Shadwell Biennial w/ s4e6 & santi gallery

Season 4 Episode 6 and santi - as always, we love to see it. The show on whole has this sort of tongue-in-cheekiness which reminds you a bit of teenage rebellion; it's like art basel's younger, punkier sibling. Like Minor Attractions, the show exhibits the theatrical bones of director Jacob Barnes' artistic philosophy (some brief research for this post turned up that he does actually have a degree in Cinema Studies, which makes so much sense).

The show presents an attempt to integrate Barnes' interest in experience-based and site-specific curation with Santiago Steib's auction house background. I am left with the question: is experience-based artwork financially viable within a gallery system?

It is certain that Barnes is doing something new, and alongside Steib, has made clear his aesthetic vision. Theatricality is of utmost importance here - the experience of the art is everything. Barnes' choice of venue, with its bright white lights and unavoidable post-industrial feel, resembles a theater, and many of the works reinforce this feeling, acting like set design as much as fine art objects.

James Sibley's work stands as the foremost example of the Biennial's set-build design. The piece invited more than a few Harry Potter references, at least among my group--that might be lowbrow, but the show seems to invite that.

In fact, maybe this performative lowbrow aspect functions as a character trait in whatever show this exhibition is staging.

Group shows are bad. /

Biennials are worse. /

Welcome to the Shadwell Biennial, a group show.

Tell me this isn't perfectly geared towards the carhartt-clad WFHers. But are they the ones buying the art?

There were certainly some works for which that doesn't seem to matter much at all. A film, an in-situ installation. Then there were works which remain object-based despite performative aspects: the following two works contain live (and quite precarious) elements, but also function as standalone and static pieces.

The works that were fully objects mirrored the industrial-performative and functional aesthetics of the set-like and experience-based works. These speak a language of "industry camp", using found (or could've-been-found) fixtures to create a work that could maybe almost be used for something, at some point, perhaps.

I have seen this language a lot around London, I am not sure if it is in-line with that carhartt workpants thing, or if it comes from somewhere else entirely. Regardless, it's definitely funny.

And at the same time there is also something sad, or maybe nostalgic about it. It makes me think of Tom Burr's Torrington Project: a post-industrial wasteland. At the same time, in many streams there is a post-covidinal loneliness, also emptiness. Storefronts are empty, community centers have shut.

But, then again, something new is coming up, and it's using the infrastructure of those old things. It is not parasitic, maybe something more like the hermit crabs of Pierre Huyghe.