SHOWnews: Some Munch, Some Emin and A Paul Smith Ballet

EXHIBITION

Edvard Munch: Lifeblood at Munchmuseet, Oslo

When you find yourself in a sea of bad news, global bad news, it may be hard to fathom how the world's state of affairs could get any worse. But then, just suddenly, you're always reminded that it can, and it probably will. That reminder was polished crystal clear for Americans earlier last month when Trump announced his government will be making 'massive' cuts to federal science - the trickle down effect not just impacting Americans but the world, east and west included. Oh how fitting it was then that the same week we were fed this news, Norway's Munchmuseet opened Lifeblood: Edvard Munch, detailing an extraordinary look at how the painter's visceral works don't just reveal traces of anguish but also a story of modern healthcare as Munch's paintings are accompanied by real life objects from the history of medicine.

Munch lived during a time of dramatic change in the technology and practice of medicine, but he was also someone who was often sick. Much is there to be taken away from Lifeblood, but if you do happen to be in Norway over the coming month, it's worth taking the small wins where you can, noting just how far we've come in modern medicine. What's even better is one of the world's leading abstract expressionists was there to witness it all.

Edvard Munch: Lifeblood at Munchmuseet is open to the public until 21 September.

EXHIBITION

Arthur Jafa and Mark Leckey: HARDCORE / LOVE at Conditions, Whitgift Centre, Croydon

Moving image works have dominated artistic spaces in recent years, yet few remain as ingeniously disruptive and heart-stoppingly brilliant as Mark Leckey's Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore and Arthur Jafa's Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death. So when Conditions, a former electronics shop at the Whitgift Centre in Croydon decides to show both films side by side, you go and watch, no questions asked. 'These works blur the lines between art and popular culture' noted Matthew Noel-Tod and David Panos of the artist-run gallery. 'They break away from the art world and point towards something far more widely resonant' - a way of showing art that is core to the DNA of Conditions which, as promised by both Panos and Noel-Tod, has been responding to 'the urgent need to provide spaces and dialogue in a city that has become harder and harder for artists' since it was established in 2018.

HARDCORE / LOVE at Conditions is open to the public until 10 August.

EXHIBITION

The Yellow Wallpaper at Incubator, Chiltern Street

The historical context of yellow is as contradictory as history itself, but that doesn't negate its importance nor relevance across the production of mediums such as painting, film, fashion, and textiles over the last 200 years. The latter of which stole the hearts and minds of Victorians who became somewhat infatuated with the shade, which, like today, was also seen as a 'happy colour'. 'The effect of yellow upon the mind is of a bright, gay, gladdening nature, owing to its likeness to light, both natural and artificial' wrote George Audsley in his 1870 book Color in Dress.

Do we agree? Sure. Does Incubator agree? You'll have to travel down to the art gallery's latest exhibition to see for yourself. Named after Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the exhibition brings a selection of works together by London stars-of-the-moment including Kesewa Aboah, Shanti Bell, Suzanne Clements, Fleur Dempsey, Lorena Levi, Florence Reekie, Anna Rocke, and Mary Stephenson - all of whom are reclaiming the colour's connotations with domesticity and passivity in favour of women-led resistance, something i'm sure the Victorians also knew a thing or two about. Before you ask, yes, yellow does feature. But don't be surprised if its appearance is excluded in some of the works on show. The messaging is paramount, not the paint's pigment.

The Yellow Wallpaper at Incubator is open to the public until 26 July.

Once Upon a Time in London at Saatchi Yates, Mayfair

If you were to host an exhibition celebrating the best of London talent, who and what would be included? For Phoebe Saatchi and Arthur Yates of Saatchi Yates, the question was one of relative simplicity as their latest exhibition Once Upon a Time in London draws on the very best of their very bright network.

Curated in a salon-style hang, this exhibition (which has remained on the lips and minds of Londoners ever since it opened last month) unfolds like a cinematic tapestry, each name as famous as the next, each work as brilliant as the previous. From post-war allegories (yes, you've read the posters right, Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon do make an appearance) to 1990s punk defiance as seen through the lens of the many YBAs referenced (Jenny Saville and Tracey Emin), art exhibitions don't get more packed than this (literally) or more fantastically exuberant. This isn't just an exhibition, it's a manifesto for London's creative scene, which, despite its jagged stagger through recessions, Brexit and a global pandemic, always comes out on top. Not just a sensorial odyssey, this is is proof that London does indeed rule the world.

