The Shock of the Now - Issue #233

Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 233 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 sixteen fresh Artist Opportunities.

Additionally, I recently released The Shock of the Now’s Guide to Backyard Biennial East, an in-depth issue providing comprehensive coverage of this new 8-week summer arts festival celebrating the culture and creativity of East London. The inaugural edition featuring over forty participating partners, presenting exhibitions, installations, screenings, performances, panel discussions, talks, walks, workshops, residencies and open studios, and I prepared a complete breakdown of the biennial programme, covering twenty-one exhibitions, the Whitechapel Gallery’s accompanying film programme and forty-eight associated events. With the festival continuing until early September, for those who missed out or wish to catch up, it can be accessed with a paid subscription Here.

I hope you enjoy Issue 233, and if so do forward it along! As always, questions and comments are welcome, so feel free to get in touch, H x

Jemma Desai - ‘There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women’ Solo Exhibition - Somerset House, The Strand (30th July - 1st November)

Somerset House presents Jemma Desai’s solo exhibition ‘There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women’, in collaboration with Somerset House Studios.

“Bringing together film and text, There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women is concerned with feminist coalition, inheritance, and relation across the intimate and the political. At the heart of the installation, a video work assembles archival footage, text, song, and newly filmed 16mm material made in collaboration with filmmaker Alia Syed. The arrangement of extracts drawn from poets, writers, singers and artists coalesces in a collage of image and sound to reflect on the politics of relation and new ways of being together. It prompts us to consider how such togetherness can be imagined, rehearsed, and received. The work is accompanied by a specially produced edition collecting research and new writing by Jemma Desai, edited with Mason Leaver-Yap and designed by Rose Nordin, who also designs graphic elements throughout the show.” - Somerset House

Clare Woods - ‘Garden Without Seasons’ Solo Exhibition - Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, Ealing (29th July - 8th November)

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery presents Clare Woods’ solo exhibition ‘Garden Without Seasons’.

“lare Woods: Garden Without Seasons will feature 29 new and recent works — all created over the last four years — comprising paintings, collages, and prints that are infused with both her trademark wet-look oil paint as well as layers of contemplative meaning. At the centre of the exhibition are the flora, still life and natural world that Woods returned to during the pandemic, at a time when familiar objects took on a heightened resonance. By responding to photographs of flowers and everyday items, Woods has created a new visual world of nature that lies between abstraction and figuration — both familiar and ambiguous — where forms are ever-moving through a semblance of oil paint swirls. Crucially, they act against the rapid flow of imagery that modern photography has enabled, allowing the viewer to consider scenes through a slower and more detailed approach. Informed by her early training as a sculptor, Woods focuses on the forms of her subjects and the spaces in-between. Now, she has engaged with the historic interiors, architecture, and gardens of Pitzhanger Manor to continue her exploration of not just the natural world itself, but the nature of time, absence, and death.” - Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery

‘Desire: The Anatomy of Desire’ Group Exhibition - Sarabande Foundation, Haggerston (Part I: 31st July - 15th August, opening Thursday 30th July, 6-8pm. Part II: 20th August - 4th September, opening Wednesday 19th August, 6-8pm)

Sarabande Foundation presents ‘Desire: The Anatomy of Desire’, their annual group exhibition featuring the twenty-three visual artists currently in residence across Sarabande’s studios in Haggerston and Tottenham, marking the culmination of their time at the Foundation.

Part I features Anna-Lena Krause, Antonia Caicedo Holguin (above), Amelia Cross, Cha’ky Donnelly, Ella Lynch, Furmaan Ahmed, George Wilkin, Jack Laver, Jane Preston, John Spyrou and Phoebe Corker-Marin, with the exhibition curated by Caicedo Holguin and Preston.

Part II features Bisila Noha, Georgina Odell, Jingyi Li, Kay Doble, Louis Petit, Rizza Zahid, Sophie Mei Birkin, Taiba Akhuetie, Tom Halimond, Victoria Ruiz, Zoya Smirnova and Siphiwe - Nokukhanya Mnguni, with the exhibition curated by Cross and Li.

