Fashion is Alec Monopoly is Art

"Costume Art" is on view through January 10th, 2027.

Read her review of the Met Gala here, where she outlines that...

"I will review the costume institute show at face value, they got blood money and from what I can tell they used it to buy and display the best."

N.B.

—

On the second monday in may, I trekked to the upper east side, home to the most fabulous of art hoes of yesteryear (old angry wealthy ladies with puffy lips, hair teased high, and the tiniest frames being engulfed in Miyake’s Pleats Please) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose facade and grand steps just a week before had been transformed into the backdrop that makes up the internet-drenched playground that has morphed into the celebrity/corporate-ego-orgy known as the Met Gala. As it has done since 1947 (although once a humble affair), the 2026 gala (spectacle) was held to celebrate (ego-gorge) the opening of the Met Costume Institute’s May exhibition Costume Art: an exhibition looking at the costume through the lense of ‘fashion is art’ with a focus on costuming the body to do so.

So let’s get into it…First and foremost highlighting the importance of the discussion that is Costuming Art. It has formed the crux of many artists' practices and works over the decades, myself included. First grounded officially in language with Anne Hollander’s Seeing Through Clothes aka a Fashion History 101 textbook and also my own personal bible: my copy a tattered, dog-eared-to-oblivian old thing, replete with highlights and embarrassing notes left in the margins by a girl in her early 20’s. I was pleased and surprised to see it in the giftshop, here she is in all her glory:

For the first time ever, the show pulled from the museums’ 15 other departments, juxtaposing works dating back as far as 5000 BCE, using said works to prop up (metaphorically, the overworked conservators would never!) the clothing displayed, instead of the usual other way around.

I must admit, despite the promise of a face-value review,I was still donning my hater cap, a grey felted beret with oversized deco hat pin, upon my arrival. The show was oversized with goods — a gluttenous display of pockets so deep, you had not 1 or 2 but EIGHT examples of tattooed garments. I could not shake the knowledge that the Costume Institute had blood money, which they so fittingly used in the display of a whole section of blood-related garb entitled the ‘Vital Body,’ (love…) from the second richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos along with his wife Laura Sanchez Bezos, to make the exhibition possible with a donation of ten million dollars to the institute. This amount is the Bezos-equivalent of finding change in your pocket, just saying! Anyways, I guess it is a discussion we can’t count on fashion to fix– but I think if we are trying to make a show that hoists fashion out of the realm of the superficial – the exhibition establishing itself alongside a new wing of the met — it's a pretty damning start.

In case you have not had the privilege of diving into this nerdy ass textbook from the 70s, upon entering the main gallery, there is an automated speaker a la robotic voice overhead, announcing “PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE ART,” anytime a viewer got to close to something… which was every goddamn five seconds because it's so crowded in that place. So yes, Fashion is Art, and security agrees. Speaking of surveillance, the mannequins are 1984 chic; something about their presentation-height combined with the chopped off profiles replaced with mirrors, that gives you the eerie sense you are actually the one on display, and those mirrors are, in fact, two way (or two-faced?). What was the conceptual decision for these over-the-top mirror faces? A physical manifestation of the way we project our own societal ideals and ideas onto dress and the dressed body? Sure, but there are pages and pages of pretentious placard text throughout the exhibition that really hammers this idea into your skull for you. It felt gimmicky… and creepy within the framework of amazon money.

Sidenote– drinking game idea: go through the exhibit with your friends: take a shot every time you see the words: liminal, allegorical, abstraction, allegorical abstraction, transcultural, temporal, dialectic, transcend, externalize… leave obliterated. I mean, I loved the text sometimes, but it was a bit much– not to mention even my seasoned in fashion-theory-reading brain had a hard time consuming the word salads with a robot yelling in one ear while simultaneously bopping and weaving between the very thick crowd, this type of culture ingesting is not for the faint of heart (or potentially for the sober).

Vionnet, Adrian and Madame Gres-clad surveillance systems watching down on you plebs!!!!!

Ok ok I can continue to nitpick.. Or, I can show you my favorite parts. I adore and learn so much from looking at fashion through the context of art history; I was a child, and the proverbial candy in the store was archive Vionnet, Madame Gres, 19th century undergarment structures, Archival Mugler, Iranian Iron-age sculpture, a whole section dedicated to the Grecian Stance, 15th century italian temperas, 18th century anatomical drawings, Albrecht Durer, old school Yves Saint Laurant, Miyake, a TON of Undercover, Victorian Mourning mementos, Mcqueen, 4th century BCE Etruscan Armor, and a lot of each. The pockets were DEEP and the show was massive. Please regard some of my own personal highlights- details that made full use of the limitless possibilities Andrew Bolton had to work with; So, I cordially present…. moments that had me forgetting that I was a hater:

Female figurine kneading dough(?)
Cypriot
ca. 600–480 BCE

The section on the Grecian Bend, a by-product of the freaky late 19th century. The lithograph is fabulously juxtaposed with a grecian sculpture from ~500 BCE. There is an entire section on the grecian bend and bodily apparatuses that helped women achieve the booty-as-shelf aesthetic synonymous with this fashion period, hotness is fashion is circular!

This Louise Bourgois Drawing paired with a Marine Serre body suit, I don’t think Louise would have liked Marine Serre Body suits very much… but I do think they were starting to scratch at something here.

This ultra special boil-chic cotton muslin number from the early 19th century, god bless you all for letting this 1981 acquisition see the light of day!!!

Victorian hair mementos; Victorians were true freaks (Valerie Steele writes extensively on their horny weird freak-ness if you are interested), and one of many death-obsessed rituals that came out of this weird time/place are hair mementos. Missed opportunity to incorporate the Mcqueen line from the 90s where Lee incorporated locks of his own hair into the garments, BUT I love any opportunity to see these high drama mementos in real life.

Pairing Munch with fashion… I think Evard would have LOVED the Dress and Psychoanalysis show at the Museum at Fit last year, but I think knowing his work was propping up the fashion lords in the skull section at the Met Fashion exhibit would have the expressionist absolutely furious!!! Which I find charming.

Jacques Fabien Gautier Dagoty (French, 1716-1785)
Plate, from Joseph Guichard Duverney's Myologie Complette en Couleur et
Grandeur Naturelle, 1746

Andy Warhol's torso shot by Irving Penn juxtaposed with a dress by NY contemporary Susan Ciancolo. The scars from surgical sutures mimicking the hand-basted work done by the seasoned artist/designer was highbrow new york.

Wooden carved prosthetic limbs by Alexander Mcqueen

There were lots of beauties not making it into this image carousel- custom Michaela Stark, a plethora of contemporary designers, mannequins displaying underrepresented bodies in fashion, a section on the corpulent body educating one on fat theory- all great things saturating the internet if it's sparking your interest.

The Chopping Block

Ok time to put my hater hat (black cloche adorned with rooster feathers) back on, for just a couple things that I need to get off my Kamali-Clad chest.

Starting with the most literal chopped, how can you show a silhouette like this with a profile like that?? It was so close to being so good. The lack of a profile/face from this victorian dame is in an attention-argument with the shelf-like derriere synonymous with 19th-century dress and a focus point of the Seurat work. In my humble opinion, NOTHING should be distracting from the majestic booty-popping of the bustle.

