Springtime Cultural Servings pt.2

Silly Bitch - Soup London 

For Tulani Hlalo’s solo exhibition, ‘Silly Bitch’, the gallery space at Soup is transformed into a competition tent, reminiscent of those seen on ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’ or Crufts, epitomising a slightly queasy-inducing pageantry aesthetic. Composed of moving image, performance, sculpture and textile installation, ‘Silly Bitch’ is an irreverent study on identity and performance within societal, racial and cultural contexts. Positioning herself as a prize-winning poodle, Hlalo’s moving image work balances humour and surrealism as she dons a poochy costume finished with a pantomime-esque rosette. Poodle Hlalo appears pissed off, she’s a winner, sure, but she would also much rather be chasing her own tail or running free with a bunch of other mutts. She exists as a creature torn between her aesthetic expectations and her natural instincts; perhaps the observer can relate? The lurid blue drapes of the gallery walls are hung with four new wall-mounted textiles, tufted rugs figure as uncomfortably familiar animal hides, as a lobster named Lucky and a genetically mutated zebra named Tira are displayed for all to see, their physical anomalies figuring them as outsiders amongst their species but held in high regard when observed with the human penchant for rarity. ‘Silly Bitch’ is showing at Soup until 8th June. Woof. 

Winding without Shore - Gathering 

Through processes of collecting and scavenging, New York-based artist Shuyi Cao, establishes her sculptures as participants in her personal ecosystem. Cao’s exhibition, ‘Winding without Shore’, is haunted by the past lives that make up pieces within the show. As memory, conversations, moments of joy and despair are subsumed by the digital sphere, the physical traces of these lived experiences are too whisked away by a pixelated ether. Cao dabbles in an intimate take on archaeology and seeks to extract a more recent history from her finds, one that connects her physical process of collecting objects-cum-artefacts with an imagined future. Driftwood, rocks, minerals, dried seeds and shells form the bases of works like ‘Xenophora I’ and ‘Xenophora II’, which embody an organic-like sprouting stance, the bony arms of the sculptures reaching up and out. Visually, the space shifts into an alien landscape, but Cao firmly roots the show and its materials on a personal plane, dancing between the world that we can certainly see but perhaps can’t yet feel. Showing until 7th June, ‘Winding without Shore’ can be viewed at Gathering. 

Twice as tall in the rain - Pipeline 

Walking past the window of the Pipeline, a quick glance inside might reveal nothing more than a sparse room, dotted with tired domesticities, a hat stand, some curtains, and a window to nowhere. However, George Richardson’s latest exhibition, ‘Twice as Tall in the rain’, implores visitors to adopt his own philosophy when observing often overlooked objects, one that prioritises a consideration of even the most banal archetypes. Maintaining a stoic belief that sculpture is devoid of any so-called ‘neutral decisions’, Richardson aims to re-contextualise the everyday, reconfiguring mundane objects with an uncanny spirit, bending them (sometimes literally) to his will, reworking them to figure as surreal objects within a familiar setting. A 1930s bowler hat is set in self-levelling concrete, and umbrellas are cast in Pears soap. A set of wooden curtains hangs on the wall and a concrete window provoke imaginings of waking to a grey London sky, all the while, still throwing open the curtains, in hope of the blue that will come. Twice as tall in the rain is open until 30th May. 

Gaaaaaaasp - The Perimeter 

For Alexandra Metcalf’s first public solo exhibition, The Perimeter is transformed with an intentional liminality, visually mutating across time periods and oscillating between freakish and familiar. Gaaaaaaasp is no small feat as Metcalf transforms the bright modern spaces of the gallery into a waiting room where your name will never be called, a childhood bedroom you can’t grow out of and a discarded surgical theatre. Themes of domesticity are prevalent across the exhibition, as she wrangles with institutional attempts at fostering a sense of home which only ever collapse into an uncanny replica; yes there’s comforting superficialities, but the innate and suffocating spirit of these spaces is omnipresent. Metcalf’s paintings are as equally anxiety inducing as her spatial installations. Depicting universal scenes of banality with visceral psychedelic imagery, her girlish figures, in their a-line dresses and mary janes are hauntingly aware of their canvas-confinement. They stare back, or reach out a hand, they look behind their shoulder as they’re changing and they’re doubly trapped by domestic bureaucracy and their painted state. The candy-like palette of the exhibition heeds a gentler atmosphere, beckoning visitors to enter, unguarded, only to be struck by the unnerving marrow of the show. Showing until 25th July, pay a visit to see Gaaaaaaasp at The Perimeter.