Are We the Gods of Our Own Image? Notes on the Virtual Beauty Exhibition (Somerset House 2025) Part 2 (Sections V-VIII)

 

Qualeasha Wood: It's All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024) [a]

Arvida Byström: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022) [b] 

 

Photos taken by Maria Thanassa on her i-Phone at the 

Virtual Beauty exhibition (2025): somersethouse.org.uk

 

'We used to check our reflections in bathroom mirrors. Now, we check them in selfies ... on TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. 

A flick of the screen shows our face, but a little smoother, a little more symmetrical, with a glow. 

In this world, we don’t just see ourselves. We edit ourselves. We curate.' - Matthilde Friis

 

Part One of this post (sections I - IV) can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

V.

 

One of the curators of the Somerset House summer exhibition - Virtual Beauty (23 July - 28 September 2025) - Mathilde Friis, has written a short essay in which she argues that at the heart of the show is a political question; not whether "beauty is liberating or constraining, but how we use it, and who gets to decide" [c].

 

It's almost as if she substitutes the word beauty for another word; one beginning with 'p' that many of those exploring issues around visual culture, sexuality, gender and identity from a post-feminist and post-Foucauldian perspective still insist is the great clue to everything: power.   

 

The problem with this is it's easy to become entangled within a discursive network of power and easy to conceive of the latter in a rather old-fashioned (overly simplistic) manner that fails to recognise its simulated nature and its ultimate dissolution into a realm of seduction and signs without referents (as Baudrillard would say) [d]. 

 

Power is not an underlying structure; nor is it a thing that one can possess and wield. The minute you use the word power in all sincerity you have failed to grasp that it's a kind of convenient fiction and, whether you intend to or not, you reify power as a static entity or object that can be analysed. 

 

And so, if we are to become the playful "makers of our own image" [e], as Friis suggests, let it be in the name of something else other than power/knowledge (one is almost tempted to suggest impotence and forgetfulness).  

 

VI.

 

The strange thing with the Virtual Beauty exhibition is just how indebted to the past it felt at times: a sneaky reference to Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (1985) here; a little bit of Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth (1990) hinted at there. 

 

Matthilde Friis mentions both authors and both books in her essay. Admitting the limitations of cyberfeminism - techno-utopias tend to always bump against the limits of physical reality - she also wonders if the digital world really offers endless opportunities for reinvention and liberation, or just the same old bullshit repackaged and recycled; "are we escaping the beauty myth, or just rewriting its code?" [f].   

 

Probably the latter: 

 

"The internet didn't erase gender or racial boundaries. It replicated them. Platforms that promised liberation were embedded with old biases. While the medium was new, the pressures remained the same." [g]

 

Thus, whilst beauty in 2025 may no longer just be about makeup, fashion, and hairstyle - but also "pixels, data, and code" [h] - old standards and stereotypes persist and old concerns to do with sexual objectification, for example, or how beauty still plays upon certain racial characteristics, return to trouble us anew. 

 

And so we come to the two works I wish to briefly discuss here: firstly, Qualeasha Wood's It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024); and, secondly, Arvida Byström's A Daughter Without A Mother (2022) ... 

 

 

VII.

 

Some readers might be wondering if, as a straight white cis male, I'm qualified - or even entitled - to comment on the work of black queer artist Qualeasha Wood. I understand the concern and admit that there's a racial and sexual history here which, as Mysia Anderson says, simply must be acknowledged and taken into account [i].   

 

Having said that, however, it would seem absurd to pretend I hadn't seen and didn't very much like Wood's contribution to the Virtual Beauty exhibition; a clever and amusing combination of traditional textile techniques and glitch aesthetics [j] that exposes (and critiques) how the femme body is shaped, commodified, and circulated online via popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. 

 

Her tapestry cleverly reclaims her own image and, fabricated as it is in woven jacquard (embroidered with glass seed beads), it constitutes a form of defiance to (and subversion of) the relentless digital age and its beloved glass screens.  

 

The medium is the message, as everyone used to say ... [k]

 

  

VIII. 

 

I will always have time for works which involve the use of dolls; some readers may recall my fascination with Amber Hawk Swanson's Amber Doll project (2007-10), for example, that I posted about back in 2013 and which the artist details on her website here. 

 

And so I was naturally drawn to the work of Arvida Byström, a young Swedish artist and photographer who, according to a recent press release, "travels in an aesthetic universe of disobedient bodies, fruits in lingerie, tulips and AI sex dolls" [l].

 

A Daughter Without A Mother (2022) is a mixed media installation that, on the one hand, critically examines how even AI can be used to replicate sexual stereotypes and thus collaborate in the pornification of the female body (and, indeed, the entire culture), whilst, on the other hand, inviting viewers to "contemplate the complexities of identity and intimacy" [m] associated with realistic looking sex dolls.     

 

I wouldn't say it's a great work: or even her best work. But it does return us to a question she has raised before concerning female fantasy figures who lack mothers and might best be described as the daughters of men (i.e., born of the pornographic imagination and styled according to male desires, values, and ideas; Eve, Aphrodite, Galatea, Maria ... et al). 

 

Another theme that Byström's work in the exhibition touches on is the question of why human beings have always dreamed of creating perfect copies of themselves whilst, at the same time, they possess a deep-rooted fear - automatonophobia - of replicants; be they dolls, cyborgs, or clones.     

