Exhibition Club - London

Get togethers to see modern and contemporary art exhibitions in London. If you fancy joining us, get in touch at [email protected] The exhibition visists and this blog are run by Irene Montero. She teaches Modern and Contermporary art short courses at Central Saint Martins and is a History of Art PhD student at University College London. 

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Exhibition Club London 29 February: West end galleries

For the first get together of the 2020 spring, we'll be visiting some of the most interesting exhibitions currently on display in London's W

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Exhibition Club London

Get togethers to see modern and contemporary art exhibitions in London. If you fancy joining us, get in touch at exhibitionclublondon@gmail.

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29 November 2019 I

Barbican Art Gallery, Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art.

Into the Night, like many exhibitions at the Barbican, is a massive thematic show. In this case, the connecting theme, besides modern art, is the role certain cabarets and nightclubs had in the development of some movements and national avant-gardes, allowing for not just artistic design and vision of spaces, but for many intellectual and creative exchanges for those participating in, performing or simply frequenting those establishments. 

Four recreations of historically important clubs are situated at the centre of the lower floor of the gallery, constituting a core around which the exhibition space is articulated in a succession of side rooms. These are:

A. An installation of shadow theatre silhouettes inspired in the famous shadow theatre of the Parisian Chat Noir cabaret at the end of the 19th century.

B. The Viennese Cabaret Fledermaus, which also operates as a cocktail bar in the evenings the exhibition opens till late. 

C. A room inspired in the cinema room of L’Aubette, a cultural and architectural complex created in collaboration by Theo van Duisburg, Sophie Tauber-Arp and Hans Arp, and an example of De Stijl environments. This room hosts jazz performances during their weekly late evening opening hours, accompanied by the projection of an abstract film by Hans Richter.

D. The fourth room recreates some of the pieces and spaces of the Mbari Clubs in the Nigerian cities of Ibadan and Osogbo, which emerged in the 1960s and were a centre of Nigerian Modernism. Here there are film projections of poetry and various performances, but these can become eclipsed by the loud jazz music of the neighbouring L’Aubette room. 

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14 December 2019 II

Alfredo Jaar (Goodman Gallery) and Valie Export (Thaddaeus Ropac). 

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14 December 2019 I

West End Galleries: Nan Goldin (Marian Goodman Gallery.

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7 December 2019

Lisson Galleries + The Showroom: Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon and Em’kal Eyongakpa

Tony Cragg at Lisson Gallery

Tony Cragg at Lisson Gallery

Richard Deacon at Lisson Gallery

Richard Deacon at Lisson Gallery

Simnikiwe Buhlungu: Notes to Self (Intimate 1), The Showroom mural commission

Simnikiwe Buhlungu: Notes to Self (Intimate 1), The Showroom mural commission

Simnikiwe Buhlungu: Notes to Self (Intimate 1), The Showroom mural commission

Em’kal Eyongakpa at The Showroom

Em’kal Eyongakpa at The Showroom

Em’kal Eyongakpa at The Showroom

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29 November 2019 II

Barbican Art Gallery. Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art.

Cabaret Fledermaus, Vienna, 1907-13

A total environment that united modern architecture, painting, poetry, music and dance, Cabaret Fledermaus was set up by the Wiener Werstätte as a place to stimulate the senses through a union between craftsmanship and fine art. 

Bal Tic Tac & Cabaret del Diavolo, Rome, 1921-22

Futurists Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero were commissioned respectively to design the clubs Bal Tic Tac and the Cabaret del Diavolo. Both artists understood that Futurism was not just a way of making art, but a way of life and transforming the universe. It was only coherent for them that every aspect of existence should reflect the dynamism, power and utopian energy of the machine age, therefore applying this vision to the environments of these two night clubs. 

Café de Nadie & the Carpa Amaro, Mexico City, 1920s

Both of these establishments were a gathering place for artists and writers of the avant-garde movement of Estridentismo, which aimed to overturn artistic conventions by developing forms rooted both in popular tradition and in the modern industrial city.

