SHOWNews: Your Weekly Arts Bulletin

by Christina Donoghue on 22 January 2025

Your weekly guide to the exhibitions, talks and cultural events to have on your radar this week.

Your weekly guide to the exhibitions, talks and cultural events to have on your radar this week.

Alexander James, film still from 'Smile', 2025 (Courtesy of Artist)

SHORT FILM

Smile by Alexander James

London-based artist Alexander James may have strayed from his usual medium of paint, but his use of reoccurring themes revolving around family, story-telling and inherited memories are here to stay - as proven by the artist's most recent collaborative project; a short film titled Smile.

Conceived in collaboration with photographers Robin Hunter Blake and Laurence Hills, Smile reflects on the shared history that has long shaped James' practice. Just as the artist's September 2023 exhibition Tuck Shop For The Wicked at Marlborough art gallery mused on James' imagined perception of his great grandfather (who really did own an infamous East London-based 'Tuck Shop'), Smile sees James look to another relative in his family - his grandfather. 'My grandpa’s voice, Gerry Kaye, was the constant rhythm of my childhood, like the hum of a familiar song', notes James, who has turned the lens inward with Smile to capture the sincerity of what happens when you do something as simple as listen and remember - and the creative potential that can be reached as a result.

Smile by Alexander James premieres at Ladbroke Hall on 22 January.

'What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory', published by Faber&Faber

TALK

What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse at the British Library

What is the meaning and purpose of art? No doubt, a question this existential cannot (and should not) be answered in a few sentences. A few chapters? Maybe. Alas, that's exactly what legendary musician Brian Eno and visual artist Bette Adriaanse have set out to do in their new book What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory. By examining the function of fictional worlds - such as pop songs, detective novels, soap operas, shoe tassels and the hidden language of haircuts - the publication puts forward 'a new theory of art' in an inspiring call to imagine a different future from the one we're currently exposed to. Reflecting on the ideas presented in the book, next week on Monday 27 January, Eno will be in conversation with co-author and visual artist Adriaanse at the British Library - an event certainly not to miss.

For more information and tickets, click here.

Performance still, BODYSUIT

PERFORMANCE

BODYSUIT at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, co-commissioned by Hannah Barry Gallery

Just like Alexander James, Hauser & Wirth artist George Rouy has also temporarily abandoned his painting practice in favour of experimenting with a new medium - sound - as seen in his latest collaborative project with internationally acclaimed choreographer Sharon Eyal and fashion label 16Arlington, titled BODYSUIT. Acting as a multidisciplinary event that will see a selection of five dancers perform on a mirrored dance floor with dynamic coloured lighting, BODYSUIT brings together electronic music composed by Rouy, who has also worked on a large silver and graphite painting for the audio-visual experience which will centre Eyal's signature, punctuating choreography. Creating a stage environment that juxtaposes technical precision with rapturous, unapologetic freedom, BODYSUIT applies literal form to the 'inalienable battle between our deepest feelings'.

BODYSUIT is a ticketed event that will take place at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station between 28 and 30 January, 2025. For more information, click here.

Teatime Dystopia by Ben Walker

EXHIBITION

Teatime Dystopia by Ben Walker at Soho Revue

To paint from memory is one thing but the very act of painting memory is a whole other - something artist Ben Walker knows a thing or two about, as per his latest exhibition with Soho Revue titled Teatime Dystopia. Looking to create an exhibition that reads akin to a physical storybook of cartoon-like distant childhood memories and imaginings, Walker's work seeks out the feeling of longing to recall something perhaps forgotten or misremembered, and although sometimes the fun may lie in the very act of trying to piece together a memory like it is a puzzle, (resulting in a Lynchian-style image as heavy on texture as it is anything else), Walker's point of view instead focuses on the direct haziness of memory as an image itself. Consider these paintings a literal representation of what would happen if you witnessed Walker reaching back into his mind’s eye to pull fragments of narrative to the fore.

Teatime Dystopia by Ben Walker at Soho Revue is open to the public until 8 February.

Maggi Hambling, 'Sebastian Horsley II', 2010. Oil on canvas

EXHIBITION

Last Night, I Dreamt of Manderley at Alison Jacques

Gothic fairytales have long captured the imagination of fashion folk far and wide - Jean Paul Gaultier A/W 06, Comme des Garçons S/S 15 and Alexander McQueen's Givenchy A/W 98 haute couture are all prime examples. The art world is also no stranger to the gothic fairy tale charms, as expertly, yet eerily illustrated by Dinos Chapman in his artwork Country Tales 3, which featured in our SHADOW-BAN exhibition last year.

