Guardian Guide: this week’s new exhibitions Friday 10 July 2015
David Blandy | Robert Therrien | Jenny Holzer | Hannah Collins | Henri-Gaudier Brzeska | Reality | Jennet Thomas
David Blandy, London
David Blandy appears to be casting off his mantle as the art world’s premiere disciple of geek pastimes. In the last decade, his love of manga, kung-fu movies, computer games and hip-hop has lead to pop-savvy work exploring global fandom and cultural colonialism, in which the skinny, bespectacled boy often cut a deliberately incongruous figure. His new video installation exploring London lingo sees him move far beyond the 21st century. Hercules: Rough Cut references the Greek myth, mutated and distorted by countless tellers over the centuries. His history of the city is related in a multitude of voices taken from across the ages: accompanying four screens on which fragmented images of London culture spin are accounts from the Romans, extracts from the writings of Thomas More, William Blake, 1950s beat poets and contemporary urban slang honouring the “mouse pushers” and “shift time shitters” of today’s office culture.
Bloomberg Space, EC2, to 19 Sep
Installation view of 'Hercules: Rough Cut', David Blandy, 2015
Photo credit: 'Dave Morgan Photography, 2015'