What's hot? This new monthly column from author and curator Francesca Gavin brings together exhibitions that somehow connect in terms of content, aesthetics or approach. Following on from her regular ‘In Five Words’ exhibition reviews on the gowithYamo app, this monthly column dives deeper into the shows that are resonating in London’s galleries and museums.
Stressed about Doom, scrolling, worried about the end of the world. Fear not, so are many contemporary artists. One of the hottest themes this month in London appears to be a takedown of capitalism, advertising desire and the structures of society. Let's get in before the lights go off.
Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison, Jasmine Gregory, Genuine Fake Premium Economy at ICA, until 5 July
Genuine Fake Premium Economy is a group show downstairs at the ICA. It brings together three artists whose work all play in somehow with the idea of financial precarity, luxury commodity and a healthy dose of institutional critique. Jenna Bliss's brilliant video True Entertainment can be watched on a Friend’s style sofa at the back, making fun of the art world in reality-TV form. Cue Jasmine Gregory's paintings of Patek Philippe advertising images in grayscale, highlighting the concepts of desire, wealth and whiteness alongside an installation with her signature divorce paintings in a pile with Swiss chocolate boxes. This is flanked by Buck Ellison's amusing crops of iconic artists in art history covered in quotes from Adam Smith and Aristotle used to promote banking services. These artists together wryly point a finger at the luxury machine and art’s role within it. The result is funny, smart, and steeped in the fiction of the capitalist dream.
Sara Cwynar, Baby Blue Benzo at The Approach, until 7 June
Sara Cwynar's Baby Blue Benzo may be the best work she has ever made. The American photographer and filmmaker is known for her cut-up college approach to art that often reveals the structures of her chosen media. This super-sized video installation, shot both on digital and 16mm, focuses on the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, the most expensive car ever sold at auction in 2022 for 135 million euros. The unique cut-and-paste aesthetic veers from advertising images to video footage of ice skaters in Marlboro racing outfits, interspersed with fashion models using dated technology. This is accompanied by a voice-over echoing the intense research into people like Roland Barthes, McKenzie Wark, Jonathan Crary, Teju Cole and Walter Benjamin (credited at the end). In the annexe space are stills from the film, presented in a behind the scene style. This is one of the most delicious takes on the disintegration of desire in the 21st century and not to be missed.
Racheal Crowther, Liquid Trust at Chisenhale, until 14 June
Rachel Crowder's Liquid Trust is her first institutional show in the UK. The RA graduate is best known for sculptural installations unpicking the structures of institutions like the NHS. She has exhibited reworked chemist signs and revealed the inside of coffee vending machines. This time, she turns her attention to a US-manufactured mobile health unit used by the British Army. This ex-hospital space, touched with the patina of a war zone, is thrown into a gallery context. It's placed in an entirely baby pink space - a colour used in military environments to reduce violence and aggression - filled with the sickly smell of powdered milk. Allegedly, it is supposed to release a feeling of oxytocin and connection, which jars with the strangeness of the central martial object. The show is unnerving. An installation that echoes our emotional anxiety about the world at the edge of war.
Genuine Fake Premium Economy is on display at the ICA until 5 July.
Baby Blue Benzo is on display at The Approach until 7 June.
Liquid Trust is on display at the Chisenhale Gallery until 14 June.
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