Once Upon a Time in London at Saatchi Yates is open to the public until 17 August.

EXHIBITION

Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

It wouldn't be a Tracey Emin exhibition if the Margate-born artist didn't lay bare her raw emotional terrain for us all to clamber and climb, right? Right. Welcome to Sex and Solitude, arguably one of the artist's more personal displays of work (although, seldom are her exhibitions ever the contrary) that's currently taking place at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Yes, London may rule the world but that's only because we have produced talents like Emin and others. So when the ex-YBA is showing out of town in Firenze, it turns out Florence rules the world too. As for what's on show, expect a sea of Emin classics, including a real-life identical mockup of her studio as it appears in her series Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made as well as the mammoth sculpture I Followed You To the End, debuted at The White Cube in Bermondsey back in 2019.

Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude is open to the public at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi until 20 July.

BALLET

Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet at Sadler's Wells, Clerkenwell

For those old enough, Mod enough (and culturally aware enough), the term Quadrophenia is remembered exclusively as the title behind The Who's spellbinding 1973 album, which amalgamated the words Quadraphonic and Schizophrenia to tell the story of a young working-class Mod named Jimmy torn in four all too familiar directions: identity, expectation, rebellion, and despair. Fast forward over 50 years and a new kind of thunder cracks in the ears of those who will listen - or watch - as the album-turned-stage-play is reimagined once more, dropping its 'Rock Opera' roots in favour of ballet as an art form to create a bold and near-hallucinogenic reinterpretation of The Who’s 1973 album with a helping hand from the precision and pathos of contemporary dance at Sadler's Wells. Not all has been transformed to fit a 21st-century agenda, however, the costumes are reminiscent of 1960s Mods thanks to a Paul Smith flair few designers could reference so intently. Tatler editor in chief and SHOWstudio contributor Hannah Teare was also on hand to oversee the styling and execution.

Performances of Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet at Sadler's Wells will run until 13 July, before touring to Salford between 15 and 19 July.

VR INSTALLATION

Jordan Wolfson: Little Room at The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel

What do people mean when they describe art as 'surreal'? According to the great surrealist himself, André Breton, as documented in his 1924 manifesto for the movement, the term is defined as 'pure psychic automatism, the process of expressing thought without the constraints of reason, morality, or aesthetics'. A much harder thing to do in reality than theory I'm sure but as of last month, Jordan Wolfson has put that argument to bed thanks to his invention Little Room at The Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, an all-encompassing experience that doesn't just ask visitors to participate, but rather, fundamentally relies on them.

Pairing visitors with either a companion or a stranger, the artwork requires the volunteer to undergo a 3D full-body scan which then transports them into a virtual space, within which, each participant sees themselves through the body of the other, leading to increasingly strange and disorienting physical and spatial distortions. This is surrealism 101, a mental state only the greatest writers and painters and thinkers and doers of the 20th century dreamed of achieving.

Jordan Wolfson: Little Room at The Fondation Beyeler is open to the public until 3 August.

EXHIBITION

Harry Freegard: Gorgeous at Soup Gallery, Elephant & Castle

Every fashion season, we ask new artists to contribute to our collections coverage by reporting on their favourite looks in the best way they know how: exercising the art of illustration. Designer-cum-artist Harry Freegard jumped at the chance when we asked him to add his illustrative yet tender flair to last year's S/S 25 menswear collections, shining an introspective lens on not just the fashion that went by but the faces too, expressing his keen enthusiasm for figurative portraiture that the artist had kept relatively hidden until now.

Open at Soup Gallery until 19 July is Gorgeous, a Freegard exhibition that references the artist's own compulsive art practice, incorporating drawing and textile collage. Soft, sharp, anxious and hopeful, this exhibition reflects Freegard's own want to alchemise our innermost desires into intimate, empathic depictions of figures and flowers. Consider this an extension of Freegard's SHOWstudio offerings, each one speaking to the creative's own meditative need to create.

Harry Freegard: Gorgeous at Soup Gallery is open to the public until 19 July.