Exhibitions

Who’s Who at Staley-Wise Gallery, New York: Until August 18, 2023

“Celebrities are instantly recognisable – or are they?” So teases the exhibition text for the current show at Staley-Wise Gallery in New York, which puts this question to visitors as they peruse a series of celebrity portraits in which the subject’s face is partially or entirely obscured. Featured photographers range from Herb Ritts and Arthur Elgort to Peggy Sirota and Stephanie Pfriender Stylander, who have turned their lenses on everyone from Naomi Cambell, Elton John, David Hockney, Prince, Jackie Kennedy and more. Some stand with their back to the camera, others don elaborate headwear or hide behind props, while others still are captured in close-ups of their hands, feet and mouths. Can you guess who’s who?

Birdsong at Timothy Taylor, London: Until August 11, 2023

At Timothy Taylor in London, Birdsong, a soon-to-close exhibit, is platforming the work of several influential talents in contemporary British art – both rising and established – with many of the pieces on display newly plucked from the artists’ studios. An eclectic selection of paintings, sculptures, prints and other mixed-media works from artists including Paula Rego, Sahara Longe, Yinka Shonibare, Rachel Whiteread and Richard Long are up for sale, with all of the profits from the show going to support The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

Robert Mapplethorpe: Fashion, Clothes, People, Pictures at Xavier Huskens, Online: Until September 3, 2023

If you’re stuck for entertainment on a rainy day, we recommend taking a peep at Brussels gallery Xavier Huskens’ new online exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: Fashion, Clothes, People. Curated by writer, fashion critic and curator Charlie Porter, the show explores the celebrated American image-maker’s relationship to fashion via his exquisitely rendered portraits and still lifes. These are presented alongside testimonials from collaborators, friends, and lovers that “reveal the photographer’s fascination and disdain of an industry he both promoted and criticised through his work.”

Read AnOther’s feature on the exhibition here.

Martine Syms: Loser Back Home at Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles: Until August 26, 2023

For those in or headed for Los Angeles, be sure to see Loser Back Home at Sprüth Magers, the new exhibition from LA native Martine Syms, whose combination of what the gallery terms “conceptual grit, humour and social commentary” has seen her emerge as a defining voice in contemporary US art in recent years. The Sprüth Magers show sees Syms present various new works in video, sculpture, painting and photography touching up on the themes of home, belonging and systems of power to stirring effect.

This Island Sunrise at Sadie Coles HQ, London: August 31 – September 24, 2023

One for the design fans, a forthcoming installation at Sadie Coles HQ will soon bring together “three remarkable thrones of artisanal construction, spanning four centuries”. The first is by the lauded British designer Tom Dixon, the next by the late, great conceptual artist Eduardo Paolozzi and the last by an unknown 17th-century woodturner. Each chair featured in the display, which is timed to overlap with next month’s London Design Festival, has been crafted from “humble, rudimentary, or discarded materials and [represents] creators operating at the very extremities of their capabilities”, the press release informs. Viewed together, the arresting trio serve to “stimulate an ambiguously interwoven contemplation upon origins, boundaries, authority and identity”.

After Cubism at Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit: August 18, 2023 – January 7, 2024

Between the First and Second World Wars, Paris was the centre of the Western art world, attracting creative minds from North and South America and across Europe. Drawing its title from artists Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier’s 1918 manifesto, Aprés le cubisme, an upcoming exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts pulls from its own permanent collection to examine some of the major artistic and architectural ideas circulating in France during this time. Spanning the work of Claude Cahun, Ilse Bing, Brassaï, Le Corbusier and Diego Rivera among others, After Cubism promises to take viewers on an exciting journey into the blossoming realms of surrealism, a new classicism for a modern age and beyond.

Run as Slow as You Can at Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Mumbai: Until October 22, 2023

In Mumbai, Milan-based creative studio TOILETPAPER, spearheaded by artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is currently holding its biggest exhibition to date, stretched across four floors of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre. The typically vibrant display is divided into four chapters that contemplate “the daily dualities of modern existence” through photography, design and architecture. A delightfully ironic, utterly absurdist and eye-poppingly colourful musing on “the homes we inhabit, the objects we own, and the people that surround us” ensues.

Chewing Gum VI at Pace Gallery, Hong Kong: August 4 – September 7, 2023

In Hong Kong, Pace Gallery will soon open the fourth edition of its exhibition series, Chewing Gum, uniting works by a diverse array of artists from its international programme to “propose new interpretations and connections among [their] practices”. Presenting dialogues between paintings, sculptures and photographs made between the early 2000s and the present day, key works include Relatum – Play of Primitive, Korean artist Lee Ufan’s powerful exploration of the relationship between objects and space, which will be shown alongside a complementary painting by US artist Mary Corse and a sculpture by Berlin-based duo Elmgreen & Dragset.