I also wanted to share an interesting parallel of this display from a mere month ago at the Museum at FIT Art X Fashion show:

Although I do think the victorian dress the Met chose to parallel the painting was much more successful than the Museum at FIT’s, I am most likely hating on the Met’s display because, as my work was curated into the FIT’s show, I am biased and potentially jealous that the Met got a real study from Seurat, and we got an LED display. Alas.

This iconic Margiela tattoo top from 1989 had the CI using the term “liminal space” (drink) to describe the area of skin between arms and shoulders.

Nobody asked them to show Anselm Kiefer paired with Joseph Thimister’s collection addressing the lasting effects of WWI on modern society. You really want to go there? With a current war raging and genocide we are witnessing real time through our phones? To include this, almost as an afterthought, as an element/way to look at the mirror that fashion holds up to society, rips whatever it was you were trying to do right back down, in super-sonic speed, to the superficial realm. Maybe this mannequin's face was chopped after falling flat on it.

Typo alert– Quote from placard on this dark pairing: The disembodied female head emerging from the permafrost suggests a chthonic haunting, recasting the land as a vessel for historical indictment. Yikes.

The copious amounts of dust everywhere… The Costume Institute accomplishing dusty in every sense of the word

The Skims Section

The last room the exhibition ended on was the “Epidermal Body” aka the skims room. This room looked at fashion recontextualizing what the term or color “nude” represents- shifting away from a singular (and white) definition mainstream fashion has adopted for hundreds of years, to one that takes on the multifaceted meaning that it should, seen here for example with Louboutin's “Nude collection.” Also featured were different nude colorways of Telfar Bags. I thought it was extremely interesting to not include Skims, the entire room looking like it had been plucked from the brands’ instagram. I think the Skims brand holds enough cultural relevance in terms of what a contemporary interpretation of undergarmenting looks, the history of “second skin” being one that dates thousands of years, and Skims being the most prominent reflection of how we as a western society approach our once-unmentionables. Certainly not a tragic oversight, just an interesting one is all.

But, I will say, with the “Epidermal Body” room, they did end on a beautiful installation of Miyake’s brand, APOC (or A Piece Of Cloth), and this mid-17th century sketch, so it I was immediately distracted by said shiny object before being ejected back into the museum lobby.

Author Caspar Berthelsen Bartholin Danish
Editor Thomas Bartholin Danish
1651

Martina Cox reviews the event on the first monday in May, celebrating the opening of the costume instiuttes Spring exhibition, from the perspective of fashion historian, a fashion designer, an artist and an all-round fantastic seer of sartorial history.

Proposed timeline for the Met Gala in coming years —

Fashion is Art (2026)

Fashion is AI (next year)

And then, group suicide (2028)

While Billionaires for a dead planet gathered in May, in the City Capitol donning no budget replete with massively heavy ballgown trains and the peasants that carried them (queue video montage of peasant train-movers, including the five masked models Madonna hired to carry hers, and the unforgivable walk of shame back down the steps they were forced to make when she reached the top, we see you masked angels!! But also Madonna I still love you), I gathered with my lovely studiomates (shout out to Robbie Stinchcomb for many of the one-liners and title) to watch and belligerently shout at the television “FASHION IS ART!!!!!!!” while piled onto a couch giggling and eating Cheez-It Duoz Sharp Cheddar & Parmesan Crackers ™ (we may not have healthcare but this kind of joy is something money can not buy). Sidenote, did you know Ozempic was developed from a hormone found in a Lizards saliva?

Allen Jones (b. 1937) *Hatstand, Table and Chair (i) Hatstand (ii) Table (iii) Chair

Allen Jones (B. 1937), Table, Acrylic paint, glass, metal, mirror, mixed media and tailor made accessories Executed in 1969, this work is from an edition of six plus one artist's proof

The theme licenses that you can literally wear anything. I am a fashion historian, I can historicize and artify the sweatpants I am wearing to write this (but I am also at an unfair advantage because said sweats are 80s Norma Kamali sweatcouture). Some celebs had lovely little anecdotes about paintings their look referenced no matter how abstract, some looked like they were going to kill a dog when they got home, and many had multiple additional limbs mounted atop their person. So I will throw ONE bone- Kylie Jenner was my favorite look.. The look is Schiaparelli (RIP Elsa, if Mae West’s bust-to-waist proportions shocked you, I suggest you look AWAY). Ky’s dress was ripped off (ode to bodice ripping perhaps?), the top half of the dress folded down over her waist, a surreal tan flesh-colored torso emerging hard nips ablaze- a pertinent nod to the Skims dynasty. Another sidetone, the nips of all three sisters are an active part of their looks; I think I freed the nip first when configuring this algorithmic workaround to the automation of nipple detection (See here) but I am glad these girls have caught up and found a way too. The inside of a couture dress, aka the guts, is by far the most beautiful and interesting part, to have it on display while simultaneously wearing the gown, is the craft equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, so Daniel Roseberry I commend you, but also you dress fascist billionaires so you might be going to hell.

Speaking of, another Roseberry look worth mentioning is that of the lady of the hour, the madame who fronted the bill, Mrs. Laura Sanchez Bezos. The gown is in direct reference to Madame X by John Singer Sargent, Sanchez-Besoz’s dress an ode to the ORIGINAL painting that had one sleeve falling off, this suggestive detail painted over post-salon, after Paris was up in arms about it, pun intended.

Vergenie Amelie Avegno Gautteau aka Madame X was a fierce american born parisian socialite who powdered her skin lavender, hennaed her hair and eyebrows and rouged her ears, need I say more? I am probably eager to think this homage to Virgenie is referencing the shared outrage they both sparked, but whether intentional or not, the parallels are certainly there. The comment section of any costume institute social media post is absolutely gorged with malice since the sponsors’ announcement, and similarly to stand in front of the portrait in the 1884 salon was to hear every profanity/vulgarity/obscenity uttered under the sun in the french language. Singer Sargent is a god send in capturing the ephemeral nature of the stuffs known as textile— and in this case freakishly pale skin— but it was the scandal that propped up the success and history making of a decent painting. The outrage of the Parisian public in 1884 was one of a canonized art history phenomenon: Singer-Sargent was ahead of his time, after 20 years in hiding the painting was brought out to the adoration of a new public, ready to face what it hadn’t been able to do before, embracing it with unexpected hunger too. There is something about looking back a generation to see what upset everyone so much— what had everyone’s metaphorical or literal panties in a bunch— and laughing in the face of it. See, this is where the two diverge: will we be looking back in 20 years to laugh? In a fever dream in a parallel universe is this the fate of Sanchez-Bezos and her contribution to the art world? Certainly not. The only canonization I foresee in her future is of the literal kind, from the impending revolutionaries.

But what if the work doesn’t get to enjoy the privileges of time? Fastforward to London in the 1970s, and we have the public in an uproar again— Allen Jones's Hatstand, Table, and Chair were exhibited;

In 1978 his work was attacked by stink bombs. Unlike Madame X, 40 years later and our reactions to these sculptures have not softened, time has not packaged them with a neat little bow of adoration. He said what I was trying to pointpoint with Madame X far more eloquently:

“Fetishism and the transgressive world produced images that I liked because they were dangerous. They were about personal obsessions. They stood outside the accepted canons of artistic expression and they suggested new ways of depicting the figure that weren’t dressed up for public consumption.”

