ABOUT
UPCOMING
EDITIONS
FROM 6 TO 9
Elleanna Chapman, Gina Fischli, Jamie Fitzpatrick and Unyimeabasi Udoh.
Jan 31st - March 9th
Indulgence and flagellation, excess and submission, sweetness and violence. These tensions run throughout Whipped: each artist presents two works, or works containing dual elements, revealing a “side B” to each piece. The exhibition invites us to consider: What does it mean to be both the victim and perpetrator of a system that whips us into emotional and ideological submission? This duality resonates powerfully in today’s world, embodied by the omnipresent influence of social media, which shapes not only our individual emotions and actions but also the political and cultural landscape.
Initially believed to overstimulate, social media has instead bred a collective boredom—a paradoxical state linked to irrational and extreme behaviours. It fosters a thirst for empty thrills, sadism and spectacle, whipping us up without even noticing. Scrolling through social media is akin to engaging with a hatred machine cloaked in Chantilly cream. We are desensitised by an endless stream of memes, selfies, Instagram birthday wishes in “stories”, paid content, ads and calls-to-action, as well as niche chat groups that encourage our darkest, most violent impulses. The intersection of politics and aesthetics takes on a whole new meaning in this content-driven society, where our emotional extremes—boredom, frenzy, outrage—are the currency.
What is particularly striking is how social media amplifies herd behavior. It condenses and accelerates interactions, seamlessly weaving emotional manipulation into the fabric of daily life. In doing so, it serves as the ultimate enabler for totalitarian political and belief systems—a dream for those who seek to control and homogenise thought. Social media doesn’t just shape discourse; it exploits our desires for connection and validation while steering us toward conformity. It whips us into ideological submission.
Jamie Fitzpatrick’s video work, The Warrior (He He He He), explores the dynamics of male online communities obsessed with analysing and reaffirming male power. Often condescending toward societal change and progression, these groups frame themselves as defenders of “legitimate” masculinity, drawing on Carl Jung’s archetypes to elevate the Hero as a justification for aggression and dominance. In these spaces, male leaders are mythologised as saviours, embodying grandiose ideals of strength and heroism that justify exclusion and violence.
The Warrior (He He He He) features a lone figure on a chessboard battlefield, embodying both the passive and aggressive aspects of the Jungian Hero. The figure wears a sculptural headpiece, characteristic of Fitzpatrick’s practice; its foam-like texture reminiscent of whipped cream, rendering the Hero absurd. The climactic moment, in which the Hero flips the chessboard, underscores the futility of aggression as an ideal. The video is soundtracked by the rhythmic strikes of a tambourine evoking the buildup to war.
Contrasting with the black and white, gloomy environment explored in Fitzpatrick’s work, Gina Fischli and Elleanna Chapman bring a hyper-feminine universe. Gina Fischli’s cake sculptures—Schloss Marschlins and Not even hiding in plain sight (taking money to the grave)—invite us into a world where sweetness and morbidity, indulgence and decay collide. The first, a celebratory tiered confection, takes its title from a castle in Switzerland that was the childhood home of feminist Meta von Salis. This title aligns with Fischli’s recurring practice of juxtaposing the whimsical allure of fairy tales with the darker histories of castles and Absolutist rule. In this specific case there’s also the layer of the contrasting princess and feminist feminine archetypes.
The second cake, shaped like a coffin with coins embedded in its frosting, nods to the Greek tradition of placing coins with the dead for their journey to the afterlife, or that even material accumulation has an end. Fischli’s cakes reflect the labour of beauty, exposing the cracks in striving for perfection.
Elleanna Chapman shares Gina Fischli’s playful, girlish DIY aesthetic in her sharp interrogation of historical and cultural symbols. Her wheat-pasted collages juxtapose life-sized images of Vladimir Lenin and Kylie Minogue in her performance at the 2000 Brit Awards, adorned with rhinestone-studded slogans such as AVANT-GARDE or VANGUARD?—a play on language that highlights the fracture between art’s avant-garde and the vanguard of progressive politics, questioning how terms that could be used interchangeably have different separate meanings and Your Class War Needs You (a humorous riff on Minogue’s campy 2000 single Your Disco Needs You). Meanwhile, Minogue’s microphone is replaced with Lenin’s 1917 text, The State and Revolution, transforming her from a pop idol into a political symbol.