      

Perhaps that's why, in the end, she seems to get such relief from having ripped off the head of poor Harmony ...

 

 

 

Arvida Byström:  

A Daughter Without a Mother (2022)

Notes

 

[a] Qualeasha Wood: It's All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024): woven jacquard, glass seed beads, and machine embroidery. The exhibition label informs us: 

      "Using webcam self-portraits, the artist reclaims visibility, challenging systems of control while highlighting the tension between self-expression and the pervasive influence of socia media and digital technologies." 

 

[b] Arvida Bystrom: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022): mixed media installation, including a short film (36 secs). The exhibition label informs us:  

      "Originally conceived as a performance piece [...] the work critically examines how AI is used to replicate beauty standards, perpetuating the sexualisation of the female body and contributing to its objectification."

 

[c] Matthilde Friis, 'From the Selfie to the Avatar: Beauty, Bias, and the Digital Self' (2025). This essay written to accompany the Virtual Beauty exhibition is available on the Someret House website: click here.   

 

[d] See Jean Baudrillard's Forget Foucault, trans. Mark Polizzotti (Semiotext(e), 2007).

      In 1976, Baudrillard sent an essay with the title Oublier Foucault to the magazine Critique (where the latter worked as an editor). Published the following year, it made Baudrillard a notorious figure within philosophical figures; for not only did he pretty much sum up Foucault's work (on power and sexuality) as a mythic discourse, but he also ridiculed the revolutionary politics of desire being peddled at that time by Deleuze and Guattari.  

       Forget Foucault ecourages readers to move beyond Foucault's cratology, rather than become trapped by its logic and thus prevented from thinking the complex dynamics of contemporary culture in a manner more appropriate to the times.      

 

[e-h] Matthilde Friis, as cited and linked to in note [c] above. 

 

[i] Just for the record, I've been thinking through questions to do with racial fetishism, sexual objectification, the visual representation of female bodies, etc., since 1991: my MA dissertation was on the position and portrayal of women in Nazi Art and Society; my initial PhD proposal was on the figure of the prostitute and the construction of illicit female sexual identity; and there are many posts published on Torpedo the Ark dealing with these and related topics from a perspective informed by my reading of feminist and queer theory (go to labels and find them for yourself).    

 

[j] For my discussion of glitch aesthetics, see the post entitled 'Glitch: the Art of Error and Imperfection' (28 June 2023): click here.  

 

[k] I'm sure I don't need to remind readers that this phrase - 'the medium is the message' - was coined by the communications theorist Marshall McLuhan to suggest that how the message is relayed matters more than the actual content; it's the medium - such as TV or the internet - that ultimately shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves, and how we interact with others, etc.

      See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (1964). The phrase 'the medium is the message' is found in chapter one and suplies the chapter title.    

 

[l] The press release was for an exhibition featuring Byström's work entitled Abyss (26 June - 26 July 2025) at Galerie Kandlhofer (Vienna, Austria): click here.  

 

[m] Quoted from the Virtual Beauty exhibition label describing Arvida Byström's: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022).  

 

Are We the Gods of Our Own Image? Notes on the Virtual Beauty Exhibition (Somerset House 2025): Part 1 (Sections I-IV)

 

 

Top: Ines Alpha: I'd rather be a cyborg (2024) 

Bottom: M.C. Abbott,  María Buey González, and Carl Olsson: Peak Face (2021)    

Images from the Virtual Beauty exhibition 

somersethouse.org.uk

 

'This exhibition highlights how questions of beauty are intrinsically linked to the screens and devices 

through which we view ourselves every day, and the altered, enhanced, 

or filtered identities we share via these devices.' 

 

 

I. 

 

Currently showing at Somerset House is a new exhibition curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado [a], Matthilde Friis [b], and Bunny Kinney [c]. 

 

Entitled Virtual Beauty and featuring work by over twenty artists working across sculpture, photography, installation, and video, it explores the impact of digital culture and technologies on traditional notions of beauty; in other words whereof aesthetics in an age of social media, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence [d]. 

 

Well, I say that, but it seems to me that most of the works are really more concerned with sexuality and subjectivity, self-image and identity, rather than with beauty per se (which is fair enough, I suppose, as it's virtually impossible to discuss the latter without also discussing these other topics). 

 

 

II. 

 

According to the press statement, a highlight of the show is a work entitled Omniprésence (1993) by the French multi-media artist ORLAN who has been interrogating ideas of beauty and how the body is stylised since before many of the other participants in the exhibition were even born; and perhaps no one has taken things as far as her. 

 

However, in an age when plastic surgery is now common and there are several reality TV programmes happy to portray in graphic detail what such cosmetic procedures involve (and how they can sometimes have very undesirable conequences), watching a 21 minute film of the above under the knife over thirty years ago is a bit boring after a couple of minutes. 

 

It's an ironic consequence of living in a world which artists such as ORLAN anticipated by pushing the boundaries between art and technology and questioning not only what it is to be beautiful but human, that their work - groundbreaking and transgressive at the time - now seems naive and passé.  

 

This, of course, is also an unfortunate consequence of getting old; one has seen and heard and read so much already about the urgent questions that this exhibition addresses.  