In the interview, Jones cites his favorite word as ‘Grabbable.’ Enter Kim Kardashian, donning the pinnacle of pointy boob a la Allan Jones, her life diligently documented on camera, and one that is far from grabbable. People have rushed to the internet full speed to comment on the shared imagery and references her eskimo sister Bianca Censori has been mining through Allen Jones-esque performance art. But for Kim, she gets to triumphantly step over (stepstool style) Bianca fixed as a furniture object and mainline the OG artist himself. Kim's legacy of exploring sex iconography through an insatiable capitalistic framework leaves much to unpack (will not open up this can of worms here but rec the IG page @kardashian_kolloquium for more), and working with artists like Nadia Lee Cohen or Jurgen Teller warrants a complexity and level of cultural engagement that, whether you like it or not, is aligned with the art world. Bianca’s performance work comparatively is one of shock and silence, saying little to back up a life that can be compared to one big performance piece. I think there is more nuance, conversation, and years of honing that backs up what Kim’s (and Nadia’s) collaboration with Allen Jones does. Kim has been doing this since Bianca was in the womb, taking hit after hit from a patriarchal public like a cyborg walking through a battlefield, and she still infuriates us, at least now from the top.

Allen Jones, Stand – By Me, 2024, Patinated bronze outline with acrylic infill, patinated bronze head, 165 x 58 x 58 cm. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery / Photo credit: Manuel Obadia-Wills.

We project our fears, angers and frustrations about the femme torso, sex and power onto these sculptures, honestly, much in the way we have towards Kim over the past two decades as well. This fear is the threatening what society is comfortable with, the objectification of the femme, subverted through using sex, autonomy, and literal casts of the femme torso to turn conservative and deeply objectifying norms onto itself. And at the end of the day, society’s fury over S&M furniture or the suggestive fall of a strap, indicates tragic horseblinders are on– don't look over there at the gross levels of resource hoarding off the backs of thousands of injured amazon workers, free the nipple, just not too much…

Ok, I have spilled the vitriol that are my feelings towards the gala, thank you for bearing with me as I did so, I am a garb lover and like many feel that this event is devoid of magic in the face celebrity delusion and a burning planet- we are in a war, committing a genocide, and here in USKKKA Amazon web services has a contract with and provides the platform ICE uses to store its data…. the people are pissing in bottles at work for christ sake. But, I will review the costume institute show at face value, they got blood money and from what I can tell they used it to buy and display the best.

Dirk Diggler reportage-d their mega cafe oto gig here. Pregnancy are going to lead the roaring 20's, as Chloée says, the evil warlocks and the supernatural are dragging away the world, so we must scream and make a new one! Lfg! Pregnant with ambition, verve at the forking paths of art and music...

Is life what you expected when you were a kid?

G: yes. I was aware that i’d have more responsibilities and life would get more stressful as i aged and that happened. i think that’s a neutral thing and somehow i still feel like the summer of my life has yet to begin.

C: As a child, I was immersed in playing with Barbies, creating stories and entire worlds. I also grew up with a lot of ghosts in my house, so there was this supernatural element that seemed to participate in the world around me—an invisible layer of the unknown. It gave me the sense that anything is possible, even if we can’t see it but can still feel it.

My first day of secondary school was cruel and bizarre. The world I had created in make-believe—once colorful and beautiful—shifted into a dark folklore, painted with nightmares and warlocks. Even then, I knew there had to be more to life than this and there certainly is. But again, it is a world that I have created through the act of making art and music - it's definitely a form of resistance to it all.

However, I didn’t think that, when I grew up, the world presented to me would resemble the one we’re living in now. I dreamed that after hardship, there would be a light at the end of the tunnel for everyone—a future filled with peace, warmth, and sunlight. But instead, it feels as though the evil folklore of warlocks and the underworld that I had feared has become our reality.

Still, I hold on to hope that the world will eventually heal.. as the sky falls and the day breaks.

Did the mix of the driven hyper pop sound and punk/hardcore vocals happen immediately when you started working together, or did it evolve over time?

C: I sort of had this sense of knowing beforehand... I don't know. I just knew it would be a good idea when Governor Vomit and I joined forces... we live not too far from eachother so it was an organic partnership.. we would listen to music all the time and show one another a lot of different things.

I used to perform a lot more, but I focused behind the scene as a director over the last five years.. which i love with all my heart. But I returned to it when working with Nkisi in 2024 unlocked performing again - felt more urgent somehow, that it has been important to create a direct response to the world we are currently living in in a live way alongside film-making. its been a cathatric experience.

G : At first Chloée was just gonna do guest vocals for one of my shows - so it was mostly a sound i was already doing- as i’ve gotten to know her more and we’ve shared musical influences it’s really expanded what i felt like i could do with the beats. i feel like a lot of the production is me trying to impress chloée and make beats that are worth her vocals.

Who are you currently listening to?

G: total wife, glockteau twins, and trick daddy

C: Reject All latest mix on NTS & Katie Shannon NTS shows <3

What do you wear when you want to be comfortable onstage?

G: A belt

C: Barefoot

Exhibition curation with anyone, dead or alive.

G: I don’t like art

C: Ruth Angel Edwards, Adam Gallangher, Solomon Garçon , Dan Mitchell, Abella D'adoro , Keira Fox, Derek Ridgers, Chelsea Young, David Hoyle, Mike Kelly, Andy Warhol, Sylive Flury, Valie Export, Liz johnson Arthur, Steven Cuffie, Eric Kroll, Ivana Vladislava and myself - would be a pychedllic exlopsion.

Why should people come to your gigs?

G: I'm fun, and the music is good.

C: If you're in the mood for love... and some unadulterated, hard hitting yet beautiful production...

Worst to fave artwork?

G: I don’t like art

C: I wish I could find a picture of the worst painting, it is, in fact, my own painting. Truly diabolical...I dont think I can find a picture but I have it imprinted in my mind... forever. It is shocking artwork I made at art school that I presented to a crit and it was soooo shit... I was kidding myself... I remember I made after this comment by a tutor - 'not everything has to be epic' and tried to do something minimal... it was rotten... truly rotten. Imagine pigs flying but shit.

I can only do artists I love not really ones i don't lol

Barbra Kruger; Jenny Holzer; Stephen Cuffie Portraits, Matt Gess, Ruth Angel Edwards, Alice Fraser

A historical figure you’d dom?

C: King Henry the 8th

G: Ulysees S. Grant

Did you have Tumblr? If so, what kind of image would you reblog? Did u use it to watch porn or not?

C: Yes, I did - probs some unknown from the 80's with a lot of make-up on and cool hair, smoking

G: Yes, mostly Simon Pegg

We gotta ask the question....... I mean, we don't have to, but we are going to.... How did you name your band?

G: Chloée was doing guest vocals for my show. We got really merry, i really had to take a piss, and while taking a piss i thought we should keep doing stuff after that show, and pregnancy would be a really good name for us.

C: We usually rehearse and make our music in Governor's studio in the basement... and we always have a good time... I remember Governer Vomit returning from the loo and, in pure ecstasy saying PREGNANCY!!! pregnancy is the name... it was genius and totally made sense. i think he fell pregnant in the loo or something... we were both pregnant that day... the rest is history.

Is there much of a difference between the NYC audience and how things go down in London?

G: Not really. It was really fun.

