Tag: London
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For the brilliantly bizarre AUTOPSY group show, Seventeen repositions contemporary issues of AI, post-truth and conspiratorial paranoia into good old-fashioned cult and science fiction. Science fiction is a paradoxical genre. In the heyday of B-movies, legacy television and cultural responses to conspiracy politics, visions of what technology could provide (or destroy) in the future were…
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With Good Night, Asako Ujita presents a beautiful, intimate exploration of culture, place and memory at the margins of light, image and sound. Stretching the bounds of meaning and understanding, Good Night operates entirely in the realm of memory; arguably a landscape work above all else, Ujita’s practice of understanding the past relies on listening through silence,…
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Marking the end of three years of research, Patent 3306x is Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom’s pithy exploration of repetition, categorisation, and ephemera through the ages—from biological taxonomy to sex-driven songwriting. Running concurrently with a show at Modern Art Oxford that includes sound recordings on historic instruments, Boakye-Yiadom’s NıCOLETTı show is as much a presentation of research…
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Kulpreet Singh’s short statement on climate change and agricultural crisis, Indelible Black Marks, leaves much unsaid—an ongoing problem with climate justice art. Nonetheless, the Hayward Gallery show could not have come at a better time. For his first solo show in the UK, Kulpreet Singh plays with ideas of trace, action and immediacy to bring…
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The experimental-filmmaking duo dmstfctn (pronounced demystification) adopt an irreverent approach to technologies of the future. In 2022, they transformed a replica of a supermarket AI training ground into an interactive video game. In 2024, they set a live film simulation in a purgatory for AIs who cheat during training, and an on-chain text game in…
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Last weekend, Barbican screened four shorts as part of their Project a Black Planet season, which all use memory and myth. But how does eternalising and internalising the past help reimagine cultural identities today? “You cannot step in the same river twice,” Heraclitus reportedly said of our experience in the world. The past is gone;…
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Presented for the first time in the UK, Tate Modern’s Ana Mendieta retrospective manages to be expansive while also zeroing in on the artist’s core themes and symbols—if at the expense of their broader meaning in contemporary society. It is hard to pinpoint along which lines Tate has organised this enormous retrospective. The sections somewhat…
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The collage films of Ebun Sodipo both invite and resist easy watching. In Nasty Girl 2 (The Beast) (2024), clips of supermodel Connie Fleming and reality star Tiffany Pollard appear side by side on top of a larger video of a raging fire, while a snippet plays from Megan Thee Stallion’s fast-paced, high-energy and bass-heavy…
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Several fairies adorn the expansive windows of Josh Lilley Gallery, hovering in the sun. Their small figures are suspended before various gaudy shades of sateen curtains within the alcoves. Some hold tiny lanterns and bulbs that flicker against the sheen of the glass and drape of the fabric, others are swathed in elaborate adornments. Under…
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Now on its seventh run, the Queer East Festival has firmly established itself as London’s go-to place for East Asian cinema that explores the queer condition. Participating in the festival’s Future Film Curators Lab, Shimeng Wang presented Acting Up, a series of shorts centred on the relationship between queerness and performance. For many queer people,…