 

However, as I don't want to be negative or sound like a grumpy old man who thinks he knows it all, perhaps it's best if I constrain my remarks to the works that did excite my interest and make smile; works to do with cyborgs, sex dolls, representations of the black female body, and the philosophical question of faciality (i.e., several of my longtime obsessions).  

 

 

III. 

 

Firstly, I'd like to discuss a narrated video made as part of a collaborative research project entitled Peak Face (2021), by M. C. Abbott, María Buey González and Carl Olssen, which pondered whether we're entering a post-facial era where sapience is no longer tied to a thing that overcodes and organises not only the front of the human head, but the entire body - the entire planet! - if given the chance to do so [e].  

 

As a Deleuzian, I've long been fascinated by that very special mechanism known as the face. And the politics of faciality [f] - or enfacialisation as I think the evolutionary biologists like to say - continues to intrigue.

 

For it's a fascinating question, is it not, to ask what happens (and what comes next) if you uncouple sapience (i.e., the form of social intelligence that is definitional of modern humanity) from faces; will a posthuman future know nothing of physiognomy, or will artificially intelligent entities develop faces of their very own?   

 

In other words, could it be that faces are indispensable and that even cyborgs will remain trapped in the facial age; "or is our facialised world simply an accident of evolution" [3] [g], rather than the universal fate awaiting man, beast, and machine alike?   

 

In as much as art should challenge us to rethink ideas and reimagine the possibilities of self, then Peak Face is, arguably, the standout work of the exhibition. For it powerfully reminds viewers that whilst "it is indubitable that the face has proven to be an incredibly resilient platform in a variety of ecological contexts and has been a constant throughout a wide arc of speciation" [5], there is "no positive reason to believe that having a face is optimally adaptive on Earth in an absolute sense - and even if it was in the past, that would be no guarantee that it is now" [5].

 

Of course, given the ubiquitous character of the face, it may seem losing it or "even imagining an end to faciality is an impossibe exercise" [12]. And yet, says Olsson, peak face may be just around the corner; i.e., there may be a point "beyond which both self-representation and cephalisation decline as social processes discover alternative platforms" [13]. 

 

That doesn't necessarily spell the end of the face, but it would mark a major upheaval: after peak face, everything changes. And the irony is that "such a turning point may occur through the deployment of the very technologies that have driven the proliferation of selfies and other forms of facial representation" [13]. 

 

Olsson concludes: 

 

"The defacement of the world may be a chance to save ourselves from the constraints of the facial platform. Soon we might be able to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, earnestly, 'Do we really need this?'" [16]

 

 

IV.

 

And speaking of mirrors ... 

 

Probably the most fun exhibit - certainly for narcissists like me - was Ines Alpha's magic mirror which gives everyone the opportunity to become-cyborg (see image below) and experience the possibilities afforded by new technologies in constructing posthuman identities that are not tied to the constraints of biological reality and societal expectation.

 

If Alpha's virtual 3D makeup isnt quite as liberating (or as empowering) as she likes to believe and doesn't enable us to lose the face, at least it allows us to mask and mutate the latter in superficial ways and, importantly, her dreamlike vision of beauty isn't corrective or all about an ideal of perfection; "it’s speculative and full of opportunities for reinvention" [h]. 

 

It's a shame Virtual Beauty has been declared as not suitable for visitors under 15 years of age [i], as I think that this age group would not only have the most to learn, but probably have the most fun too - particularly with Alpha's mixed media installation.       

 

Selfie taken on 14 August 2025 with my i-Phone in Ines Alpha's magic mirror 

which formed part of her work entitled I'd rather be a cyborg (2024)  

 

Notes

 

[a] Gonzalo Herrero Delicado is a London-based independent curator, educator, editor, and architect concerned with the impact of climate change and digital technologies on the world and artistic practice.

 

[b] Matthilde Friis is a visual anthropologist and PhD candidate at Northumbria University. Her research and work explore issues around sexuality, feminism and gender. She curated the exhibition Working Girls! at Gallery 46 (London, E1), in 2024, which had obvious appeal for illicit lovers (and lovers of the illicit) everywhere.

 

[c] Bunny Kinney is a British-Canadian filmmaker, creative director, and consultant, who knows how to cast a critical theoretical eye on issues within contemporary culture such as youth identity, gender and sexality. He co-curated Charles Jeffrey: The Lore of Loverboy exhibition at Somerset House in 2024, which I discussed in a post published on 9 August 2024: click here. 

 

[d] For full details about the exhibition, which runs from 23 July until 28 September, at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2, visit the Somerset House website: click here. And to watch a short promotional film on YouTube featuring three of the artists discussed in this post (and from where I borrowed the title), click here. 

 

[e] The project was developed at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, as part of a three-year research and design initiative, The Terraforming (2020-22), directed by Benjamin H. Bratton and Nicolay Boyadjiev. Readers are encouraged to read Olsson's essay 'Peak Face' (2023) which is available on the Urbanomic website and can be downloaded as a pdf: click here. And to watch the Peak Face video on YouTube: click here. 