C: I would say its not fully different but its more how nyc is different to london in terms of the art music scene... in london its merged in nyc its seperated with a few cross over.. but the feeling is very similar in both... <3

Did u have to give Governor Vomit a do's and don't's guide to London?

C: I wanted re write the urban myth that London and the Uk has bad food...I know it's not true but it has a bad rep in NYC and governer also was believing it... the food in london is wicked. and yum!!! So gave a lot of recommendations to him and we had some delicious food from greggs to french house lol...

G: Chloée guided me really well with where to eat. Turns out black pudding is amazing.

What's next in your pregnancy?

G: actually release music.

C: We are going to make some wicked music videos... to go alongside those releases...

Nico, our teenage MUSIC reporter, ventures across to Paris... to attend an Atomiser gig! Many such cases.

You know what they say: you can take the boy out of London but you can't make him listen to shit music!!!

We're trying to expand our music coverage and he appeared like a guardian angel referencing Branzi's writing and talking about hurdy gurdy's and shit. He's writing part diary and part research- we couldn't have asked for a better music nerd if we tried.

Go off nico!!!!

HE NOTES: "Valentin Clastrier does not play. He is the best."

Before we met nico online these were our notes on music:

So far on my 3 day vagabondage of Paris, I have reunited with old friends and cousins that have accompanied me on wanders around the lovely and bait spots of the city’s centre; but on this rainy Sunday, I embark on a solitary expedition to the musical underworld of the city - which on this occasion, assembles in a garden.
It’s 4 when I arrive (ticket unchecked) and B2E are playing with an ipad for their soundcheck.

It feels like I’m intruding on a family function as the early-comers politely and quietly lounge in the veranda outside the main hall. This is a foreign, initially awkward dynamic to a London night-concertgoer like myself, that I will soon reconsider to be a charm to Atomiser’s afternoon.

Considering Italian designer Branzi’s writing on “Contemporary Music and Space”, Le Sample can be seen as an example of musical territory rather than specialized space; an ex-industrial ground, claimed and repurposed by artists, that is void of acoustic function and impositions- granting musicians and curators like Atomiser the artistic freedom today’s music needs.

A Chinese-whisper goes round warning the music will begin shortly and so we enter the main room where B2E stand on a carpet, ready to perform. You can tell the back2egg shell is just starting to crack as their presence gradually shifts from shy to sly. Persevering through a streak of technical difficulties, the band perform cloud-rock ballads over chops of speech and field-recordings that seem to marry the loud rainfall, acting as a convenient low end. Boy-girl two pieces are the most beloved acts right now and B2E is a cool French variant.

Around 6, Daisy Ray opens her set by larping as a bee; does some impressive looping; raps over her guitar (used as percussion) and then camouflages back into the crowd. Occasionally silly, sometimes very fun - as outsider music tends to be- the performance felt warm and clearly stated the unrestrained nature of the afternoon.

The flux of tension, comic relief and awe makes the sequence of acts into a circus. Atomiser’s project to conceive seemingly implausible conglomerates of artists is the reason I always feel an urge to buy a ticket - it has atmosphere, regardless of the execution.

Interrupting Lucia Kagramanyan’s clubby remixes of Armenian music, we applaud as Valentin Clastrier climbs onto a stool and - with chivalric prowess - arms himself with his ridiculous weapon of choice: an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy. The French luminary used to kick it with the likes of Jacques Brel as a guitarist in the 60’s, before getting bored and deciding to become one of “the great masters of the hurdy gurdy”: title of his 1987 album.

Within the first minute of music, it sounds like a whole orchestra is evoked by the single instrument. Using his right hand to generate either a ceaseless groove or drone, his virtuosic melodies played by the left, blaze through, achieving that real Dionysian effect. Valentin’s resurrection of a medieval folk instrument with his own electronic amendments is magical to witness live, as the success of a life long mission.

I am sitting on the Eurostar back to London as I finish writing this souvenir for my trip. Somewhere along the English channel I ask myself: What has the weekend taught me?

I note:

1. It’s nice that venues like Le Sample are still kicking (bittersweet as it is being forced to close)
2. Valentin Clastrier does not play. He is the best.

Hollywood Superstar will write your exhibition text, your press text.

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a taste of our previous work:

We wrote Bod Mellor's show at IFB, which was received WARMLY by both artist and curator.

Link to the Josef Strau essay is here.

For those who say we only write about Reena Spaulings, here is another stick with which to beat us with, and then yourself. What would you rather hear about, Marcel? Josef? Bloody, Jordan Wolfson? Charles Ray? Semi-abstract figurative painting by slade graduates?!?!? No, you're right. We're naughty. This is the last one, promise x sorry reena.

No, in all seriousness, please point to our floors. We are all ears to the подполья.

No, just kidding - this review was pitched and it was really good - sometimes exhibitions, by virtue of their strength, actually enclose into a worthy review. Equally true of bad shows, harder to say for mid shows.

Anyway, with Jeremy, we have taken an unprecedented leap and allowed him to employ footnotes.

FOOTNOTES:

- The pretends of NYC group shows to install gallery backbenchers alongside new, trendy consignments.

- The identification of Post aspiration and post-professionalisation artists in older figures such as Seiji Inagaki kind of reflects what it is to be just any unrecognised artist. Just graduation is post-aspirational, a non-act.

- People always have, and always will, love Jean Genet.

Sydney

“By linking my production to your production, the curator also disconnects us both”: I kept returning to that old, half-remembered line – drawn from an old, half-remembered John Kelsey essay – while viewing On the Never-Never, a group show at Reena Spaulings, curated by Tenko Presents. (1) Exhuming shopworn pieces from the depths of Reena’s storage (Stephan Dillemuth, Danny McDonald, Josephine Pryde) and suturing them to works representative of the roving Tenko program (Thomas Cap de Ville, Seiji Inagaki, Sabina Maria van der Linden), On the Never-Never positions the group show format as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, an experiment toying with spare or dead parts. Can they all be brought together and restaged, and ultimately imbued with new life? If the show indeed comes alive, it does so by way of devices intrinsic to the artworks themselves: through shoddy assemblage, tasteless juxtaposition, and rough-hewn montage, through forced combinations redolent of a bad skin graft or a rejected organ transplant.

Poor things – “unproductive, wasted meaningless, excluded from historical narratives, endangered by the prospect of complete erasure,” as Sabina Maria van der Linden’s undated poster states – these works remake Frankenstein as a kind of kitchen sink drama, a no-budget Mike Leigh film. The storyboard is provided by Thomas Cap de Ville’s Book 1 and Book 2, both 2017, a pair of oversized scrapbooks arranged on a clothed card table. With the tactile feel of a duct-tape wallet, Cap de Ville’s books document a gritty, heroin-shaped life we were promised by the exhibition’s title (an alternate title, playing on both US and UK definitions, might have been On the Nod.) They are composed of disposable camera prints and digital images printed on copy paper, print-outs of aughts-era horoscopes and dating webpages, sometimes framed by tacky patterned craft papers; chronicling a misspent youth at the advent of social media, but also comment upon it humorously in retrospect. The noon-until-noon binges, the stupid pranks and long-forgotten acquaintances, compiled years later, in a form evoking the mild-mannered family album. At least one page, featuring an image of a dreadlocked Cap de Ville, is completed by a cigarette burn. Yet in prizing unruly formal experimentation over careerist common sense – folding terrific standalone photographs, for example, into a far less saleable form – these scrapbooks also supply the exhibition with its overarching ethos of poignant anti-ambition.