L’Aubette, Strasbourg, 1928

A total de Stijl environment--a collaboration between Theo van Doesburg, Sophie Tauber and Hans Arp--L’Aubette was large architectural and cultural complex of ballrooms, bars, a cinema-dancehall, a tea room and a cabaret. Every aspect of the environment was carefully thought out by the artistic trio: from wall decor, coloured-glass windows to furniture or even the ashtrays.

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29 November 2019 IV

Barbican Gallery. Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art

Harlem Nightclubs, Jazz Clubs and Cabarets, New York, 1920s-40s

This beautiful room contained paintings by Jacob Lawrence, such as the one below. They show the atmosphere of the age of jazz in Harlem’s nightclubs during a period of black cultural splendour following the Great Migration of African Americans escaping the segregation and poverty in the US southern states.

The room was also filled with the illustrations and drawings of Aaron Douglas, as well as his collaborations illustrating poetry such as in the portfolio Opportunity Art Folio, with Langston Hughes poems, published in 1926.

Cave of the Golden Calf, London, 1912-14

British modern art features in one room of Into the Night dedicated to the London artistic cabaret. 

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29 November 2019 V

Barbican Art Gallery. Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art

Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916

Unavoidably, Cabaret Voltaire had to have a whole room in Into the Night. Although the existence of this cross between an arts society and a night club was fairly brief (February - July 1916) its impact in the art of the 20th century was huge as the birthplace of Dada, the most anti-rational of all historical avant-garde movements. 

The room was full of historical materials, among which were the following:

A poster announcing Cabaret Voltaire in the cellar of a restaurant called the “Meierei” on February 5 February 1916, designed by Marcel Stodki.

On the left, Hugo Ball in a cubist costume, such as the one worn during his performance on 23 June 1916, whilst reading his poem ‘Karawane’. On the right, Emmy Hemmings a performer and poet, photographed with one of her puppets.

A portrait of Tristan Tzara, drawn by Marcel Janco.

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23 November 2019

Tony Cokes, “If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol 1,” Goldsmiths CCA and Jeremy Deller, “Putin’s Happy,” Hannah Barry Gallery. Part 2.

Jeremy Deller’s “Putin’s Happy” is a 40-minute-long documentary film on London’s Parliamentary Square Brexit protests in the spring and summer of 2019. It consists of interviews and exchanges with mostly pro-Brexit demonstrators in which the artists enquires about their reasons to be there. There’s footage of the demonstrations and of some musical performances during them, but also a little bit of analysis of some banners, tattoos and groups’ links to far right ideas and groups. 

Like with many of Deller’s works, the artist takes a step back and lets people talk, showing a portrait of a country and its political attitudes at a precise historical time. It is also full of humour and despite its subject not being lighthearted at all, the film is entertaining and fun to watch. Of course, most viewers will leave the screening room extremely concerned after watching “Putin’s Happy” and the sarcasm and symbolism of the welcoming mat saying ‘welcome to the Shitshow’ and of the image of a wet english flag hanging above the door only help to reinforce this the feeling that what we have just seen is a people led by lies (and fake news) and a toxic nationalism.

I have found the text that Stuart Hall wrote for the catalogue of Deller’s 2013 retrospective “Joy in People”, at the Hayward Gallery, quite interesting in relation to this film. You can find it here.

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23 November 2019

Tony Cokes, “If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol 1,” Goldsmiths CCA and Jeremy Deller, “Putin’s Happy,” Hannah Barry Gallery. Part 1.

“If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol. 1″, the first UK solo exhibition of US artist Tony Cokes, takes its title from a 2015 music album by the North-American rapper Drake. Popular music is a key element and preoccupation in the work of Cokes, always intertwined with political questions --in many cases directly related to a racialised subject-- and cultural theory that evidence the artist work in and engagement with academia. However, the engagement with these matters in the work is done in a non-straightforward manner, resulting in works with a certain degree of complexity, but also ambiguity, that through the use of music, rhythm and text establish an affective relationship with the viewer. 

