What's hot? With Francesca Gavin: July Edition
The theme of this month's column is a wild 21st-century take on aliens, a theme that could also be positioned as contemporary madness. These exhibitions are all about breaking the boundaries of creative freedom, performance, rethinking media, and envisaging a brave new wild world. Often with a bug-eyed alien and UFO in the mix.
'Autopsy' at Seventeen is an incredible show curated by artist Joey Holder, inspired by UFOs, weird phenomena, and the digital age. Ranging from video to merch, installation and sculpture to painting, this is a wild narrative show a decade in the making. Most incredibly, it includes the actual alien sculpture created by artist John Humphreys for the 1995 viral alien-hoax film, Alien Autopsy. There's also a never-before-seen video collaboration between Mike Kelly and Paul McCarthy, edited specifically for the show by Paul, riffing on American military and alien madness. Holder is currently based in Helsinki, and a lot of the amazing artists here are Finnish, including Jaakko Pallasvuo, best known for his Instagram account @avocadoibuprofen. There's also an entire merch shop, which is delightfully fun for anyone looking for a '90s-inspired aliens T-shirt or various bits of UFO pop ephemera. This show is wild, humorous, fantastical, inspirational, funny, strange, and political all at once. Who needs Stranger Things when you’ve got this?
Harold Offeh’s solo mini retrospective at The Showroom is entitled 'Trustful Strangers Induce Fearless Aliens’. Pieces include Alien Communications (1999), a tiny phone-screen-sized work that forces the viewer to come close and watch the artist’s facial features pressed against different magnifying glasses. The idea of otherness is itself alien. Other pieces, like Alien at Large (2001-2004), draw more on the Afro-futurist reference. This joyful video depicts adlib footage of passersby in dress-up – many of them children – riffing on a fantasy future against a space-scape backdrop. Offeh's references include Sun Ra and H.G. Wells, and highlight the Black body's place in performance and narrative rebellion. Another highlight is Snap Like a Diva (2012-2020) featuring Offeh “snapping” (derived from Black American gay subcultures of the 80s and 90s) in a myriad of outfits, complete with house music and a Warholian slideshow of historic divas from Diana Ross to Barbara Streisand, switching at the click of Harold’s fingers. The exhibition brings together videos and performance documentation in a central, printed wood-frame installation. This is an artist who can do anything from performance to photography to social practice and deserves continued attention.
The alien reference in Delaine Le Bas’ show at Maureen Paley is more fleeting but still present. ‘Leap’ includes the Roma-British artist's objects, textiles and performance costumes. Le Bas' work is very personal, reflecting her own history and identity, but it also touches on broader ideas about politics, feminism, free speech, and being. Noticeably, there's a massive costume piece under the skylight called Goddess, created between 2007 and 2026, that includes scribblings such as "Protesters in Peril”. Many of the other works feel collage-like in their densely created textile pieces that shift around ideas of time, collaboration, and otherness – including detailed embroidery work of a sequin-encrusted UFO ship and recurring figures of death. This exhibition at Paley’s flagship follows Le Bas’ solo show at Secession in Vienna and nomination for the Turner Prize in 2024. It reaffirms her position as a truly unique voice.
Autopsy, Until 15 August, Seventeen Gallery, entrance Acton Mews, 270-276 Kingsland Rd, London E8 4DG
Delaine Le Bas: LEAP, Until 25 July, Maureen Paley, 4 Hearld St, London E2 6JT
Harold Offeh: Trustful Strangers Induce Fearless Aliens, Until 15 August, The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London NW8 8PQ
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