If we’re still in mind of the monstrous mash-up, there’s Danny McDonald’s Midnight Snack Encounter, 2014, which reads as a counter to the current vogue for conceptual sculpture. An Emperor Palpatine figurine leers at another of Twinkie the Kid, ensconced in a distressed sofa reminiscent of the after-after party. But the Twinkie figure carries a secret – he holds an actual Twinkie, by now possibly twelve years old.

Like any good artist right now, McDonald lists every material in the work’s details, including the long inventory of ingredients deployed in the Twinkie’s production and (maybe eternal) preservation. (2) There are also two assemblages from 2015 by Stephan Dillemuth, who once ran the storied Cologne space Friesenwall 120 with artist Josef Strau. Both sculptures are grounded by plaster cogwheels, and both are interrupted by a number of self- or scene-referential objects – the cast of a forearm, a burner phone affixed to a “bad” golf-leafed painting, the 2014 Gallerists issue of Texte Zur Kunst.

All of these things are embedded in the middle of the cogwheels, rather than between the gears, indicating that they aren’t really disrupting anything, not least in the present. Like the mostly reclusive, mostly middle-aged artists of On the Never-Never, these objects are closer to vestiges of an evaporated discursive zone, haunting the system once again through reappearance. Likewise, in a suite of exhibited photographs, taken from Josephine Pryde’s series Just What is Aura Anyway? (2006) a young girl is presented as a Victorian maid on Boxing Day, if the yuletide setting is to be believed. As in Jean Genet’s play The Maids (1947), Pryde’s role-playing maid serves here as an ambivalent figure, even a stand-in for a certain type of identity-fluid (young/old, rich/poor, now/then) artist LARPing faintly at systemic upheaval.

Although most of the artists included here have by now settled into a post-aspirational, post-professionalised groove of artistic production, one outlier might be the illustrator Seiji Inagaki, whose pervy, noncey, Pierre Klossowski-summoning drawings from the 1980s and 90s, for early Japanese gay magazines like Barazoku, have been tastefully framed and effectively upcycled, recirculated within a quainter, more “bohemistic” – to borrow a phrase from Dillemuth – economy of objects and images. We might spend some time thumbing through the original magazines, too, and lament, as with Cap de Ville’s books, a rich visual culture lost to the flattening effects of social media, a culture taken from us, in this instance, by Grindr. Variously presaging the more recent practices of Julien Ceccaldi, David Rappeneau, and Shogo Shimizu, Inagaki’s illustrations, and the queer culture they emerge from, derail us from the show’s predominant concerns while proposing yet another clever detour.

All of this, of course, runs counter to the reigning paradigm of the New York group show, which seeks to elevate the staid offerings of gallery backbenchers by smuggling in a few elder or late statesmen on consignment (a different, more optimistic type of never-never). A Harun Farocki video here, a Karen Kilimnik painting there, maybe a minor piece by Andrea Fraser or even Peter Hujar, and suddenly the inherent vacuity of the commercial group show is absolved, or at least optimised for dissemination online.

Such conditions seem ripe for a moment to reconsider Josef Strau’s essay “The Non-productive Attitude,” 2006, exemplified to some degree by many of the artists on view, alongside other models of artistic “badness” more broadly. (3) What could it be like, conceivably, to revisit these strategies today, for the Tenko generation? “So embarrassing,” Strau preemptively concludes, although this show gently suggests otherwise.

1. The pretends of NYC group shows to install gallery backbenchers alongside new, trendy consignments.

2. The identification of Post aspiration and post-professionalisation artists in older figures such as Seiji Inagaki kind of reflects what it is to be just any unrecognised artist. Just graduation is post-aspirational, a non-act.

3. People always have, and always will, love Jean Genet

1. John Kelsey, “Unclaimed Bags Will Be Destroyed,” in Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010), 221–234.

2. Danny McDonald, Midnight Snack Encounter, 2014. Materials listed by the exhibition checklist: Emperor Palpatine action figure (vinyl, fabric, sound), miniature snacks and games (vinyl, plastic), antique salesman's sample couch (fabric, wood), Twinkie The Kid Twinkie storage container (plastic, vinyl), miniature carpet (nylon), string, Twinkie (Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour [Flour, Reduced Iron, B Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Folic Acid)], Corn Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable and/or Animal Shortening (Soybean, Cottonseed and/or Canola Oil, Beef Fat), Whole Eggs, Dextrose. Contains 2% or Less of: Modified Corn Starch, Glucose, Leavenings (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate), Sweet Dairy Whey, Soy Protein Isolate, Calcium and Sodium Caseinate, Salt, Mono and Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60,Soy Lecithin, Soy Flour, Cornstarch, Cellulose Gum, Sodium Stearoyl Lacylate, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Sorbic Acid (to Retain Freshness), Yellow 5, Red40), wood plinth.

3. Josef Strau, “The Non-productive Attitude,” in Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 1–4.

Dirk Diggler is a man about town. He was #there with Laura Les. Crimes. Etc. A time when Hollywood Sups were still watching nickelodeon. But he's back now - for the return - and he says it's angry. Pregnancy is pissed, not abortive. Chloe is wearing a tam o' shanter with ultra maximalist yelling piercing screaming barely breathing takes. Governor vomit is sat on the ground with a pedal as she chest bumps the crowd.

Thanks dirk, another stinger from the diggler.

Pregnancy are fucking sick btw.

Currently sitting in an airport lounge, in many respects the epicentre of western civilisation, waiting to go into the sky, all is wipe-clean, smooth, 100% surveilled. Everyone has been x-rayed, scanned, recorded, photographed and ID'd, so I can be very sure this is me, sitting here, alone, it's utterly peaceful, boredom is total, the apex model of how society is becoming. I have time now to reflect on one of the most urgent, stimulating, hectic, angry, stunning gigs I've been to, well since the last time I saw Pregnancy at Reject All, organised by Ruth Angel Edwards and Adam Gallagher, the week before.

The Cafe Oto gig, hosted by the always brilliant TLC23 (Keira Fox and Katie Shannon) took place on good Friday, we dont need Jesus's suffering to stand as a representation of sacrifice. The current world view of horrific slaughter in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Iran is way more than enough. The murder lovin' billionaires are inflicting their selfish desires for yet more unimaginable wealth, their greed is our suffering.

Anger is the mood, the age of rage is now. Pregnancy boil this fury down into 3 minute bursts of frenzied hyper punk pop. Maugile and Governor Vomit have crafted their sound from what may have been left over from the semi demise of Hyperpop's mini era of the 2010's culminating in the outstanding Haunted by Laura Les in 2021. But Pregnancy take things further, much further. All the recent musical cores get condensed down into unrelenting hammers of rhythm and throbbing synth blasts that don't stop hitting, the feelings of terror and joy combine under this relentless pressure to force the mind to let go and release all concerns. Chloée leaves it all on the floor, so much so that by the final track she is literally glitching like a broken mp3 file, but it's in time with Governor Vomit's industrial strength barrage of ultra mega hyper maximalist total ear storm. The crowd can't help themselves, their willing madness bursts into deranged freedom, almost epileptically rejoicing in the totalpermission to not give a fuck. Not since the days of Sunrise raves or Butthole Surfer gigs have I been forced so urgently out of my own canister to join with the other souls with my sweat, screams, and rapture. Cafe Oto, being the considerate venue, hands out free ear plugs, I thought this was funny, condoms for the ears to avoid pregnancy? I recommend going comando, nothing should ever get in the way of such fucking brillance.