      It sounds a bit dramatic to say the face organises the entire body, but as Olsson writes: 

      "From their humble origins as mere front-ends, faces developed into composites [which ...] played an important role in organising and constraining the physiology of many animals, and [...] they have played this role continuously for a very, very long time. Nothing, it seems, escapes the face." [4]

      Some readers, loyal to the face, might be quick to ask So what? and point to the many evolutionary advantages faces bring, but as Olsson also reminds us, "while faces have undoubtedly enabled a new level of behavioural complexity and flexibility, they may also have imposed limitations on the acquisition of future traits" [4].

      As for the face organising the entire planet ... Olsson argues, rightly, I think, that the built environment "has not just been shaped to 'fit' the face but has been constructed in its image" [10] in an act of planetary-scale narcissism. 

 

[f] See, for example, the post on Torpedo the Ark published on 13 September 2013 - click here - in which I discuss the politics of the face. And for a much more recent post on probe-heads [têtes chercheuses] in relation to the sculptural work of Daniel Silver (published 18 December 2024), click here.

 

[g] Carl Olsson, 'Peak Face' - essay linked to in note [e]. Note that all following page numbers given in the post - and in note [e] - refer to the pdf that can be downloaded from the Urbanomic website.

 

[h] Matthilde Friis, Virtual Beauty exhibition essay - 'From the Selfie to the Avatar: Beauty, Bias, and the Digital Self' - available on the Somerset House website: click here.

 

[i] To be honest, I'm not sure if declaring an exhibition as unsuitable for under 15s prohibits them from entering or if it is merely a required notification. What if, for example, they are accompanied by an adult? I do seem to recall that when I was at the exhibition a woman entered with a child in a pushchair, but perhaps they were deeemed too young to be upset or corrupted by the art on display.        

 

Part two of this post (sections V - VIII) can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

And Hate Shall Set You Free

And Hate Shall Set You Free 

SA von Hell after William Blake (2025) [a]

 

  

I. 

 

"We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves." [b] 

 

That's a great line from Hazlitt: far more philosophically profound and liberating than the Christian idea of learning to love one's enemies and the Californian injunction to love the self.   

 

Love binds: but it's hate that shall set you free; free from the expectation of those who think they know you best and oblige you to remain the person you've always been; free from ideas and viewpoints that have become fixed and congeal into forms of doxa or harden still further into dogma; free from a model of self born of internalised cruelty that some think of as an essential soul and others discuss in terms of subjective identity.  

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, it's difficult breaking from old friends and family members (unless they die or conveniently move far away). Nevertheless, it can be liberating to both parties to encounter one another once more as strangers (an acquaintance of mine once told me that he never loved his wife more than after their estrangement and subsequent divorce).    

 

The fact is, times change and we change and whilst some old friendships can last a lifetime, other friendships become "cold, comfortless, and distasteful" [131] like a plate of cold meat served up over and over again and even if we would like to revive old feelings that's impossible: "The stomach turns against them." [131]  

 

 

III. 

 

Perhaps it's even more difficult breaking from the authors one has loved; even when fully aware that one rewards great teachers not with loyalty but infidelity and by reading them against themselves; giving them over, as Hazlitt says, to the dissecting-knife or opening them up to ridicule [c].  

 

And great books must also be laid aside at some point and allowed to gather dust [d] - even become a little worm-eaten and mouldy. For as Nietzsche writes somewhere or other, it says nothing against the greatness of a spirit - or, in this case, a book - that it contains a few worms; corruption is a sign of maturity or ripeness and doesn't diminish overall value [e].  

 

IV. 

 

"As to my old opinions, I am heartily sick of them. I have reason, for they have deceived me sadly." [135] 

 

Again, I know exactly what Hazlitt means: old ideas and old beliefs that I once subscribed to in all sincerity at the very least embarrass today; words I once used to identify myself - punk and pagan, for example - "are become to my ears a mockery and a dream" [135].  

 

A true philosopher, says Nietzsche, cannot belong to any church or party that requires members to have moral convictions or political principles; for a philosopher is someone who burrows their way into a body, through it, and out the other side and never holds on to even their own ideas for too long, for this would imply that one could know oneself well enough to trust one's own thoughts and that simply isn't the case:

 

"We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers [...] We remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we do not understand ourselves, we must confusedly mistake who we are [...]" [f] 

 

Hazlitt appears to find this lack of self-knowledge good cause for self-contempt; "mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes [...] always disappointed where I placed most reliance [...] have I not reason to hate and to despise myself?" [136]

 

But then he adds an amusing final twist:  "Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough." [136]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The phrase hate shall set you free is obviously playing on the well-known biblical line: 'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (John 8:32 KJV). 

      Ever quick to point out the bleeding obvious and display it's moral colours, the Google AI assistant was keen to inform me that the phrase 'hate shall set you free' is neither a universally recognised nor an accepted statement and that the original saying is emphasising the liberating power of truth, not hate: 

      "While some may interpret it to mean that rejecting societal norms or expectations (through hate or defiance) can lead to liberation, it's crucial to understand that this interpretation is not a standard or positive one." 

      If I were Tracey Emin, I may have been tempted to write the phrase 'hate shall set you free' in the form of a neon sign, but - as I'm not Tracey Emin - I've simply added it the text to William Blake's 'Albion Rose', which can be found in A Large Book of Designs (1793-96). 

      I'm sure he wouldn't object; for Blake acknowledges the vital importance of hate as well as love within human existence by arguing that: "Without contraries there is no progression." See the Argument that opens The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93).       