From a formal point of view, Cokes artworks are relatively simple: the majority of his output presented at Goldsmiths consists of screens (sometimes projections, sometimes old cathode-ray tube TV monitors) where text on a flat colour or abstract background is animated as a discourse is presented following certain rhythms, whilst at the same time loud popular music (rock, electronica, techno, electro-pop) blasts through speakers or headphones --sometimes directly connected to the text presented, as in Evil 16 (Torture.Musik) (2009-2011) with fragments of tracks of popular music used by US (and UK) troops to torture detainees in Iraq in the work ; and sometimes not.

Two works have been specially commissioned by the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art with the occasion of this exhibition, The Morrissey Problem (2019) and Testament A (MF FKA K-P x KE RIP) (2019). The Morrissey Problem presents the thoughts of Joshua Surtees, a black British Morrissey fan, adapted from a piece published earlier this year in the newspaper the Guardian, expressing his concern and disappointment about the singer’s open and public embrace of far right ideas.

Stills from The Queen is Dead, Fragment 2 (2019), a work by Cokes on the political reverberations and legacy of Aretha Franklin. It is made of fragments from a selections of articles on the late singer, and it is presented accompanied of some of her music. At the moment of my visit, this was a techno remix of one of her songs, and the text on the screen spoke of Franklyn’s support of the Black Panther activist and philosopher Angela Davis.

The second piece commissioned by Goldsmiths, Testament A (MF FKA K-P x KE RIP) (2019) verses on Mark Fisher, the late philosopher and lecturer at Goldsmiths College’s Visual Cultures department. The text used as the base for this work is not one of the many pieces of writing by Fisher, but part of the contents of the first memorial lecture in his honour, delivered by his friend and colleague Kodwo Eshun in January 2018, one year after Fisher’s death. The lecture is an intellectual eulogy and a testament to the power and potential of Fisher’s ideas. You can watch it here. Cokes deploys the thoughtful and precise words of Eshun in a way that he replicates the extraordinary rhythm and cadence of that specific speech, making the viewer slowly absorb the clarity and carefulness with which the words were articulated and the power of the message delivered. 

Cokes engages with Fisher as well through the choice of music accompanying the text animation in yellow and pink. One track he employs is the song ‘Ghosts’, by the British 1980s new-wave band Japan. A verse of this song gave title to one of Fisher’s books, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014). In the chapter with the same title, Fisher reflects on the electronic music of Goldie, Japan’s singer David Sylvian and Tricky using this song as a connector between the three artists. Fisher creates a genealogy of art pop and a picture of the electronic music (and the culture) of the beginning of the 21st century, exposing at its core the very British preoccupation of class. 

Extra materials: 

An interview with Tony Cokes on Artforum, regarding this exhibition.

Kodwo Eshun and Tony Cokes in conversation about this exhibition on 28 September 2019.

Tony Cokes’ Testament A (MF FKA K-P x KE RIP) as a visual essay on Frieze magazine (April 2019), with a text by Pablo Larios, senior editor at Frieze.

Mark Fisher’s series of lectures at DOCH, School of Dance and Circus, Stockholm University of the Arts, in May 2011. 

I think that it can be interesting to re-read Fredric Jameson’s “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” (1984) in light of Tony Cokes’ work, but also as a key reference for Mark Fisher’s thought.

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The first artwork that visitors encounter when visiting Tony Cokes exhibition at Goldsmiths CCA is “The Morrissey Problem. This piece, specially commissioned by Goldsmiths Centre fir Contemporary Art, contains reflections from a black fan perspective on the singer’s support for far right ideas.

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13 November 2019

Christodoulos Panayiotou, “Act II: The Island” at Camden Arts Centre. Part 2.

A vase with flowers is placed on the tables of the Drawing Studio. This is Panayiotou’s Untitled (September, October, November, December, January...) (2019). The piece is made out of five vases -one per each of the months the exhibition is open- to be filled with a different specific type of flower each month. This is the November vase, filled with chrysanthemums. Each day one fresh flower is added to the vase, thus the piece operates as a kind of a calendar.