I HATE WAR. Babedrea33's irreverent blog account (DISCLAIMER: nottin irreverent about hating war) I don't know what drives the vibe accounts of today's economy, but this grid is divided through aesthetically lead horizontals. We adapt the questions of Andy's timeless bathmatt3000 interview to get to grips with IhateWarmag.

Babedrea collects images that are attached to greater timelines of timeless violence. An archaeologist by training, maybe, dusting off the patina on tumblr images to feed them shining into our algo. We first met discussing the imperialism of mythic atlantis on a podcast I'd heard, and by met I mean Dm'd. Hollywood prefers the idea of her image discoveries parallel to the era-shaping analysis of lost civilisations - where codexes came to redefine the contemporaneous spirit.

After all, is that not all we crave from a tumblr blog?

What is image archiving for you and how does it different from @ihatewarmag?

I think that the two go hand in hand somewhat, altho image archiving formally takes care to find context, names, dates and attach them to greater timelines, ihatewar is about dusting off tumblr flickr google search deepcuts and unearthing them before a grander singularity collapses the internet on itself and things become impossible to find or leave forever like blingee among others. In this way I do think it’s archival because I think there are images I collect which are attached to these greater timelines of timeless violence.

Trend predictions for 2027 (apocalypse theme).

William Blake off a phone and cocacola gnosticism

If Silent Hill comes out with a new game, where would you want it to be set?

Cortázar-style conflations of reality with echoes of the past. In “La Noche Boca Arriba,” a man is severely injured in a motorcycle accident in Mexico. He’s in the hospital and lucid dreaming about a reality where he’s on the run from a group of Aztec warriors who want to sacrifice him to the sun god. He’s finding it harder and harder to wake up again in the hospital. Was he ever actually in the hospital at all or dreaming hauntologically of surgery? Take Silent Hill to ancient Maine, USA. We want to dream of surgery.

Favourite ancient archaeological site/period/excavation?

Chavín de Huántar. First excavated by Julio C. Tello in 1919. Traces of Chavín’s art style are all across ancient Peru but it isn’t really certain why this art style was so widespread. A religious center for sure, reliefs across the site depict shamans snuffing hallucinogens with jaguars and snuff tube artifacts are found everywhere. But the real crown jewel is the subterranean labyrinth of 35 interconnected tunnels beneath the site. Peaks and pokes of sunlight tickle through the ceilings of the tunnels where we infer that shamans would begin a religious journey to the underground central Lanzón–a monolithic sculpture 15 feet tall depicting the fanged deity of Chavín. The chamber was architecturally built to produce and amplify the sounds of the ground above. Archaeoacoustically, the features of this underground passageway seem to encourage the existence of a hallucinogenic journey to the center where shamans above ground might intentionally play tricks with the lights and sounds above you so you may stare awe-stricken at the Lanzón once you reach it. Perhaps you fall to your knees. Perhaps you were already on your knees.

Insert Favourite Meme ever.

What’s your screen time?

Daily average = 5.5 hours on phone.

Relationship to your schizophrenic device?

I know when it is trying to be my evil twin. That’s how you win. But sometimes me and twin stay locked in.

How would you describe your iG page? Curation? Moodboard? Dump?

Posting feel like eyes roll back into head and tongue loll out and you start speaking a prophecy and then the post becomes a multipart globule of brain chunkage enfilade reliant upon a Markov chain of network understanding.

I would say you are a niche Tumblr type source - what page did you grow up on?

I used to love these 2 blogs of this couple that lived in Antwerp I can’t remember their usernames but they broke up at some point and I stopped watching. I also really loved @sandsvendor100 but you have to remember I joined Tumblr when I was 12.

Dream Blunt Rotation?

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sue de Beer, Ana Mendieta

What do you do for $?

Frost Children creative director + nightlife photographer + social media intern + freelance graphic design = my current lifestyle
Looking for more work tho hmu

What do you spend most $ ?

Looking for more work tho hmu

What Foot Tattoo would you get?

Tattoo from @cheaptruth9891999 of the staff god at Chavín on the sole of my right foot that takes up the whole foot. Or Anna Opperman drawing.

Who are you currently listening to?

The Tear Garden, Strawberry Switchblade, Kino, Mice Parade, Country Teasers,Frost Children, Momus, Air, Malcolm McLaren, Lolina, Hail the Sun, Pulp, The Legendary Pink Dots, Suicide, Sparks, Corridos Ketamina, Morrissey, DJ Hoes Mad, Hanin Elias, John Maus, Strictly Ballroom, NEW YORK, Psychic TV, Cranes, Silver Jews, Television Personalities, Orange Juice, iwrotehaikusaboutcannibalisminyouryearbook, Lento Violento, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin

Why should people follow you?

Be such a dope soul that people crave your vibes.

Favourite Porn website?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Favorite Account on Ig?

@chair_shibarior @agent_labradeur

If IG was deleted tomorrow would you be ok darling?

No. If Tumblr was deleted tho, I’d die.

Pic of Feet (can be in socks):

By: Sydney Sweeney and Timothée Chalamet ft. Eileen Slightly

Here is a long-overdue essay that, at its outset, is driven by the founding principle of Hollywood Superstar Review, that being, biting the hand that feeds it. Going straight for our own magazinical jugular. Staring the gift horse in its publishing mouth. Inspecting the soft hands of the London art ecosystem, one encounters thousands of pieces of metaphysical debris: in our editor's inbox, unread digital PDFs of art shows we don't want to see, will never see, and are likely never, ever going to write about. It's a good thing that I, Sydney Sweeney, have a fantastic grasp of my own personal public relations — and that I, Timothée Chalamet, have made quite clear of late the fact that I have none.

Part one of "Art and Magazine Irrelevancy"

This is an article that investigates the proliferation of PR firms employed by galleries in London that specialise in promoting art, artists, and exhibitions...

...The outsourcing of PR takes away any of its sexiness. If galleries did their own PR again things could be different, and the promotion could emerge alongside da oeuvre of concern. Instead its just this rabid thing jack rabbit fucking a fleshlight of fake (bitch-goddess of) success. It's confusing the youth, it's not relevant.

The relentless emailing is, we guess, necessary because you must sort through the continuous fatberg of art, and there must be discernment, right? Someone tell me that's right! Contemporary Art Library can’t be the ONLY thing. So, if you ever look at the internet, the media or broadsheets (god forbid) and wonder why the only content there is that produced by the same nine “emerging” galleries, “groundbreaking” institutions and “brave” artists, then you may find your answer in these jaded dulcet tones:

“We thought you might find this interesting”

“This one's right up your street!”

“I hope your week’s off to an amazing start!”

“Feature Idea: Solo Exhibition at the Intersection of Conceptual Art and Luxury Finance”

For us two, the collective press-hallucination started with George Rouy. Abstract-figurative painter. Easily marketable, kind of sexy (?) bad boy of art who was an obvious homage to iterations of artists from bygone generations whose suit-wearing was not anachronistic, and whose studios were actually unheated (thinking of that famous NG postcard of Freud and Bacon looking drunk and angry).