 

[b] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am quoting from the text as it appears in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), p. 130, which was published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. Future page references to Hazlitt's essay will be given directly in the text.

 

[c] Hazlitt is right to say that we are aided and abetted in this by the fact that sometimes our favourite writers suddenly become fashionable and subject to an outpouring of academic analysis: 

      "The popularity of the most successful writers operates to wean us from them, by the cant and fuss that is made about them, by hearing their names everlastingly repeated, and by the number of ignorant and indiscriminate admirers they draw after them." [133]

     

[d] Even Hazlitt has some reservations about this; surely, he says, "there are some works, that, like nature, can never grow old and that must always touch the imagination and passions alike!" 

      Or, at the very least, there are books that contain passages "that seem as if we might brood over them all our lives, and not exhaust the sentiments of love and admiration they excite" [133]. 

      Having said that, however, Hazlitt confesses that, for him at least, any passage - even the most beautiful or stirring - soon becomes vapid if we read or recite it too often (see p. 134).

 

[e] See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Vol. 2, Part 1, Section 353, p. 292.

 

[f] Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 3.  

 

 

For a couple of other recent posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating' - discussing topics including spiders, ghosts, and witches - please click here and/or here.  

 

 

On the Need to Fear Ghosts and Hate Witches

Be thou a witch or a spirit, thou com'st 

in such an enchanting form, that I will speak of thee. [1] 

 

 

According to William Hazlitt, if there's one thing men hate it's to be bored. And evil - in small, chaotic doses at least - does bring a little danger and a touch of horror into the world, i.e., an element of excitement to counter the tedium of everyday life: 

 

"How loth were we to give up our pious belief in ghosts and witches, because we liked to persecute the one, and frighten ourselves to death with the other!" [2] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, scene 4). 

 

[2] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am quoting from the text as it appears in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), p. 128, which was published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here.   

 

Readers may be interested in two sister posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating': 

 

'There is a Spider Crawling' (12 August 2025): click here. 

 

'And Hate Shall Set You Free' (15 August 2025): click here. 

 

 

A Brief (Somewhat Belated) Note on the Online Safety Act and the Peter Kyle / Nigel Farage Spat

Peter Kyle MP / Nigel Farage MP

 

A lot of people are expressing concern about the Online Safety Act (2023); a new set of laws passed to protect children - and adults - from all kinds of online content deemed to be potentially harmful by Ofcom (an independent regulator, albeit one established by Parliament and which is overseen by the Culture Secretary).  

 

Some critics worry about how it might impact on free speech and privacy; others say that it will be largely ineffective at restricting access to content and so is doomed to failure.  

 

To be honest, it's not an issue that particularly excites my interest. However, the moment I hear supporters of the Act pleading with us to think of the children à la Helen Lovejoy [1] - thereby transforming an important and complex question into a simple moral issue in order to effectively shutdown debate - I immediately side with the critics.

 

What does interest, however, is the manner in which everything moral, orthodox and conformist - i.e., everything which was traditionally associated with conservatism - has passed yet again to the political left and that it's members of Keir Starmer's Labour Party who most vociferously support the Act and, indeed, wish to strengthen it still further. 

 

Reform UK, on the other hand - a party on the populist right of the British political spectrum - have pledged to repeal the Act if elected into government, prompting the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, to make the unpleasant and ludicrous accusation that Nigel Farage is on the side of those peddling hate as well as sexual predators like Jimmy Savile.

 

It's ironic that this remark should be made by the Rt Hon. Member for Hove and Portslade, as Kyle is someone who opposes all forms of hate speech and wants the online world to effectively become a virtual safe space; i.e., an inclusive, supportive, and secure environment ideal for monkeys who wish to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. 

 

Why is it that those on the virtue-signalling left are often the ones who spew some of the most vile and vicious invective? 

 

Might it be because they tie hate (disguised as love) to judgement rather than joy, unaware that by so doing they corrode and corrupt their own hearts and turn what begins as a desire for political correctness into a resentment-riddled ideology which "leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others" [2].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post published on 30 Jan 2016 in which I discuss this 'think of the children' ploy: click here. 

 

[2] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am quoting from the text as it appears in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), p. 130, which was published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. 

 

 

There is a Spider Crawling ...

 

'Without spiders, flies would have no wings ...'

 

 

Hazlitt's essay opens with a lovely passage about a spider crawling along the floor towards him. Rather than crush the unwelcome intruder, he allows the creature to pass by in peace and, in fact, aids his escape into a darkened space. 

 

This is the mark of a man whose philosophy has taught him how to behave with restraint even when confronted by a creepy-crawly whom he instinctively hates the sight of. In other words, although the spirit of malevolence has been curbed to the extent that he doesn't commit a needlessly cruel act, he still feels negatively towards the eight-legged other:    

 

"We give up the external demonstration, the brute violence, but cannot part with the essence or principle of hostility. We do not tread upon the poor little animal in question (that seems barbarous and pitiful!) but we regard it with a sort of mystic horror and superstitious loathing." [127-28] [a]

 

Hazlitt suspects it will take "another hundred years of fine writing and hard thinking" [128] before he gets over his arachnophobia and learn how to regard spiders with something approaching love and kindness. 