“Over the past year, each artist has delved deeper, immersing themselves in their craft; their final pieces reflect countless hours of experimentation and research. Desire often begins with an act of looking. The first part considers desire as a fundamental human imperative, an animating catalyst of creativity, imagination and the ongoing process of transforming. The second part, considers the impulse to make, as a form of attention; a way of giving visual form to inner desire. Desire takes a broader reading here beyond its usual meaning of longing or attraction, it’s understood as a process of seeking, longing, and projection, a movement towards something not yet fully known. It is both the desire for something and the desire to make something.” - Sarabande

‘Half Closed Eye’ Group Exhibition - Outhouse Gallery, Brunswick Park (31st July - 16th August, opening Thursday 30th July, 6-9pm)

Outhouse Gallery presents ‘Half Closed Eye’, a group exhibition curated by SADESIX, featuring works by Akilah Chambers, Barbara Majek, Heera Gul, Ikesha Avo, Moon Hussain, Natalie Charles (above), Sophia Kaur Hambleton-Grey, Tanya Wilson and Tomilola Olumide.

“An intimate group exhibition bringing together artists exploring moments of transition. Featuring small works spanning drawing, assemblage, collage and painting; each artist approaches these states through their own visual language. Reflecting on the spaces between waking and dreaming, the exhibition considers the in-between moments we salvage, fall into, return to, run away from, run towards and ultimately surrender to. It explores how these states shape our experiences, desires, memories and understanding of the world.

Named after our mother, Sade, we are a collective of six siblings celebrating her creative legacy through our shared vision and diverse practices across London and Nigeria. Our practice is rooted in familial bonds and the creative synergies between us. We value collaboration, creative exchange and community building, extending our family ethos into the wider communities we work with. Through curating exhibitions, events and workshops, we champion inclusive artistic dialogue, experimentation and shared learning.” - SADESIX

‘Holding Company’ Group Exhibition - SET91, Shoreditch (31st July - 23rd August, opening Thursday 30th July, 6-9pm)

SET91 presents ‘Holding Company’, a group exhibition curated by Aram Masharqa, featuring works by H M Baker, José García Oliva, Luke Gould, Markéta Slaná, Maya King-Dabbs (above), Samra Mayanja and Tawfik Naas. Alongside the exhibition, ‘Holding Company’ features a public programme of three scheduled meetings, collectively titled ‘Out of Office (OOO)’, with talks between Aram Masharqa, Tawfik Naas, José García Oliva, and Samra Mayanja.

‘Out of Office’ Public Programme:
TOIL w. Tawfik Naas (Wednesday 5th August, 7-8pm)
OCCURRENCE REPORT w. José García Oliva (Wednesday 12th August, 7-8pm)
THE CALL CENTRE: CURVEBALL w. Samra Mayanja (Wednesday 19th & Thursday 20th August, 7-9pm)

“SET 91 presents Holding Company, the second exhibition of our second six-month curated programme. Bringing together new or unseen works and performances by H M Baker, José García Oliva, Luke Gould, Markéta Slaná, Maya King-Dabbs, Samra Mayanja, and Tawfik Naas, the show probes the holding company as a fundamentally intangible corporate structure. Holding Company is a group exhibition spanning object-based and event-based practices. Beginning from the place of neoliberal financial capitalism, the exhibition considers the affordances of ‘passive’ or ‘umbrella’ legal entities in the arts. While holding companies—corporate structures set up purely to hold assets and shield liability rather than produce goods—are everywhere in the contemporary art world, this show looks to the structure itself as a productive conceptual anchor. Embracing rather than resisting the cultural rise of ‘corpcore’, the exhibition approaches this specific form of company on its own terms. If the gallery model is a kind of traditional company structure, perhaps the future of the gallery is holding companies all the way down: uber-streamlined, with staff and physical space abstracted out of the equation, and risk neatly packaged.” - SET91