Elephant Magazine, Hammersmith (2025)

24/09/2025

“The opening night had the electricity of a downtown loft party circa 1985, only with better lighting and a bigger guest list. Boone worked the room like the seasoned pro she is. Rumour has it she even sat at the front desk for the first few days of the exhibition, greeting visitors and making sure everything ran smoothly. It was the ultimate power move: Mary Boone, back where she started, reminding everyone she still knows how to run a gallery — and conduct the whole show.”

From Downtown to Uptown, Mary Boone () has been ruling the New York art scene for almost five decades. The Art Daddy ( )reports on her curatorial return — a blockbuster show that’s not just eighties nostalgia, but a reminder that risk, friction, and unapologetic taste-making are still possible.

23/09/2025

“Corpo de Cor, translating to “Body of Colour,” feels like an exploration of acceptance. Described as an exploration of the body, there is a more reflective, meditative take; it’s not self-discovery as much as it is a permission slip. The fact that Falcão can recognise and reflect on her experiences is abundantly clear in the works, though what’s more interesting is the self-approval and self-acceptance that oozes out of each portrait. Here, reinterpreting her features always feels like play, rather than an exaggeration or mockery; having three feet and jagged curves is a defiant act of love and resistance.”

Mia Butter reviews Márcia Falcão () at CFA ().

Passinho Real (2025). Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts. Photo by Nick Ash. Posiçāo (2025). Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts. Photo by Nick Ash.

22/09/2025

“Fashion is not just about garments. It is a vessel of identity, resilience, and transformation. With this collection, I wanted to explore how African heritage can serve as both a timeless foundation and a speculative future” - Loza Maléombho

At NYFW, Loza Maléombho () unveiled her SS26 collection with an AI-powered journey through African heritage and speculative futures, blending ancestral craft with avant-garde design.

Image Credits: Quadir Moore/BFA.com

19/09/2025

Vittoria Benzine (), Elephant‘s resident psychic, returned this month to, once again, read the art world’s tarot. What came true from her last reading? And what new revelations do the cards hold for the industry’s strange, ever-elusive psyche as it spirals toward another uncertain season?

So far, her predictions are on the money. Especially concerning the reception of a certain Pauline Karpidas sale at Sothebys…

“According to the results, the Queen of Pentacles will define this week. This is fantastic news! The Queens embody the divine feminine energy of their suit — this one’s about savouring material comforts. For emphasis, spirit offered the Nine of Pentacles — you will perhaps recall from last month that she’s the rich bitch card — alongside the Five of Wands reversed (which you’ll also recall means setting petty s**t aside). I immediately realised this is the week of the Pauline Karpidas sale at Sotheby’s. These cards seem to bode well…”

18/09/2025

“That may be Duet’s true delight: an attempt to dance on the grave of old and waning norms of the art world as it stands before us. Breaking into the hometown abandoned mall to fill it with new vitality; remake the space in your image by reveling in the space. Luckily a chapel was erected downstairs so all who observe might properly mourn the passing of an older era. On that meta-level, Duet’s curatorial focus on the twin becomes compelling when considering the crossroads that those within the arts find themselves at. “All” the galleries are closing yet season’s openings remain packed with eager bodies. We should be well-accustomed to the cycle of things. If something is dying here, something else is dying to be born.”

The inaugural group show and gallery presentation at WSA () offers a new imagining of what an exhibition might be, while signaling fashion and art’s spatial collapse upon one another. Words by Arimeta Diop ().

Installation view, courtesy of WSA

17/09/2025

“With an ambivalent attitude towards aspects of his identity, Thek’s practice seems to capture his famous declaration to Sontag of being against interpretation. One of the joys and challenges of Thek’s work seems to be the fact that it doesn’t offer a singular image of the artist. Instead, through vivid paintings and morbid, darkly funny sculpture, Thek’s work presents an artist and practice alive with contradiction and possibility.”

Sam Moore (.moore94) examines Paul Thek’s multifaceted practice and asks how an artist so resistant to categorisation is finally being seen anew.

Paul Thek, Untitled (cityscape), 1972. Acrylic on canvas, 166 x 142 cm © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy of Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and the Watermill Center, NY. Photo: Ben Westoby / Fine Art Documentation.

16/09/2025

At ninety-one, Frank Bowling () is still breaking new ground. This year alone, the leading abstract painter opened his debut solo exhibition in France, and now, he is exhibiting in Brazil, South America — the continent of his birth — for the first time. For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, Bowling presents twenty-five paintings spanning five decades of work in response to the biennial’s central metaphor of the estuary — a symbol of the convergence of philosophies, mythologies, and landscapes. On a hot summer’s afternoon, art historian Melissa Baksh () caught up with the artist to discuss the allure of São Paulo, serendipitous chance happenings, and how Guyana — with its wild waters and luscious terrain — is a constant, both in his work and in his dreams.