 

However, he doesn't wish to be cured entirely of his ability to hate. For without having something to hate - if not spiders, then snakes; if not snakes, then other people - man's ability to act or even to think is seriously compromised and rather than resembling a fast-moving and sparkling stream, life becomes a stagnant pool. 

 

Moralists may not like the fact, but pure goodness soon grows insipid and man finds delight in his unruly passions. Indeed, it may even be the case, as Zarathustra says, that man needs 'what is most evil in him for what is best in him.' [b] 

 

So it is that there's a seceret affinity between love and hate and the human heart desires the latter as much as the former. And since love soon turns to indifference or disgust, says Hazlitt, perhaps "hatred alone is immortal" [128] amongst the passions; not only the longest lasting, but primary, due to the simple fact that there is always a "quantity of superfluous bile" [128]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am using the text as it appears in volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. All page numbers refer to this edition. 

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,  'The Convalescent' (2). 

      Of course, before either Nietzsche or Hazlitt were writing, Blake had already recognised that evil was only another term for the active expenditure of energy and that the feeling that results from this is a form of eternal delight. See 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (1790).  

 

 

Readers may be interested in two sister posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating':

 

'On the Need to Fear Ghosts and Hate Witches' (14 August 2025): click here.  

'And Hate Shall Set You Free' (15 August 2025): click here. 

 

 

Nigerian Chutzpah: Notes on the Artist Known as Slawn

Photo of Olaolu Slawn by Georgia Jones 

saatchiyates.com  

 

"My style is all about feeling over form ..." 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the young artists included in the Saatchi Yates summer exhibition whose work I didn't discuss in a recently published post [1], is the man who brings "Nigerian chutzpah to the London scene" [2] and is usually known by the mononym Slawn. 

 

Such is his presence, for better or worse, within contemporary British culture, however - he designed a unique version of the FA Cup in the 2023-24 season in order to promote the competition amongst a younger generation of football fans and he also designed the set and stauette for the 2023 BRIT Awards - that this seems something of an oversight. 

 

So, for the record, I did like his large and energetic canvas Diaspora (2025). Using acrylic, ink, and spray paint, Slawn combined elements not only of street art and abstract expressionism, but surrealism - all those eyes! 

 

Having said that, however, there's something about him and his work - or perhaps more precisely the uncritical media fanfare surrounding him and the cynical promotion and exploitation of his work by the (predominantly white and wealthy) people in the art world - that troubles me (even if it doesn't seem to trouble him). 

 

 

II.      

 

Let's start from the beginning ... 

 

Olaolu Akeredolu-Ale was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in October 2000. A clever and creatively-minded teenager, he and his skateboarding pals founded Motherlan in 2018; an art collective cum streetwear brand. 

 

In the same year, Slawn moved to London and enrolled to study graphic design at Middlesex University in 2019, taking up a paintbrush shortly afterwards and quickly establishing a strong social media presence. 

 

He had his debut exhibition in September 2021, at The Truman Brewery (Brick Lane, E1). Interviewed in The Face around this time, he is famously quoted as saying of his work:

 

"I don’t even know why people want this shit. ​I wouldn't buy this shit. I just have no interest in my art. I make it so I can fuck about." [3]

 

Evidence perhaps of his iconoclastic spirit and Nigerian chutzpah ...   

 

Such an honest (and sadly accurate) appraisal of his own work didn't, however, have a negative impact on his career as an artist and in autumn 2024 he held his first major London exhibition at the Saatchi Yates gallery: I present to you, Slawn - click here. 

 

One of the works was a giant mural spanning the full length of an entire wall. Composed of a thousand small rectangular canvases, each was hand-painted and each priced £1000; all of which were sold. 

 

But what can one say - without using his own four-letter term - of the dozen or so large, colourful canvases that made up the rest of the exhibition ...?   

 

The gallery press release for the exhibition speaks of the work being "rooted in both Yoruba heritage and contemporary societal themes" [4], but, frankly, this sounds like the kind of thing Marcus at Modern Wank would tell one of the wealthy poshos looking to buy some new toss at a reassuringly high price to put alongside the old shit they already own [5].    

 

I can accept that one might read some of Slawn's playful figures with their oversized red lips in terms of race and identity, but whether he can be said to address such complex issues is debatable. As the cultural critic Tomide Marv has noted, Slawn is a mix of artist, hustler, and performer ultimately more interested in collaborating with world-famous brands than producing art to raise political consciousness or inspire people to want to know more about Yoruba history [6]. 

  

Still, I'm not about to criticise him for that. And I certainly don't think he's merely a talentless chancer - far from it. But neither am I going to pretend that his work is comparable to that of Jean-Michel Basquiat, as I've seen it suggested by some idiot online and to which I can only respond: 

 

I've posted in praise of Basquiat. Jean-Michel is a hero of mine. Slawn, you're no Jean-Michel Basquiat [7].       

 

 

Olaolu Slawn: Diaspora (2025) 

Acrylic, ink, and spray paint on canvas (170 x 225 cm)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The post I'm referring to - 'Reflections on the Summer Exhibition at Saatchi Yates: Once Upon a Time in London (2025)' - was published on 8 August and can be read by clicking here.     

