The Shock of the Now - Issue #93
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The Shock of the Now - Issue #93
Afternoon All,
I hope you’re all well and welcome to Issue 93 of The Shock of the Now.
This week there are seven weekly Recommended Exhibitions, as well as 10 active Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 93, and if so do forward it along! As always any questions, comments or feedback are welcome, so feel free to get in touch.
All the best, and speak soon, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week:
Divine Southgate-Smith - TEETH KISSIN’ Solo Exhibition - Soup, Elephant & Castle (6th July - 12th August, opening Wednesday 5th July, 6-9pm)
Soup presents Divine Southgate-Smith’s debut solo exhibition TEETH KISSIN’.
“For TEETH KISSIN’, Southgate-Smith presents a selection of artworks from her/their ongoing photographic collage series ‘What I’ve Been Doing Lately’ and sculptural series ‘MELA-9’, the latter accompanied by an assortment of the artist’s own collected miscellanea and a corresponding research archive kindly loaned from the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts in Norwich. These feature alongside new collaged constructions and a complementary playlist created in conversation with Daniel Kabuya.” - Soup
Mike Silva - ‘New paintings’ Solo Exhibition - The approach, Bethnal Green (5th July - 5th August, opening Wednesday 5th July, 6-9pm)
The approach presents Mike Silva’s latest solo exhibition ‘New paintings’.
“Mike Silva paints portraits, interiors and still lives that are intimately connected to personal memory. Whilst the importance of his subject matter is evident, the artist’s fascination with the medium of painting is perhaps less often acknowledged. Painting is Silva’s language: through a process of observing and making, he attempts to reflect a part of himself which cannot be articulated by any other means.” - The approach
Ferdinand Dölberg & Ceyda Karatas - ‘Inferno Of The Same’ Two-Person Exhibition - The Artist Room, Soho (6th - 28th July, opening Wednesday 5th July, 6-8pm)
The Artist Room presents ‘Inferno Of The Same’, featuring new and recent paintings and drawings by Ferdinand Dölberg (b.1998, Berlin) and Ceyda Karatas (b.1989, Istanbul).
“The exhibition takes its name from philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s publication The Agony of Eros (2017). Considering the nuances of human interaction in what he names burnout society, the book asks why technologically mediated social interaction has led to a contemporary condition characterised by ‘fetishised individualism’. In harried contemporary life, the author argues, our satisfaction is largely drawn from efficiency, small pleasures, and instant gratification; often catalyzed by the immediacy of digital technology. Han suggests that the pace of life – and our lack of patience, focus and concentration – lead to satisfaction for the ‘comfortable, safe, and familiar’. In other words, contentment with endlessly repeating forms of experiences and entertainment that minorly vary: the Inferno of the Same. As such, this exhibition observes how Dölberg and Karatas utilise and expand on this notion of repetition to consider alternative ways of being.” - The Artist Room
‘think of those flowers you plant’ Group Exhibition - Niru Ratnam, Soho (6th July - 12th August, opening Wednesday 5th July, 6-8:30pm)
Niru Ratnam presents ‘think of those flowers you plant’, a group exhibition featuring Ashish Avikunthak, Emma Cousin, Milly Thompson and Jacqueline Utley.
“The show is a nod to Stuart Morgan and Frances Morris’s curatorial concept for the show ‘Rites of Passage’ that showed at Tate in 1995, and in particular their idea of the artist as a ‘passeur’. This according to Morgan in his catalogue essay, is a person who “moves people or things across borders into forbidden zones” with particular reference to key moments in life, those rites of passage.” - Niru Ratnam
‘Into, over and underneath’ Group Exhibition - Public Gallery, Aldgate (5th July - 5th August, opening Wednesday 5th July, 6-8pm)
Public Gallery presents ‘Into, over and underneath’, a group exhibition featuring Nevena Prijic, Jade Thacker & Evian Wenyi Zhang.
“The title of the exhibition, borrowed from a 2021 work by Harminder Judge, gestures towards a common concern for patterns of interconnection, repetition, and visual elasticity that encourage the persistent return of the viewer’s gaze to the painting’s surface. Enacting a defensive camouflage against the autonomy of vision and instantaneous interpretation, these three artists share characteristics that foreground ambiguity over certainty, elusiveness over mimicry, and yet precision in the physiological act of seeing. In this exhibition, the constitutive asymmetries that scaffold what we see and what exists become exceedingly transparent, taking the legibility of painting as a site of contestable ground.” - Public Gallery
Melanie Jackson - ‘Rouge Flambé’ Solo Exhibition & Alia Hamaoui - ‘HINO 500’ Solo Exhibition - San Mei, Brixton (7th July - 12th August, opening Thursday 6th July, 6-8pm)
San Mei presents Melanie Jackson’s latest solo exhibition ‘Rouge Flambé’, alongside Alia Hamaoui’s solo exhibition ‘HINO 500’ in the gallery’s new public-facing window space.