Images:

September, 2025. Acrylic, acrylic gel on canvas with marouflage, 189.2 x 196.5 x 4.6 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photographed by Anna Arca. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS 2025

Mazaruni Spread, 1976. Acrylic on canvas, 114.3 x 111.8 cm. Photographed by Charlie Littlewood. Courtesy the artist. © Frank Bowling. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025

Birthday, 1961. Oil on linen, 126.6 x 101.4 cm. Photographed by Jess Littlewood. Courtesy the artist. © Frank Bowling. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025

Broken Seven, 2022. Acrylic, acrylic gel on collaged canvas with marouflage, 188.7 x 180.9 x 4.4 cm. Photographed by Anna Arca. Courtesy the artist. © Frank Bowling. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025

Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA in front of September (2025). © Frank Bowling. Courtesy Frank Bowling Archive.

15/09/2025

“I give myself and my painting permission to be. It can be both complex and shrewd, while also being peaceful and quiet. For me, I feel complete at the nexus between the two.”

Camille Bacon () speaks with painter Lindsay Adams () about the people, places, and books that inspire her practice.

14/09/2025

As Berlin Art Week returns, 10–14 September 2025, the city once again proves itself both marketplace and playground for contemporary art—edgy, alive, and restless. Here are Elephant’s pick of six shows not to be missed.

Live on Elephant.art now 📍

Image:
Petrit Halilaj, An Opera Out of Time, Installation View. © Petrit Halilaj, 2025 / mennour, Paris, ChertLüdde

Written by Millen Brown-Ewens (

10/09/2025

“Now I see them everywhere. We’re living in an auditory panopticon. I spot one looming on the roof of a block of flats situated one road away from my bedroom window. They are spectral, eerie things that, once noticed, make you feel that their very design was intended to cause unease. A feeling of being silently monitored is inherent in their forms, quiet and hidden in plain sight — like a fictional spy, but with all libido removed.

The Scottish artist Jame St Findlay took me for a walk. First stop: a mid-century block opposite Stoke Newington station, where a cyberpunk configuration of miscellaneous antennae is positioned, ostensibly to transmit mobile phone service around the city. St Findlay later described this building and its future-dystopian millinery as one of the ugliest things they had ever seen. Yet it was here that they chose to begin our saunter through a small section of London.”

Artist Jame St Findlay (.girlfriend) takes Ethan Price () on a tour of the telecommunication masts that inspired their latest solo exhibition, Harmony.

Jame St Findlay, Harmony (2025). Courtesy of the artist

08/09/2025

In the latest edition to her column, Figure Study, Camille Sojit Pejcha () is joined by Tali Lennox () for a conversation about sexuality and the sublime. This conversation is co-published by Pleasure-Seeking () and Elephant magazine.

“I was in a river accident where I almost drowned. After that near-death experience, my paintings completely transformed. Before that happened, I was always painting portraits, which, you know, it’s fun — there’s a lot you can get from somebody’s face, but it is literally surface. Now I’m in this different role; I started painting imagination, painting symbols. And so that experience quite literally allowed me to take from a space that was deeper into the psyche, from that experience of breaking open.

Like most people, I’ve had experiences through tragedy or ecstasy that have shaped my time on this planet. I’m always trying to return to those states. As humans, we’re always chasing euphoria, always seeking a release. We’re also trying to leave reality, to have these moments of rupture that open into something greater than the body, greater than the mind. That’s not sustainable; you can’t live there. But it’s the time we feel most alive.”

Sulis & The Wreck is on view in Geneva through September 11th, 2025.

Image credits:

Tali Lennox, photographed by Uri Fruchtmann for Elephant

Tali Lennox, Bedlam Psalm, 2025. Oil on linen, 41 x 27 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sebastien Bertrand

Tali Lennox, Flutter, 2024. Oil on linen, 65 x 50 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sebastien Bertrand

Tali Lennox, Thirst Trap, 2024. Oil on linen, 65 x 50 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sebastien Bertrand

Tali Lennox, The Lull, 2025. Oil on linen, 60 x 46 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sebastien Bertrand

Tali Lennox, To Pierce The Moon, 2025. Oil on linen, 61 x 46 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sebastien Bertrand

07/09/2025

From karaoke to fortune-telling, Crocs Jibbitz to ni**le masks, writer Annabel Downes () shares her comprehensive guide to detoxing from Frieze Seoul (

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