 

[2] Quoted from the press release for Once Upon a Time in London by Purple PR, a shortened version of which can be read on on the Saatchi Yates website: click here. 

      I'm not quite sure I know what the phrase Nigerian chutzpah means, though one assumes the writer is using it in a positive sense to signify boldness, even if this Yiddish term originally carried a more negative connotation suggesting impudence rather than just audacity. 

 

[3] Slawn interviewed by Brooke McCord for The Face, Vol. 4, Issue 9, (November, 2021): click here to read online. Slawn has also stated on social media that it doesn't matter to him whether he makes money through art, fraud, or crime, so long as he is rich at the end of it. 

 

[4] To read the press release for I present to you, Slawn (12 Sept - 1 Nov 2024) visit the Saatchi Yates website by clicking here.  

[5] I'm referring here to a character played by Harry Enfield in Harry & Paul, a British sketch show, starring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, first broadcast on BBC One in 2007. Along with Modern Wank, Marcus also has an antiques store called I Saw You Coming. Click here to watch a sketch on YouTube.  

[6] See Tomide Marv; 'Slawn's Art is Not That Deep', an opinion piece on theblotted.com (31 March 2024): click here. 

      For a more positive view, written by Juliette Eleuterio, see the article 'Artist, Skater, Designer, Mowaloa Model: Who Exactly is Slawn?' (2023) on culted.com - click here. Clearly a fan she writes:

      "Working on canvases, murals and just about anything Slawn can get his hands on, his playful street and pop art-style may seem like just that, a bit of fun, at first glance. This notion is reinforced by the artist himself who has often been quoted as questioning why others even follow or show any interest in his art as he is just messing about. Though up close, it's clear that Slawn knows what he is doing, with his art diving into the themes of political challenges, racism, human psychology and other societal concepts." 

[7] Surprisingly, even The Guardian's arts and culture correspondent says there's "more than a hint of Jean-Michel Basquiat about Slawn". However, he is not comparing them in terms of talent, but referring to the fact that both men tried to disguise that they were from relatively wealthy backgrounds: 

      "Basquiat created a myth about himself being a Haitian-Puerto Rican street kid prodigy who slept on benches in Tompkins Square Park. While he might have been homeless at times, he also grew up in a Prospect Park brownstone, went to private school and knew MoMA inside out. Like Basquiat, Slawn has told reporters about his down-and-out existence in Lagos before he was 'discovered' by the British grime MC Skepta while working in a Lagosian skate shop and encouraged to move to London. 

      But while he might have slept at friends' houses and in cars, he also went to the exclusive Greenwood House school in the bougie Lagos suburb of Ikoyi, and mixed with other Nigerian tastemakers such as fashion designers Mowalola Ogunlesi and Ola Badiru." 

      See Lanre Bakare, '"I got offered a gram of cocaine for a painting": is Slawn art's latest enfant terrible?', The Guardian (24 September 2024): click here to read the article and interview online.  

      Obviously, my response is a paraphrase of the famous remark made by Democratic nominee Senator Lloyd Bentsenduring during the 1988 US vice presidential debate with the Republican nominee Senator Dan Quayle, after the latter compared himself to President John F. Kennedy. 

      For my post of 11 October 2017 on Basquiat and the question of black dandyism, please click here.  

 

 

Reflections on the Summer Exhibition at Saatchi Yates: Once Upon a Time in London (2025)

Saatchi Yates: Once Upon a Time in London 

12th June - 17th August 2025 

 

 

I. 

 

Only a few days to go before the summer exhibition at Saatchi Yates [1] comes to a close. So, if you want to see it, you'd better get your skates on ...

 

According to the press release prepared by Purple PR, this group exhibition is a celebration of those British artists who, over the last 70 years, have called London their home and it draws upon the history, diversity and culture of a city that has been "a major artistic crossroad where artists have challenged conventions and redefined the artistic landscape" [2].  

 

Still, don't let that and further clichéd guff about the way in which London has "evolved but remains a constant beating heart of ground breaking art" - or how "the current community of London artists [...] create masterfully painted surreal portraits that delve deep into the human psyche in a post digital world" - put you off, as it was clearly written by an idiot (or perhaps, who knows, generated by artificial intelligence given all the right prompts). 

 

Never prejudge an exhibition by its press release: that's my advice; just go see things for yourself [3]. 

 

 

II. 

 

The problem with a show of this kind, in which very different artists from different eras, working in very different ways and with very different concerns, are placed side by side is that difference is often flattened out in the name of continuity, coherence, and the identifying of correspondences so as to open up a dialogue between past and present: Messrs. Bacon, Freud, and Hockney meet Jadé Fadojutimi and Olaulu Slawn.  

 

Maybe that's a noble goal which, if successfully achieved - and I'm not convinced this show pulls it off - allows us to see how one artist takes up the challenge or initiative of another, albeit in a new context and in a new manner, for a new audience (it's never just solely a question of influence and imitation):

 

"Many things change or are supplemented from one initiative to another, and even what they have in common gains in strengh and novelty." [4]  

 

Rightly or wrongly, however, I suspect that Once Upon a Time in London was conceived and curated more as an opportunity for the gallery "to show off their roster of emerging artists with Saatchi legacy artists as a backdrop" [5].  

 

     

III. 

