us to find sanctuary in our own internal world and the internal worlds of others, towards reclamation and radical collective nurture.” - Twilight Contemporary
‘Shaping Time’ Group Exhibition - The Stone Space, Leytonstone (28th August - 21st September, opening Thursday 28th August, 6:30-8pm)
The Stone Space presents ‘Shaping Time’, a group exhibition featuring Mils Bridgewater, Caroline Chouler-Tissier, Natasha Fontenelle, Dovile Grigaliunaite, Caz Hildebrand and Phillipa Silcock.
“Time slips, folds, accumulates. Shaping Time is an exhibition of glass and ceramic works that transform the intangible into presence. Through slow, deliberate processes—shaping, firing, fusing, and refining—artists give physical form to memory, change, and the quiet passage of time. Clay is moulded, glass is melted and cooled—each gesture a record of motion, each surface a map of time’s imprint. Organic contours, layered textures, and translucent glazes echo natural cycles and inner landscapes, holding fleeting moments in permanent shape. By grounding abstract experiences in material process, Shaping Time invites reflection on how meaning is made, how memory is held, and how even the most ephemeral elements of life can be shaped by the hand and made to endure.” - The Stone Space
Tim Renshaw - ‘Vanishing into Recognition’ - Coleman Project Space, Bermondsey (30th August - 14th September, opening Saturday 30th August, 2-6pm)
Coleman Project Space presents Tim Renshaw’s solo exhibition ‘Vanishing into Recognition’.
“There’s a word used in the depiction of Indian art and experience, rasa, which B. N. Goswamy explains has multiple, multifaceted meanings: it is at once the essential ‘juice’ or ‘flavour’ of a thing, the ‘relish’ it provides the viewer and the very ‘sentiment’ it evokes. While we may associate the region and its makers with heat and vibrancy, Tim Renshaw’s recent body of gouaches, however cool-toned and non-committally constructed, meet almost every rasa definition. Created during a Shelagh Cluett Trust-funded residency in Varanasi, India, earlier in the year, this expansive paper ‘deck’ of delights offers new insights into Renshaw’s making and research processes; his relationship with architecture, Modernist motifs and books as repositories of knowledge. Each ‘hand’ offers glimpses – on a sliding scale between figuration and abstraction – of the objects and interiors of the library at the Alice Boner Institute (ABI).” - Coleman Project Space
Chris Huen Sin-kan - ‘The Path and The Fog: Part I’ - Matt Carey-Williams at The Bomb Factory, Marylebone (2nd - 13th September, opening Tuesday 2nd September, 6-8pm)
Matt Carey-Williams presents Chris Huen Sin-kan’s solo exhibition ‘The Path and The Fog: Part I’ at The Bomb Factory’s Marylebone location.
“Matt Carey-Williams is delighted to present his third Episode Episode III: Chris Huen Sin-kan, The Path and The Fog, Part I', the largest presentation of Chris Huen Sin-kan's work in the UK. This body of work continues the artist's engagement with the prose of his everyday life as Huen nourishes his compositions with delicate, tremulous mark-making hovering between abstraction and figuration and which elicits a metamorphosis of form and nuance that sees the ordinary effloresce into the remarkable. Staged at The Bomb Factory, Marylebone, this Episode marks the first part of a two part presentation and comprises of eight monumental paintings and five smaller compositions.” - Matt Carey-Williams
‘Clay in vivo’ Group Exhibition - ASC Art House Gallery, Croydon (2nd - 14th September, opening Tuesday 2nd September, 6-9pm)
ASC Gallery presents ‘Clay in vivo’, a group exhibition curated by Stathis Dimitriadis, featuring Barbara Beyer, Mary Branson, Dimitriadis, Beatrice Galletley, Sandy Layton, Desa Philippi, Lisa Snook and Livia Spinolo.
“Clay in vivo brings together eight artists who work with clay to explore ideas that have, at their heart, its materiality, raw energy and plasticity - as well as its ability to hold memory and tell stories. All the works in the show celebrate unfired clay, which gives rise to the possibility of change and transition over the course of the exhibition. This process of transition is further manifested in how the artists approach clay, using its unique qualities to embody a liminal state. Barbara Beyer draws on clays archaic roots, Mary Branson fuses it with sound to create immersive installations. Sandy Layton and Beatrice Galletley each examine dualities, flux and polarity through contrasting forms and surfaces. Desa Philippi constructs fictional architectures from clay fragments, while Lisa Snook captures unconscious emotions in tactile expressions. Livia Spinolo uses clay as a medium for environmental awareness, whilst Stathis Dimitriadis curates all these diverse voices into an immersive story told through the language of clay. Clay in vivo goes beyond the usual exhibition to oer visitors a hands-on creative experience with clay through workshops and performances, which unfold clay’s capacity to connect, heal, shape and reimagine our world.” - ASC Gallery