Alex Margo Arden: Nothing Personal\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606<\/p>\n
They tried to make her go to rehab and she said \u201cno, no, no\u201d. And she probably would\u2019ve said no to letting the artist Alex Margo Arden mount an exhibition out of all her old junk, too, but sadly Amy Winehouse<\/a> isn\u2019t around to protest, so Arden\u2019s gone ahead regardless.<\/p>\n In display cases and on shelves in a lush Chelsea flat, Arden has assembled a collection of objects and books based on what Winehouse once owned. Trawling through archive material and auction records, Arden has bought duplicates of Winehouse\u2019s makeup, her copies of Vogue, her boardgames, her books.<\/p>\n So you get to snoop through her private junk, imagining her reading all these biographies of jazzers and celebs, or the Claudia Roden book of Jewish food. The thought of her reading Roy Keane\u2019s autobiography while slurping down matzah-ball soup is beautiful.<\/p>\n Did Winehouse really do the 1,000-piece Cadbury jigsaw puzzle? Did she read the article on \u201cthe body we all want now\u201d in that issue of Vogue? Arden is forcing you to ask these questions, imagine these scenarios, turning you into a celebrity stalker, someone who has become unable to separate idol from human.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a pair of ballet pumps signed by fans and left on her doorstep after Winehouse\u2019s death, a birthday card from Mark Ronson and Adele that she never got to open. Now we\u2019re too close, now it feels like we\u2019re intruding.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a weirdly cold, unemotional display. But two things are opening at once here: there\u2019s a portrait of an icon being created out of the objects and ephemera of their life, and there\u2019s an uncomfortable exploration of the fetishisation of celebrity. There\u2019s an act of love and devotion, and there\u2019s an act of critical self-reflection. Joy and discomfort, rubbing awkwardly up against each other. It\u2019s very smart, very critical conceptual art that makes you feel pretty grubby and intrusive.<\/p>\n Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, until 23 January 2027<\/a><\/p>\n Yuko Mohri: In Concert\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606Surreal \u2026 Yuko Mohri: In Concert at the Barbican, London. Photograph: Thomas Adank\/Barbican<\/p>\n The Barbican has sprung a leak. Actually, it has sprung loads of them, which is why they\u2019re investing so much in trying to repair this poor old brutalist beast.<\/p>\n But in Yuko Mohri\u2019s installation, those leaks aren\u2019t maintenance problems, they\u2019re creative collaborators. Water drips out of sinks and pipes in the Curve, gathering in buckets and tarpaulins, being funnelled and pumped through tubes. Each drip triggers a little cymbal, a triangle, a mallet on a drum. The Barbican\u2019s collapsing infrastructure is playing you a tune.<\/p>\n It\u2019s surreal, cacophonous: repurposed Barbican lamps, flickering on and off, are being controlled by sensors measuring the moisture levels in rotting fruit, others by breezes blowing through the Barbican\u2019s draughty walls \u2013 all at the will of mouldy fruit and crumbling concrete walls.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the best use of the Curve for years: Mohri has turned rot and disrepair into an instrument and made the building\u2019s frailties into a symphony of survival. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When it gives you a leaky roof, you make musique concr\u00e8te.<\/p>\n Barbican Curve, until 24 January 2027<\/a><\/p>\n Yuyan Wang: Pilgrims\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606Disconcerting \u2026 Yuyan Wang, Boring Billion, 2026, at Shoreditch church. Photograph: Yuyan Wang<\/p>\n Light is a positive thing in popular culture. We call smart people bright, we say good things are \u201clit\u201d, etc. But there\u2019s a darkness to how Chinese artist Yuyan Wang approaches it in this new film work.<\/p>\n It takes as its starting point a 2018 initiative from the Chinese government<\/a> to launch artificial moons in order to provide continuous daylight.<\/p>\n Moths and bugs flit across the screen downstairs, drawn to a lamp, their natural instincts duped by artificial light. Upstairs, found footage of drills and mines, LEDs, fireworks, lasers, rockets, torches and neon striplights flicker past, soundtracked by blasts of synthesiser choir chords. Wang is asking what it means to have no darkness, to be constantly productive, to have no rest or escape.<\/p>\n I guess we are the moths now, being fooled by the artificial lights of a world that treats us like bugs.<\/p>\n Over in the crypt of Shoreditch church next door, another video shows humanoid robots being constructed. You get the sense that Wang knows that our terrifying imminent future will just be more forgotten industrial detritus.<\/p>\n This is what art cinema does well: non-narrative, alluring, disconcerting weirdness.<\/p>\n Emalin, until 14 November<\/a><\/p>\n Rebecca Warren: There Will Be Another You\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606Perfectly imperfect \u2026 There Will Be Another You, 2026. Photograph: Mark Blower\/Rebecca Warren\/Maureen Paley, London<\/p>\n Twenty years after her nomination for the Turner prize, Rebecca Warren has lost none of her angular, gritty, rough, weird power.<\/p>\n The sculptor is back for her first London show in 16 years with more of her lumpy unfired clay and bronze figures, and they are still perfectly imperfect. The smaller sculptures look like a post-apocalyptic take on decorative rococo ceramics. Instead of glistening perfection and flowing, ornamental robes, we\u2019ve got rough, gloopy, brittle nudes stretched out on rocks. They\u2019re funny, ugly things. But you can\u2019t help but feel like the avalanche of faux-amateurish, kindergarten-grade ceramics that are so popular these days might all be Warren\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n The big bronzes in the main space are the best. Lifesize nudes with hands and feet that have grown grotesque and lumpen, they\u2019re somewhere between Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Robert Crumb, like a bawdy grotesque take on modernism. It\u2019s like all your favourite modernists have melted together, making one big, lumpy but pretty delicious visual soup.<\/p>\n