Rouy’s canvases and public-facing image form the nexus, nay, the blueprint for a generation of press releases and artist portraits where, much like how an owner resembles its dog, the artist resembles the art, which is, of course, a thing to sell – Rouy knows this; look at his paintings.

Today, we have such wonderful, complicated b2b systems for selling things. Whole companies, with their 4-word job titles and AI-integrated workflows. Our special guest for today, that has so far gone pretty unsurveilled by the general public, are the ART PR FIRMS. You’ve heard of crisis management (for arms dealers, technocrats, boob jobs etc) — the art PR firm is the climbing vine exerting a crumbling stranglehold on the faded edifice of art criticism and editorial structure.

Public Relations is a term that, on the outside, feels innocuous. Starting out in journalism, you are approached by ‘PR Teams’ who offer you exclusive access to galleries, programming, exhibitions and artists. The same PR teams will be emailing the editors of each and every art publication in an attempt to have their show covered. By the time you pitch, an editor will likely know of the show. An editor will, in fact, have been alerted to the show on regular intervals and already have decided whether to cover it. When you dip your toe in for the first time, none of this is obvious to you.

Here’s the principle of the system, put simply: editors and writers need things to cover; galleries need coverage to plump their gram and quote to collectors; institutions need evidence of impact to return to funding bodies and jurors; and PR are here to help grist the mill, hold your hand, and see you through to completion.

It feels the desired result among all this is for a show to have so many angles, so many pressure points applied, that a collective Mandela syndrome will emerge whereby its relevance (and merit) will materialise from deep within the subconscious. (Much like the entire ‘London Scene’, a term coined in 2023.)

We experienced this recently with the infamous Rose Easton show “O…to have a mouth”. I started having dreams about an exhibition whose presence on Instagram was so divorced from its relative merits, ideas or wider cultural relevance that I began to feel like Cary Grant in Spellbound: noticing patterns, scared of forks, uncertain about life outside of the sanatorium.

This is not to say that editorials are not biased; editors are often in bed with (or, at least for now, on PINT terms) with artists they cover. The art world is small; it's inevitable. A more pressing issue is the lack of discernment. If every programme on this gallery's 3-month-long rotation is groundbreaking, or brave, or even just cool to look at visually, what’s the expected output? I want to know their endgame. A fully stacked artist's dossier that just lists the same outlets on a three-month rotation?

It would be better if PRs started their own publications where they could regurgitate desired sentiments.These could be made by AI – and probably read by AI, summarized by Gemini, then used to train AI; how’s that for a dildo-fleshlite theorem, which, for you infidels, is an analogy for a substanceless interaction, a penetration simulation? – and circumvent the need for legacy magazines (defined here as, let’s say, those that have been around for ten years or longer). A great example of this is found in the Press Release Sus Instagram account, that points out when PR texts are AI generated.

In a supreme effort to ensure that the right shows get the right kind of press and exposure is maximised, ### the sites would run a rotation of two or three Bethnal Green-based galleries each season. These ### publications could be called things like:

HOT YOUNG MAGAZINE

ART FOR THE PEOPLE

PLASTER MAGAZINE

The recourse toward ease (and there’s little that’s nastier) is PR’s its greatest weapon. But at what cost? It’s not groundbreaking to say that taste is dictated by money – but if even the more emerging names are the product of a well-oiled machination of bulk emails, it makes you wonder where genuine talent begins and public promotion ends. And all the while, the curious workaday everyperson – that’s who art is for, right? – sees the art world through a stage-managed pinhole.

Hollywood Superstar’s question of who art is for is one we seek to address over a longer course of investigation. Right now, art is just the one of the few third spaces where young people can hang out, drink for free and feel relatively wanted.

Another thing at stake: the artists – because it’s supposed to be about them, right?– are unwittingly getting fucked by the very PRs promoting them. If an editor's inbox is flooded with bad copy describing an artist’s practice, how is their work meant to be received with anything more than a heavy dose of indifference? It requires the kind of strength and X-ray bullshit-vision which many just aren’t paid enough for.

For emerging artists, the desire to rely solely on their gallery and PR to “make their name” is understandable, but shouldn’t be necessary. They may look at the art world and wonder how certain people have got to where they are. The answer, most of the time, is that taste as it stands is corrupted by galleries paying public relations agencies to promote their programme to the Nth degree. Usually, or in the not so distant past, this kind of system was reserved for Blue Chips. Today, as smaller galleries come to the fore in terms of sale to overhead costs (scaling down in order to reach a broker market, reducing the cost of running a large scale operation) a significant budget can instead be allocated toward promotion.

A few case studies for this can be found in smaller galleries whose scale allows them to opt into the emerging stand in fairs, but whose overhead costs allow for well-timed “deals” from PR companies.

What’s more, in London today, what is publicly accepted (as it has been for some time) by newsletters and mid-sized outlets as ‘emerging’ is actually highly stratified and engineered. It occludes real artist-led initiatives and the underground. This is not necessarily a problem. The frustration we felt when setting out to write this piece was the effect of an out-and-out flattening: walls slowly closing in on a narrowing stream of artists, writers, editors. ### PR means the underground stays underground, but it also acts as a kind of bulwark of shit. The upside is that, maybe, what is real is that which just doesn’t get covered.

This overreliance on crappy unconvincing PR harms the artist. Pay attention to the bigger picture, though, and the injurious pattern for these companies, like most things under the monied sun, trends upwards. Emerging gallery first; small, chic-peopled openings; notionally conceptual foundations; press coverage; first fairs; first missed energy bill; pivot to paintings – and then comes the next step (and something we can get into next time): PR for a public institution. This is where the real fun is. ⁠⁠Everyone knows that PR firms are a key arm in State-image massaging, and everyone also knows the best image-massager is contemporary art (and maybe football, but superstars don’t care for it). PR handshake state institutions, all drinking from the same teapot that tips for various armed forces. Feature Idea: The First Institutional Show in Region for Hot Young!

Here’s an analogy for you: the AI influencer, run by a bot, created from male fantasies, is the perfect form of labour. It requires no impetus but can fulfill every fantasy. Sometimes, I wonder if the PR’s dream writer is Claude?

Fuck it, we recently ran an article on our page just so a friend of ours could be considered for a VISA. We’re definitely not not complicit.

FYI - If PR decides they need some run of the mill reviews our pockets are pretty empty right now and we love Vietnamese food (JK).

Here’s a list of small galleries in London that employ the preceding PR firms.

Strobel Lall Communications

Rose Easton
Ginny on Frederick
Arcadia Missa
The Perimeter
Champ Lacombe
Incubator

Sam Talbot

Soft Opening
Alison Jacques
Sadie Coles (sometimes…)

Sutton Comms

Josh Lilley
Hauser & Wirth
Sprüth Magers
Elizabeth Xi Bauer

Pelham Communications

LAMB Gallery
Lévy Gorvy Dayan
Lisson
David Zwirner
Gallery 1957
Pilar Corrias
Massimodecarlo
Waddington Custot

–

I asked a clanker to collate all the emails I've received from PR in the last year and tell me which galleries have been pushed the most. This is what it said:

Strobel Lall's website has no public client list, so I've built this from what I could confirm:

Rose Easton is their most pushed client by far — 6 emails, three of which were the Beatriz Olabarrieta follow-up chain that you never replied to. They're clearly working hard on that relationship. The Manon Wertenbroek pitch in January was separate and also unanswered.

