July 25, 2023 |
Through a tension between manipulation and desire, a new exhibition Allow Cookies brings together the work of 12 emerging artists working across London.
Imagined by curators Laurie Barron, Isabel Davies, and Isabel Walter, each artist’s visual medium fuses together a critique and partake in seduction.
In collaboration with Kupfer, which platforms the work of those often underrepresented in the capital’s art circuit, the exhibition explores contemporary society through the magnetic pull of consumerism.
As the first show to take place inside Kupfer’s new gallery space on Scrutton Street in Shoreditch, you’ll find repurposed classified ads from 1970s and ‘80s gay magazines, as collaged by Waj Hussain, a fashion designer who specialises in clubwear. Evaluating the social currency of Instagram algorithms, Woodsy Bransfield then questions the material signifiers of class that are fuelled by targeted advertisements.
From Balenciaga collaborator Ana Viktoria Dzinic, the artist uses consumer technology – such as the artificial transformation of personal archival images into polaroids – to manifest fantasy realities. Firpal, who designed a dreamy prints collection for Skims, world builds imaginative digitally-rendered works from traditional Punjabi drawings and histories.
Artist Anya Gorkova emulates the longing, shame and power in queer consciousness in a Barbie-fit composition of fake gems glitter, and synthetic sugar features. Such ideas are further illuminated by the exhibition’s other artists Sofia Hallström, Lowena Hearn, Hongxi Li, Dani Marcel, Geo Stuart, Louis Blue Newby, and Laila Majid.
Open until Satursay, the show is a clever, introspective look of one’s place in today’s current climate through different lenses of pop culture, advertising, pornography, painting, photography, and hedonism.
‘Allow Cookies’ is open until July 29 at Kupfer, 3 Scrutton St, London, EC2A 4HF.
