Li Li Ren - The World Forgetting, by the World Forgot
26 January - 16 March 2024
This was going to be a whiplash quick visit, but I ended up dwelling longer than I’d anticipated. I first met Mazzy Mae Green when she was working with Nick Hackworth at the Paradise Row location just off Davies Street. She’s since opened up shop in Hackney with a gallery called Sherbet Green, which is very close to my gym, so I often turn up out of the blue after a HIIT class, looking appalled at myself, with a face the colour of an undercooked sausage. I always apologise and she’s always very nice about it.
They’ve had plenty of interesting things there since launching in late-ish 2022, including some fine painting by Sonja Derviz and mixed media work by Laila Majid. Right now, Li Li Ren’s show is up, and it’s fabulous. There’s a big womb-cum-grain silo in the middle, its outside covered like a cave wall with watery acrylic paint, and its interior dribbled with white resiny stuff and rabbit fur patches, underneath an inverted fibreglass dome which is half yoga ball, half Ikea lampshade. It was uncomfortably welcoming in there, but that could have been the effect of the HIIT.
On the gallery wall is a series of mounted works, including an oozy Bayeux tapestry of lurid rubber, shed snake skin, and fuzzy bits you’ll want to touch but mustn’t. Perhaps most alluring to me though were the cast brass pelvic holsters, containing hand-blown coloured glass vessels, some empty, others filled with rubber plant seeds, some weeping with pendulous glass dangle-drops. Jasper Sdougos, aka Bubble People, has also provided a soundscape to accompany Ren’s pieces (you can listen to him below), which is the only bit I can’t really describe.
It’s Ren’s first UK solo exhibition and I think you should check it out (it’s just been extended to March 16). There’s a big neon sign of the exhibition title on the outside so you can’t miss it.