“Rouge Flambé draws on mediaeval “fire rocks” found in English and Scottish bestiaries. This new body of work animates connections between protean materials, objects and symbols from the Middle Ages through to the era of colonial conquest and our contemporary world. Around these cross-class and transcultural collisions and encounters, Jackson pays attention to the symbolic and affective meanings that circulate around the colour red: warning, danger, anger, rage, shame, joy, luck, and hope.
Alia Hamaoui’s practice probes the relationships between cultural identity, objects and places, drawing on the artefacts, spaces, materials and textures that resonate with her dual heritage. Working across sculpture, print, image-making and moving image, Hamaoui’s work layers fragments of personal memory, found objects and digital imagery to construct enigmatic and affective elements of speculative mise-en-scènes.” - San Mei
Suwon Lee & Małgorzata Widomska - ‘Window shopper’ Two-Person Exhibition - Kravitz Contemporary, Soho (7th July - 19th August, opening Thursday 6th July, 6-9pm)
Kravitz Contemporary presents ‘Window shopper’ in collaboration w. Death of Man, a two-person exhibition featuring Suwon Lee and Małgorzata Widomska, curated by Elaine ML Tam.
“The exhibition takes its title from a suite of formal qualities that the artworks share – namely, the recurrence of the window as a literal and metaphorical device that shapes the virtual act of seeing. Drawing together photography and abstract painting for their respective abilities to speak to the personal-cultural through the retinal pleasure of specific chromatic fields, Window shopper calls to attention the situatedness of the viewer of art. In so doing, the exhibition considers the parsimony of the frame edge, the aesthetic logic of transparency and the role of passionate detachment in memory formation.” - Kravitz Contemporary
Artist Opportunities:
Call for Proposals, Drawing Research Forum 2023, Drawing Room. Deadline - Monday 10th July.
Drawing Room invites proposals that examine critical issues around contemporary drawing. We offer postgraduate students and scholars the chance to field test research, and to network and engage with a wider community of academics and specialists. Outset Study is a space for knowledge exchange between disciplines, encouraging cross-fertilisation of ideas and methodology, and fostering collaborations between artists and researchers. Drawing Room are now inviting proposals of a high quality that reflect a strong research focus. Proposals should include a summary of your research, outline the key questions it raises and how these will be addressed by your project. Proposals must have an explicit connection to drawing, and discuss why the medium of drawing specifically has been utilised in your research. Please include supporting visual material and a bibliography of key texts or existing research to which you are responding. Please state how presenting at the Drawing Research Forum will benefit your project. Selected papers will be presented at the next Drawing Research Forum in September 2023.
Cubitt are seeking three artists to participate in a year-long residency at local secondary, Arts and Media School Islington (AMSI), starting in September 2023. Selected artists will have access to a free studio space (equivalent of £1,800) for one academic year and receive a fee (£3,000) for devising and delivering work with the AMSI community, supported by Cubitt. The residencies are part of Reclaim Islington: Cubitt’s two-year programme which aims to transform the way they work with the communities of Islington by supporting groups with lived experience of exclusion to collectively explore their narratives, stories, and shared histories. As part of this programme, Cubitt want to support artists to actively participate in producing and sharing practice which can be shared more widely.
As part of an artist-led research programme, Cultural Reforesting, The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames are looking for an artist or artist collective to explore the theme of darkness in urban spaces. Open to artists or artist collectives from any discipline, who will explore this theme and work with local communities to understand darkness in urban environments. Artist/s should have socially engaged participatory practices at the core of their work. The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames will provide the selected artist or artist collective with a budget of £12,000 which is inclusive of all artist fees, production support, materials and expenses for the delivery of the project. Three artists will be selected to further discuss their project ideas. There will be a fee of £250 per artist or artist collective/group invited to interview to share their ideas.
Art for Change Prize, M&C Saatchi Group & Saatchi Gallery. Deadline - Monday 17th July.
Applications are now open for the free-to-enter Art for Change Prize, an international art initiative from M&C Saatchi Group and Saatchi Gallery, open to artists working in the first five years of their career. This year’s prize asks artists to creatively respond to the theme Regeneration. A total prize fund of £20,000 will be split between six winners, five to receive £2,000 and one overall winner to receive £10,000. Winning artists will also have the unique opportunity to exhibit their work at Saatchi Gallery in London.