Following in the steps of Chapman, a new exhibition at Alison Jacques also takes inspiration from the gothic fairy tale, but not just any fairytale, Daphne Du Maurier's fairytale, Rebecca. Aptly taking its title from the renowned book's first line Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, the group exhibition - curated by Daniel Malarkey - includes work by artists of equal fame and talent comparable to Du Maurier's own; Maggi Hambling, Leonora Carrington, Sheila Hicks, Dorothea Tanning and Nicola. L all have work involved, just to name a few. Whether you've read the book or not, few times has an exhibition in recent years included work by such a spectacular array of talent. That alone is enough of a reason to pay Alison Jacques a visit in the next month.

Last Night, I Dreamt of Manderley at Alison Jacques is open to the public between until 22 February.

'Venom Voyage', Christelle Oyiri

EXHIBITION

Venom Voyage by Christelle Oyiri at Glasshouse, Gathering

Using words as a vehicle for inner reflection, artist Christelle Oyiri's latest exhibition Venom Voyage sets out to answer the question: 'How can one deal with a reality that is nothing more than a continuous concerto of contradictory images and narratives?' Armed with an aesthetic inspired by the insipid imagery much associated with the late great 20th-century concept of the 'travel agency', (purples and lime greens come together to create an 'evil pop universe'), Oyiri's show directly looks at the contradictions that lie between the idea of advertising 'paradise' versus said place's often very different reality. Looking to the chlordecone poisoning of the French Caribbean, (chlordecone is a synthetic chemical that was used in intensive agriculture in French overseas territories up until the 1990s despite its US ban in 1976), Venom Voyage ultimately asks, 'How can nostalgia of a native paradise still exist when that very paradise was already unviable long before the happy memory itself? (Chlordecone's harmful effects include cancer, water contamination, and disruption of biodiversity - all of which are still heavily felt in the region today.)

Venom Voyage by Christelle Oyiri will be open to the public at Gathering's Glasshouse exhibition space from 24 January until 22 February.

'Union Jack Flag in Tree', Paul Graham

EXHIBITION

Troubled Land at Huxley-Parlour

Despite Britain's turbulent relationship with Northern Ireland being well chronicled, 'The Troubles' that took place in the region in the 1980s still remains entirely absent from school curriculums. Looking to educate through photography, Paul Graham's exhibition at Huxley-Parlour titled Troubled Land provides an intimate portrayal of the country via a series of landscape portraits made between 1984 and 1986, documenting 'The Troubles’ by daringly subverted the traditions of British documentary photography. Just like the topic is absent from school textbooks, violence is left out of the frame entirely. Instead, it's the country's rich Emerald Green coloured landscape spotlighted, as the exhibition's poster image demonstrates, featuring a tree standing alone amidst a field of grass billowing in the wind. (Only upon further inspection does one then notice the pocket-sized Union Jack flag haphazardly placed on top, as an angel might be on a Christmas tree.) In one photograph, you can see the curb painted red, white and blue and in another, the word BEWARE is graffitied in carrot orange. So yes, violence may be absent, but its threat is ever-present in Graham's body of work - just as it was in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

Troubled Land at Huxley-Parlour is open to the public until 1 March, 2025.

Image courtesy of the artist, P.P.O.W, New York and mother's tankstation. Photography: Ian Edquist

EXHIBITION

Erin M. Riley: Look Back At It at mother's tankstation

Interweaving craft-making with ‘digital’ design to pull together a series of tapestries that narrate contemporary life in New York, artist Erin M. Riley's current exhibition at mother's tankstation Look Back At It lays bare the personal, in addition to the sentimental, philosophical and even psychological. How she does this, you ask? By creating one-of-a-kind tapestries that reflect as much anguish as they do comfort in the scenes they illustrate. What makes Riley's work so great is that although the medium she employs in her work is heavily symbolic (you only have to look at textile's domestic history to know the how and why regarding Riley's appropriation of the fabric), the final result ends up looking more like a fractured paper collage à la Richard Hamilton. Think Grayson Perry's imitable tapestry series Vanity of Small Differences only better, grander and more opulent.

Erin M. Riley: Look Back At It at mother's tankstation is open to the public until 1 March, 2025.

Artwork included in New Contemporaries at ICA

EXHIBITION

New Contemporaries exhibition at ICA

Nothing brings in the 'New Year' like discovering a truckload of new artists - and no, we don't just mean on the Instagram Explore page. Get off your phone (unless that's the device you're using to read this article, in which case, keep reading) and head to this year's annual New Contemporaries at the ICA, a reoccurring group exhibition spotlighting a finely curated selection of 35 emerging and early-career artists from across the UK with works addressing themes such as sustainability and decay; boundaries, borders and fragmented memories; and the commodification of mindfulness, self-care, pop culture and consumerism. Although varying in style, reference, texture and aesthetic, each artwork is as rich as the next, weaving a world unknown to create a portal that transports the viewer far, far away.

New Contemporaries at ICA is open to the public until 25 March. For more information, click here.

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