Reframing Neglect at The Africa Center, New York: August 5 – September 3, 2023

At the Africa Center in Harlem, New York, a new photography show, made in partnership with The END Fund, spotlights the heavy burden that neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) place on individuals and communities. Contemporary artist and activist Aïda Muluneh was invited to create a body of work with photographers from six African countries affected by NTDs for the purpose, the resulting photographs offering a poignant, frequently interpretive meditation on the devastating repercussions – physical, mental and financial – of such diseases. For those in London, the display will relocate to Cromwell Place on September 26.

Frank Horvat: Paris, the World, Fashion at Jeu de Paume, Paris: Until September 17, 2023

The late photographer Frank Horvat is currently the subject of an exhibition at Paris’ Jeu de Paume, focussing on the first 15 years of his remarkable, seven-decade-spanning career. Recognised as one of the leading pioneers of contemporary French fashion photography, Horvat was also an accomplished reportage photographer, and both sides of his accomplished practice are examined here in a display of over 170 prints and multiple archival documents. This includes a number of archive fashion publications chosen to contextualise Horvat’s sartorial snapshots, made as they were “at a time when the rise of ready-to-wear and the evolution of women’s social status profoundly modified the canons of the genre”.

Hank Willis Thomas, I’ve Known Rivers at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles: Until August 26, 2023

Another LA must-see, Pace Gallery is currently hosting its first exhibition of work by the US artist Frank Willis Thomas: a spellbinding new series of retroreflective artworks that bear two distinct scenes, revealed alternately depending on the lighting and the viewer’s perspective. Referencing the work of fellow artists including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Roy Lichtenstein, Henri Matisse, and Malick Sidibé, these new pieces “mine the complex origins and histories of modern art across Africa, the United States and Europe”, speaking to the artist’s “continued explorations of abstraction through the lenses of colonisation, globalisation and appropriation”.

Group Exhibition 2023 at Galerie Bene Taschen, Cologne: Until September 30, 2023

If you’re in Cologne, don’t miss the annual summer show at Galerie Bene Taschen, highlighting select works by artists across the gallery’s roster. This year, these range from reportage by Sebastião Salgado, striking set-ups by David LaChapelle, 1980s New York street photography by Jamel Shabazz and captivating compositions by Gregory Bojorquez.

Events & Performances

There are lots of exciting live performances to attend this August. At the Young Vic, British ballroom pioneer Jay Jay Revlon and award-winning director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu join forces once again for Sundown Kiki Reloaded, the anticipated follow-up to their acclaimed 2021 show Sundown Kiki, running until August 11. Expect a joyful collision of ballroom and theatre in what the Young Vic describes as “an evening of pumping music, dance and partying that celebrates a queerer London in all its glory”.

Edinburgh Fringe and Edinburgh International Festival are back from August 4–28 to deliver their annual serving of world-class comedy, theatre and dance. There are so many highlights to pick from (including a host of queer-led productions) but some of ours include Obehi Janice’s Casanova-inspired Nova, billed as “a new theatre-storytelling show following a Nigerian-American comedian as she navigates desire, power, and pussy”; Tim Crouch’s groundbreaking play An Oak Tree, first debuted in 2005, in which an actor who has neither seen nor read the play joins Crouch on stage for each new performance; and If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, the new show from British comedian Chloe Petts who made waves with her Fringe debut last year.

Dance fans, be sure to catch The Rite of Spring / Common Ground[s] double bill at the Edinburgh Playhouse: a performance of Pina Bausch’s legendary 1975 work by 34 performers from across Africa, preceded by a new piece by Germaine Acogny, dubbed the “mother of contemporary African dance”, and Malou Airaudo, who performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works.

At London’s National Theatre until October 7, meanwhile, Jamie Lloyd directs a new production of Lucy Prebble’s renowned play The Effect. Starring I May Destroy You’s Paapa Essiedu and Bones and All’s Taylor Russell, it follows two volunteers in a clinical drug trial whose blossoming romance may or may not be a side-effect of the medication they are testing.

Film

There are plenty of reasons to head to the cinema this month. Paris Memories, from French filmmaker Alice Winocour, is a deeply moving, richly woven portrait of a woman trying to regain her grounding after surviving a terrorist attack in Paris. L’Immensità sees transgender director Emanuele Crialese loosely draw upon her own transition in a gut-wrenching drama set in 1970s Italy, exploring the bond between mother and child. In Oliver Peyon’s Lie With Me, Stéphane, a successful French novelist returns to his hometown for the first time in many years. There, he encounters Thomas, his first love, and finds himself swamped by memories of their secret teenage love affair in a beautifully acted adaptation of Philippe Besson’s acclaimed novel of the same name.