Open Call, Circa Prize 2023. Deadline - Thursday 20th July.
This year, CIRCA has eyes for one thing above all else: hope. Now is a time for hope. As the CIRCA 20:23 Manifesto made clear, hope is not an empty affirmation or a luxury for the privileged but the animating force of today’s struggles for a better world. For the III edition of the CIRCA PRIZE, CIRCA are searching the Earth for works of hope. In an open call for emerging and mid-career artists of all ages, we are inviting a global community of artists, performers, poets, activists, architects, gamers and filmmakers to respond to the CIRCA 20:23 manifesto, ‘Hope: The Art of Reading What Is Not Yet Written’. Throughout September, 30 international artists will see their work appear at 20:23 local time on the iconic Piccadilly Lights and across the CIRCA global platform of digital screens. The winning artist will receive £30,000 to support their future practice alongside a new trophy designed by Ai Weiwei, who first launched the CIRCA free public art programme in October 2020.
Open Call, Deptford X Festival Fringe. Deadline - Wednesday 26th July.
The Fringe is the core of the Deptford X Festival and an annual celebration of the area’s art scene. Over the course of the festival, the Fringe will take over Deptford, placing art in unexpected locations, rooted into the fabric of everyday lives. This year, to mark 25 years of Deptford X they are particularly keen to include projects that reference or recreate artworks from previous festival years. If you took part in the past and fancy dusting off an old intervention for a new outing in this year’s Fringe, they would love to hear from you. Equally, they can make elements of our archive available to artists who are interested in making new works or projects in response to the history of the festival. A limited number of bursaries will be available for artists who would benefit from financial support to enable them to participate in Deptford X Festival 2023.
The Adobe Creative Residency programme is a new, approach to bring making into the museum. It gives artists, designers, performers and creators unprecedented access to world-class arts resources and mentorship, studio space, creative programming, and a display to showcase. A cohort of three residents across different practices are selected annually to work full-time for 12 months, each working with a designated audience (schools, families, and young people) to expand access to creativity, design and making. Embedded within the Learning Team at the V&A, residents will commit half their time to developing engaging learning programming around their craft. This could include working directly with audiences, acting as a creative advisor to wider museum learning programming, and collaborating across the museum to bring contemporary practice into galleries. The residency programme culminates in a 6-month display of their work at the V&A South Kensington. There are three open calls available for the Adobe Creative Residency Programme, illustration, Global ceramics and Costume design. Each residency offers a Fixed Term Contract (FTC) salary of £42,000.
Rolling Residency, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation Holborn. Deadline - Sunday 30th July.
The Bomb Factory Art Foundation are offering a rolling residency in their new Holborn location starting from 28th August to support dedicated artists who cannot afford studios, as well as a one week end-of-residency exhibition. First studio residency will run 28th August - 25th September, w. exhibition from 25th September - 1st October. To apply, please add 'HOLBORN RESIDENCY 2023' to the subject of an email to: studio@bombfactory.org.uk. Please state: Name, Contact Number & Email; Dates of interest; Website or Social Media of work + One-page application letter outlining your practice and why you are eligible for this opportunity. (Applicants must be able to prove that no other studio space can be afforded. Due to the nature of this free residency programme, we may require further interviews about how applicants meet the criteria for support.)
The Dover Prize is an award open to any UK-based artist. It supports excellence and experimentation in the arts and creative industries. Applications are welcome from artists and creative practitioners working in the visual arts e.g. painting, sculpture, ceramics, print-making, photography, digital art, filmmaking, performance and installations. The Dover Prize is a bursary of £10,000 paid across two years, to an individual or collective to provide time to think, research, reflect and/or experiment with new ideas. The aim of the Dover Prize is to raise within Darlington the profile of contemporary arts, and to make a positive impact on the town. As such, the Dover Award biennial winner must agree to a final show that will premiere in Darlington on completion of their 2-year bursary.
OPEN CELLS Artist Residency Programme, The Koppel Project Station. Deadline - Monday 31st July.
The Koppel Project are excited to announce the opening of applications for the OPEN CELLS Artist Residency Programme. OPEN CELLS is an emerging or mid-career artist residency programme at The Koppel Project Station with a focus on community involvement and engagement. Koppel Project’s goal is to provide artists with a dynamic, inclusive, and interactive experience that helps them develop their practice while contributing to the local community.
The residency lasts for two months – Beginning of September until end of October (2 residency slots – each with 3-4 weeks working in the space, ending in a final exhibition). Studio Space in multiple holding cells and Communal working areas: 5 Artists will be provided with a free studio space to work in for the duration of each residency slot. The space is located at TKP Station in (Hampstead) Camden, London.