Upcoming Cultural Servings

Captive Heart - Forma 

After their show ‘I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman’, London-based artist duo Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban extend their collaborative practice with a new installation, Captive Heart, opening 8th February at Forma’s new public art space in Bermondsey. Beginning with the iconic Mexican-American musician, Selena, the duo draws feelings of love, loss, grief and cultural transformation from the singer’s enduring legacy, and uses this space to reflect on the experiences of South London’s Latinx community. While revelling in the romance of the Old Kent Road’s cultural petri dish, the duo undercuts the rosiness of their reflection with an acknowledgement of the urban change omnipresent in the surrounding neighbourhood of Forma. Despite the heaviness of Athen and Nina’s artistic focus, the duo’s sensitivity and willingness to linger in the spaces between love and loss ultimately posits Captive Heart as an earnest interrogation into both personal histories and community erasure. 

Man Holding a Snake - 8 Holland Street

There’s a sense of kineticism intrinsic to Jake Garfield’s work, whether it’s two figures, arms locked in a wrestling match or Jake himself, frenetically carving his subjects into wood. Showing now until 12th April, Jake Garfield, Man Holding a Snake will be exhibited at 8 Holland Street. Dabbling in his signature forest green and deep scarlet palette, there’s an inviting carnality to Jake’s works, with his subjects dominated, sparring or gripping a snake with both hands. Despite the weighty thread of virility, there’s a real tenderness at play, as though the figures we’re looking at aren’t only fighting but pining for the other’s touch.

Yay, to have a mouth! - Rose Easton & Ginny on Frederick

Beginning at the mouth and ending up everywhere else, Yay, to have a mouth! presented by Rose Easton and Ginny on Frederick is a group show opening 14th February. Heralding the mouth as the site of pleasure and pain, the open mouth both expels and swallows, gulps down our mother's cooking or spits out vicious words. ‘Untitled or: an ode to my mouth’ by Sam Moore accompanies the exhibition and we quickly assimilate his pain, love and fear all through the visceral sensations of his mouth, tongue and teeth. Launching us into a suite of works by artists including RIP Germaine, Michael Ho, Hannah Murray, Jenkin van Zyl and more, Yay, to have a mouth! explores oral tradition, and the very physical way we engage with, spread or resist information. Whether you use yours for good or evil, celebrate your mouth and its multi-disciplinary renderings at Rose Easton on Valentine’s Day. 

Five Defence Towers - Chisenhale Gallery

Opening on 28th February, Chisenhale Gallery presents Five Defence Towers by artist Claudia Pagès Rabal. Interrogating the societal and physical structures that maintain and facilitate the flow of commodities and capital, Claudia’s latest body of work tracks methods of defence across the Iberian Peninsula during the Al-Andalus era. Centring five defence towers built by European forces across the 9th and 10th centuries, these stalwart structures – supplied with kinetic energy by Claudia – form part of her moving image work. Debuting choreographed sequences of dance, light and sound, Claudia’s reflections on self-defence are projected across the towers as for the first time since their erection, they  tussle with colonialism and its role in erasure and border maintenance. Open until 11th May, Five Defence Towers promises to be a moving – quite literally – physical and audio depiction of how containment has mutated across time.