 

Having said that, there were certainly artists included in the exhibition whose work I'm always happy to see; Francis Bacon and Frank Auerbach, for example. 

 

I particularly liked the latter's vibrant portrait Catherine Lampert Seated II (1991), a medium-sized, predominantly yellow coloured oil on canvas, which sold at auction to a private collector a couple of years ago for £630,000 [6]. 

 

There are other artists, however, whose works I could quite happily live without ever having to look at again; sorry Damien, sorry Tracey.

 

Hirst's Nothing Can Stop Us Now (2006) - part of his Medicine Cabinet series - may, as a concept, interest, but, unfortunately, as an object it bores after a few moments; much as Emin's neon heart - Wanting You (2014) - bores as soon as one has read its message (if not before) [7]. 

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, I didn't go to the Saatchi Yates summer show in order to see old works by artists I already knew and like (or knew and disliked), but new works by artists I didn't know of ...

 

Artists such as Benjamin Speirs, whose large porno-surrealist canvas, Metamorphosis (2025), certainly caught my attention when I first walked into the gallery. This was a painting which wouldn't have looked out of place at the Time to Fear Contemporary Art exhibition that I loved so much at Gallery 8 back in March of this year: click here.

 

The red-haired nude figure with a strangely twisted and elongated body was only spoiled for me by the fact she was wearing flip-flops: I hate flip-flops, for the reasons explained in an early post on Torpedo the Ark that can be accessed by clicking here.   

 

I was also quite taken with Danny Fox's Black grape vape, purple tape, Guaguin's cape (2024); a large canvas which not only referenced Guaguin, but also had elements that reminded me of Matisse. I would quite happily hang this on my wall, although if I'd been offered the chance to take but one picture home, it would probably have been Our Vegetative Virgin (2020) by Jadé Fadojutimi ... 

 

Why this one? 

 

Because of the title. Because of the lovely colours. Because I think this young woman (of Nigerian heritage who was born in London and grew up in Ilford) has real talent [8]; her work containing both abstract and figurative elements all cleverly orchestrated and full of a certain exuberance that is hard to resist.

 

I think this description from Rebecca Mead pretty much hits the nail on the head: 

 

"Amid vibrant gashes, iridescent arcs, and urgent lines, a viewer may discern the contours of leaves, flowers, butterfly wings, waves, or suns. But Fadojutimi’s swirling images seem to capture a state of mind as much as they do a state of nature - they are always energetic, and sometimes ecstatic, blooming into color and motion and light. [...] They are an alternative place to dwell." [9]    

 

Despite the obvious speed they are painted at, Fadojutimi's canvases allow one to breathe like little engines of fresh air.  

 

Top Left: Jadé Fadojutimi: Our Vegetative Virgin (2020)

Top Right: Benjamin Spiers: Metamorphosis (2025)

Bottom: Danny Fox: Black grape vape, purple tape, Gauguin's cape (2024)  

 

Notes

 

[1] An independent commercial gallery opened by Phoebe Saatchi Yates and Arthur Yates in October 2020, it is described by Dora Davies-Evitt as the buzziest gallery in London. 

       Since opening its doors five years ago, Saatchi Yates has become the place to be seen for a young crowd of glamorous gallery goers who know how to put the art in party. See 'Once Upon a Time in London: Saatchi Yates heralds a new chapter in British art', Tatler (11 July 2025): click here.

      The Saatchi Yates gallery is at 14 Bury Street, St. James's, London SW1. Visit the website by clicking here.      

 

[2] This from the press release written by Purple PR; a global communications agency who provide services including editorial procurement, product placement, and high profile event management for clients in the worlds of art, fashion, beauty and lifestyle. Visit the Purple PR website for more information: click here. 

      The Once Upon a Time in London press release can be read on the Saatchi Yates website: click here. 

 

[3] Obviously, as a writer trained in the art of the press release by the amazing Lee Ellen Newman, I rarely follow my own advice and usually go straight to any available literature about a show - both promotional and critical in character - in advance of actually looking at the pictures. But it's a habit I'd like to break if possible.  

 

[4] Gilles Deleuze, 'Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos', in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael E. Greco (Verso, 1998), p. 37.    

 

[5] Nigel Ip, 'Review: Once Upon a Time in London - Saatchi Yates, London', blog post dated 7 July 2025 on nigelip.com: click here. 

 

[6] For more details see the Christie's website: click here. The Lot Essay, detailing the close relationship between Auerbach and Lampert, is particularly interesting. 

 

[7] I didn't realise until visiting this exhibition at Saatchi Yates just how much I dislike Emin's neon signs and the bullshit that surrounds her unflichingly honest and sometimes painfully initimate sculptures. Having said that, I do like her piece entitled My Favourite Little Bird (2015); but then this is a (slightly sentimental) figurative work rather than a conceptual (and confessional) work pushing an overt message. 

      For a far more positive reading of Tracey Emin's neon works, see the article by Erin-Atlanta Argun on myartbroker.com (31 October 2024): click here.     

 

[8] In 2019, Fadojutimi became the youngest artist to have a work placed within the collection of the Tate; I Present Your Royal Highness (2018).   

 

[9] Rebecca Mead, 'The Intensely Colorful Work of a Painter Obsessed with Anime', in The New Yorker (11 November 2024): click here.