In the exhibition there is a hidden artwork: One of the gallery invigilators wears Venetory Fides Inviolabilis Bisante (2014), a necklace with a pendant made out of a medieval coin related to an episode in Cypriot history.

Panayiotou’s exhibition is a pleasant and entertaining display. However, after seeing a couple of rooms his strategies start to feel repetitive and predictable, as if each of the readymade pieces didn’t have much else to say in relation to the whole. 

The references to Cypriot history and culture are clear, but the exhibition is presented as potentially relating to “the turbulent status of the ‘British Isles’ as we approach Brexit, with all its attendant discourses of nationalism, identity and self-determination.” I have not been capable to distinguish in Panayiotou’s exhibition a political critique of the present political conjuncture in the United Kingdom, beyond some references to Cyprus’ past as a British colony.

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6 November 2019

Danh Vo, “Untitled”, at the South London Gallery

Last night, we journeyed across London to visit Danh Vo’s exhibition at the South London Gallery. It contains a huge variety of works, made by different people, selected and organised by Vo to create a series of artworks and spaces that put together different stories and histories - layered, complex and with the only denominator of somehow relating to Vo’s life and family history. Far from disorientating, the result is visually attractive and charming, elegant and balanced in its strangeness. The stories and histories that here intersect in the figure of the artist, despite their apparent whimsical interconnection, end up taking viewers into a journey of exploration, intellectual stimulation and discovery guided through enjoyment and pleasure. All this, whilst at the same time forcing them to evaluate the role of art and authorship in contemporary discourse.  Although before visiting the exhibition I thought that one point of approaching this kind of work for those not so familiar with contemporary art could be some important texts on the relationship between artists and the archive (Hal Foster’s “An Archival Impulse” or Okwui Enwezor’s “Archive Fever”), I now see that this is not the right entryway. I think that an interesting point of departure instead could be the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a piece of whom is present in a section of the exhibition. I believe that Gonzalez-Torres’ queering of previous artistic practices of the 1960s and 1970s (Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Institutional Critique), and his ability to maintain a tension between the personal and the abstract in his artistic output and between the relationship of the artwork with the world and with institutional practices prefigures Vo’s work. 

I have found this piece in The New Yorker titled “The Artist Questioning Authorship” quite interesting. Also, Adrian Searle’s review on The Guardian is an accurate description of “Untitled” and the ideas and artworks it comprehends.

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2 November 2019

Shoreditch gallery visits

Doug Aitken

Rock My Soul

Rock My Soul

Rock My Soul

Rayyanne Tabet

Rayanne Tabet

On 2 November, we went on a small gallery tour od Shoreditch. Our stops were:

Doug Aitken and Rock My Soul at Victoria Miro Wharf Road. Rock My Soul was curated by the artist Isaac Julien, inspired by bell hooks’ book Rock My Soul: Black People and Self Steem (London and NY: Atria, c2003.) Here you have a review of that book: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-29-et-book29-story.html

Rayyanne Tabet at Parasol Unit. 

Lina Iris Viktor at AutographABP.

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26 October 2019

West End Galleries

For our first gathering, on 26 October, we visited: 

I’ve Grown Roses in this Garden of Mine, at Goodman Gallery, where we were generously guided throughout the display by the very kind and insightful Jessie Cohen. 

From Black and White to Living Color: The Collected Motion Pictures and Accompanying Documents of Kara E. Walker, artist, at Sprüth Magers. This was an exhibition of Kara Walker’s film works curated by the critic Hilton Als. A copy of his text on these works, “As It Happens”, was kindly provided by the gallery to those visiting. You can find it here: https://frieze.com/article/hilton-als-films-kara-walker

And we finished our gallery morning on a more lighthearted and humorous note with My Life in Flux at Cardi Gallery, a survey of Fluxus works. (See images.)