Chapman’s works reflect the shift from the grand ideologies and direct actions of the 20th century to today’s fragmented, meme-driven discourse. They pose the question: If anything can be altered, beautified or meme-ified, what is the cost of this endless flexibility? Chapman cheekily observes the collapse between revolutionary politics and internet culture, coating them in cuteness, leaving us to wonder where authenticity and subversion truly lie.
This exploration of political ideology and capitalist critique is also reflected in Unyimeabasi Udoh’s work, where words take centre stage. For Whipped, Udoh created two text-based garlands, inscribed with the phrases “laissez-faire” and “fait accompli”. These terms encapsulate the resignation inherent in capitalist logic: the illusion of self-regulation of market forces (laissez-faire) and the sense of inevitability or irreversibility (fait accompli). The titles of the works Untitled (Nothing to Do) and Untitled (Nothing to Be Done) subvert the translation of the French phrases: “There’s nothing to do about it, but it’s done,” or, “There’s nothing to do about it, because it’s done.” They highlight how these ideas absolve individuals of agency while perpetuating systemic control.
The symmetrical phrases, each with twelve letters, mirror the calculated banality of a system that operates under the guise of inevitability. By juxtaposing economic jargon with its emotional and historical consequences, Udoh’s work underscores how the illusion of choice perpetuates passivity, revealing the invisible hand’s lasting grip on society.
The works in Whipped converge on themes of physical domination, emotional manipulation and cultural spectacle, with each artist offering a unique lens on the interplay between agency and submission amid the blurred lines between choice and co-option. Together, they transform the gallery into a twisted celebration: a birthday party where cakes and garlands revel in the manipulation of language and imagery, exposing systems of control operating in plain sight. Whipped is a verb rooted in the past, but it also ripples forward, revealing cycles of discipline and desensitisation, where sweetness and submission mirror one another until sugary excess inevitably gives way to rot.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Under the Spell Editions is proud to release Options, an artist edition by Unyimeabasi Udoh. In financial terms, an “option” is a contract granting the holder the right—but not the obligation—to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price within a specific time frame. Udoh translates this concept of choice, opportunity and risk into a variable edition of triangular pennants, cut from a single screen-printed sheet. Held together by an invisible thread, the pennants reflect individual possibilities while remaining part of a larger whole; their variations in shade underscoring the unpredictability and uniqueness of every outcome.
All proceeds from sales will directly support future programming at the art space.
Options, 2025
Hand-cut silkscreen print on paper
17.8 x 14 cm
Variable edition of 25, cut from a single printed sheet.
£50
LIST OF WORKS:
Elleanna Chapman
AVANT-GARDE or VANGUARD?, 2024
printed paper scan of Noel Burch’s 1976 essay AVANT-GARDE or VANGUARD?, as reproduced in Working Together: Notes on British Film Collectives in the 1970s by Petra Bauer and Dan Kidner (2013), sparkle modge podge, glitter effect spray, acrylic paint, spray paint, maker pen, rhinestones, glue, organza, claybord, inkjet print of rasterbated Vladimir Lenin, wheat paste
Dimensions variable (approx 187 x 140 x 4 cm)
Your Classwar Needs You, 2025
printed paper scan of bootleg custom wordmark forYour Disco Needs You by Kylie Minogue, sparkle modge podge, glitter effect spray, acrylic paint, spray paint, maker pen, rhinestones, glue, tulle, claybord, inkjet print of rasterbated Kylie Minogue, wheat paste
Dimensions variable (approx 175 x 140 x 4 cm)
Gina Fischli
Schloss Marschlins, 2024
Plaster, wire, wood, fimo
33 x 30 x 30 cm
Not even hiding in plain sight (taking money to the grave), 2021
Plaster, acrylic paint, fimo clay,
32 x 21 x 12 cm
Jaime Fitzpatrick
The Warrior (He He He He), 2019
Video
14:30 minutes
Unyimeabasi Udoh
Untitled (Nothing to Be Done), 2024
Die-cut Flashe and retroreflective glass beads on matte Duralar
Dimensions variable (approx. 48 x 154 cm)
Untitled (Nothing to Do), 2024
Die-cut Flashe and retroreflective glass beads on matte Duralar
Dimensions variable (approx. 48 x 154 cm)