The Perimeter is a newer addition to their pitching — all three emails came in Feb/March, suggesting it's a recent retainer. Two of those are about Camille Henrot, who is genuinely a significant name, so that pitch has more weight than the others.

Ginny on Frederick is quietly appearing more — two emails in Feb/March, both unanswered. Worth knowing if you have any interest in that gallery.

The big gap: Gathering and Wschód — both confirmed clients, neither has ever been pitched to you. Wschód in particular has a strong programme and is interesting from a European contemporary art perspective. It's a genuine blind spot, or possibly they've decided you're not the right outlet for those.

Want me to pull up any of the specific pitches in full — particularly the Camille Henrot or Beatriz Olabarrieta ones — or draft a response to any of these?

OR

Monthly volume: Sam Talbot runs at 25–37 emails a month consistently, spiking hard in October (Frieze season). Rees & Co were very active Sep–Jan but have gone nearly quiet since February, which might be worth noting — they may have lost clients or shifted strategy. Sutton Comms and Strobel Lall are steady, low-volume but persistent.

Follow-up heat: Sutton Comms is the most aggressive follow-upper by far — 8 follow-ups on a single Sprüth Magers pitch is notable. Rees & Co follow up heavily too, especially on interview pitches (Laura Lima at 5 follow-ups). Sam Talbot, interestingly, almost never follows up — he sends at volume and moves on, which tracks with his broadcast press-release style vs the more relationship-focused approach of Sutton/Rees.
Sam Talbot clients: BALTIC is his most repeated client (4 mentions), with a cluster of institutions at 3 — Goldsmiths CCA, Alison Jacques, Camden Art Centre, Spike Island, Soft Opening, Sainsbury Centre, Henry Moore. These are likely his retainer clients rather than one-off projects.

N.B.

*Getting away from PR cycle boom and busts also means getting away from the capitalist “innovation” narrative of (art) history. Don't get us wrong, we love PR stunt-art of days gone by, but I don't wanna get nostalgic for the tradition of da new: the Brave New World can fuck off.

Although PR firms are globally up to justifying the grandest malfeasance (Why is Bill Gates still alive?), the engine of manufactured consent of the art world is a rubbish one- more like manufactured indifference!!! Instead of another email insisting I’m missing out on this week’s latest product, I’d much rather, idk… consort with an ancient text?*

Taix rhymes with Sex and that's what LA was gathered to Eulogise. Or rather, confess. Hollywood appears to have been copying our Superstar bit: there is anonymous writing celebrities everywhere. Jack Skelley edited the iconic Barney: A Modern Stoneage Magazine in the near '80s, whilst writing The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker (semiotexte, 2023), an editor favourite. Skelley writes an absurd sexual scene report in a style we thank him for: Miley Cyrus is back on shrooms.

As below events occur, empires careen thru history’s stoopidest war.

“Not the CNN/TikTok wars; nor the 2004 Simulacra Wars of Ikea pressboard
rationales, such as WMDs; nor the counterfeit meme wars of 2024 – ‘they’re
eating the cats and dogs.’ Today’s war churns hydra pedogarchy’s smashing
and eating of babies and placentas for Peter EpThiel’s Mars colony. After this –
ha! – abandon hope, all ye of democracy fig-leafs. For now, the striptease of
market cabals gives hard-ons to patriarch missiles. But check it out: Their own AI
foresees the collapse of ugly naked body empires. So Antifa Luke Skywalker
tangles his tow-cables around the ankles of those big, armored snow walkers,
and – boom! – the fuckers fuck themselves. See what I mean?”

This is Miley Cyrus whispering into my ear with her licking and flicking tongue.

We are standing on Sunset Boulevard outside of Taix (pron. “TEX,” rhymes with “sex”)
restaurant, soon to be demolished. I adore Miley more than ever since she’s back on
shrooms. We’re all out here in a sidewalk wake staged by Sammy Loren in eulogy to
Taix, the romantic hang and receptacle of confessions from the naughty ids of Los
Angeles.

Lily Lady is here too. Lily leads the crowd in a cheer: a chance Sunset sidewalk
chanson of:

TAIX, TAIX, TAIX, TAIX!!!
(pron. TEX, TEX, TEX, TEX!!!)

One by one, the artists and writers recount memories of blowjobs and choke-sex in the
Taix restrooms. Oh, wait. that wasn’t Taix. That was El Prado, down the street. Or was it
Footsies in Highland Park?

It’s funny because, the following week, I run into Miley Cyrus again at the St Patrick’s
Day House Party: This is the lit-reading I throw with Lily Lady at Lily’s vacant Gothy
avocado courtyard apartment in lower Los Feliz. It is there I remember that Lily Lady
and Miley Cyrus both performed in Alejandro Jodorowski’s film Blood Brother, in which
Miley plays Lily. (Blood Brother has since evolved to become Lily’s new book of poems,
launching April 30 at Poetic Research Bureau, where I will QA Lily and get to the bottom
of all this!)

Before our guests arrive, Lily points out the MAKEOUT ROOM. It’s the bedroom, but
instead of a bed, the floor is filled with plushies pillowed 3-feet thick. Mostly white-and-
red Snoopies and Hello Kitties. Also cerulean Blue Smurfs peppered with paisley Labubus.

“If people get horny, they can do it in here!” beams Lily.
The reader/performers include Clarke E Andros, Ryan Lynch, Molly Larkey, Jo
Stone, Danielle Altman and Diva Corp. Andros’ love sonnets are tight and tender. Diva
Corp manifests as a video of artist Petra Cortright enacting Diva Corp’s poem “Gun” in
fiery arcs and blurs.

Altman reads “Striptease,” a sexy confessional, including:
I try to gather the pieces of myself together
But he pulls me back on the sheets
Reassembles me roughly
Strokes me past language
One can’t help imagining the “I” of the poem as one of Danielle’s Instafit teddy selfies.

After the reading, I find Miley. She’s holding a paper cup of Jameson Irish Whiskey.
“Are you drinking Jameson in honor of Fredric Jameson, the Marxist theorist and
Octopus of Totality?” I ask. “I just wrote a one-act about an encounter between you
and Fredric Jameson. You know: When you were tripping in the Bonaventure Hotel?”
Miley’s response – and it’s a St. Paddy’s miracle! – is to press her tongue again into
my ear! “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Into the plushy MAKEOUT ROOM we leap. Haloed by Hello Kitty cherubs, Miley is
erotodelic goddess. Miley is a radical of insurgent licking, scooping and choking.
Roughly dis- and re-assembling her, I nuzzle Snoopy into Miley’s heart-shaped treasure
wet with warmth. Preverbal and compressed, Miley is small, vowel-shaped, fiercely
obedient. Then, side-by-side, soothed in DDLG growls and whispers, she tongue-fucks
secret grammar. She strokes me past language. Miley shines. Miley murmurs...
“Now, together, we see thru the lizard-brain default mode the System forces upon
lab-grown psyches and bodies toward endless abuse, wars and genocide. The
System being – let’s fucking face it – capitalism and its hydra proxies of morality,
politics, culture and The Kardashians. But, ah, a sexy Sacred Heart alchemies
base Matter into a Flaming Lips dawn. Together, we bestow unity of
consciousness – thru flesh – to our sum inter-experience, including precious
love, and triple star-loads of soulpocalyptic orgasm ripples. Can I get an Amen?”

END.