Funny and thrilling in equal measure, Louis Garrel’s crime caper The Innocent sees a prison theatre teacher fall for one of her students, only to arouse the suspicions of her son, who wonders if his mother’s new partner is the reformed man he claims to be. In father-daughter comedy Scrapper, the feature debut from British director Charlotte Regan, an absent father returns to look after his 12-year-old daughter, who has been happily fending for herself in the wake of her mother’s death. Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s wonderfully kooky Theater Camp finds the eccentric staff of a drama initiative in upstate New York haphazardly taking the reins when the camp’s indomitable falls unwell. While this month’s must-see documentary is undoubtedly Kokomo City, in which filmmaker D Smith shines a light on the lives of four Black trans sex workers in New York and Georgia through a series of intimate interviews.

Food & Drink

August has lots of new openings, pop-ups and menus to keep the foodies satisfied. From August 1–26, Italian eatery Luca is offering a special summer menu, titled the Ferragosto, honouring the annual Italian vacation that begins on August 15. The menu will centre around the best summer produce from Italy and the British Isles, combining some of the restaurant’s signature offerings with dishes from Italy’s coastal regions. Think: burrata with vesuvio tomato with white peach, shaved fennel and sfincione; vitello tonnato with tema artichoke, celery, capers and preserved lemon; and roasted Stillman’s Farm pork chop with Italian peas and girolles.

Don’t miss your chance to experience an exceptional Hong Kong dining experience at Carousel on Charlotte Street, where cult favourite Ho Lee Fook (translation: “good fortune for your mouth”) is currently in the midst of a ten-day residency, running until August 5.  Promising electrifying Cantonese flavours, the menu from chef ArChan Chan offers Hong Kong favourites with a bold contemporary twist – “Prawn Toast x Okonomiyaki” with kewpie mayonnaise, bull-dog sauce, shaved cabbage and nori, for instance, and a mouthwatering take on Peking duck.

On August 9, south London aperitivo bar These Days is joining forces with with east London restaurant Stuffed for a one-off Italian feast, served on a single long table à la Stuffed’s Netil Market eatery. Expect vegetarian antipasti and fresh pasta in abundance, including ve-du-ya (vegetarian nduja) and caciocavallo arancini balls served with basil aioli, spaghettoni with miso puttanesca, rounded off by a tantalising tiramisu.

The Langham London now boasts a new restaurant dedicated to modern Caribbean fare. The Good Front Room is headed up by chef Dom Taylor, who was awarded his own space in the prestigious London hotel when he won the TV cooking competition Five Star Kitchen. Taylor is “on a mission to recreate, modernise and ignite a new lease of life into Caribbean cooking”, drawing on his classical training, love of travel and the arts, and his family teachings for the purpose. Guests can anticipate an imaginative take on Caribbean classics, ranging from jerk chicken served with plantain jam, plantain crisp and blackened sweetcorn dressing to dark rum-glazed pork belly with pickled raisins and cho cho, charred hispi cabbage and thyme salt crackling.

Look out for Counter 71, a minimalist new restaurant from Joe Laker (formerly Fenn, Anglo & Roots) in Shoreditch. Serving dishes like smoked eel, caviar and wasabi, heavenly soda bread and langoustine broth and pickled carrot around a marble counter where you can watch the chefs at work, unexpected ingredients collide in a 15-course tasting menu that showcases ingredients sourced from the British Isles.

If you’re planning a visit to the newly renovated National Portrait Gallery, we recommend treating yourself to some sustenance at its brand new dining spot, The Portrait, helmed by Irish chef and restaurateur Richard Corrigan. Using the finest ingredients from the British and Irish Isles, the suitably artful menu includes whole artichoke, with crab mayo and kombu; Cornish plaice with coastal herbs, buttered vegetables, and dressed Carlingford oysters with ginger, lime, coriander.

This August, Chris Restrepo of Kurisu Omakase will be heading to Cycene, the Michelin-starred Shoreditch hotspot, to collaborate with the latter’s executive chef Theo Clench on a 12-course, seafood-led menu. Running for four nights only (August 8 and 9, 15 and 16), the dinner will begin in Cycene’s ground floor bar, “where Clench and Restrepo will collaborate on Yoroppa-Mae-style sushi dishes”, before relocating guests to the upstairs kitchen “where dishes to follow will incorporate a four-hands approach”. The menu is yet to be announced, but there’s no doubt the experience will be a truly special one.