A picture may say a thousand words, a drink choice may tell a person a lot about their date, but what does a cup say about someone? We here at Londonist aren’t sure, but that won’t prevent us from attending the current exhibition on at London gallery Hotel.
“Cups” is the current collaborative exhibition between London-based artist Dustin Ericksen and Los Angeles-based artist Mike Rogers. Since 1996 the two have collected over 350 different drinking vessels. Everything from plastic cups, empty beer bottles, used disposable coffee cups, to wine glasses and champagne flutes can be found at the exhibit. Each one of the glasses is labelled with the drinker’s name, date, and location where it was collected, with some of the drinker’s being more famous than others. The press release boasts such names as, “Sol Lewitt, Ed Ruscha, Charles Ray, Alan Kaprow, James Turrell, Dan Graham, Tracey Emin, Raymond Pettibon, Vanessa Beecroft, Roni Horn, Julian Schnabel, Mike Kelley, Mel Bochner, Elizabeth Murray, Vito Acconci, Andreas Gursky, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Brice Marden, Takashi Murakami, Hermann Nitsch, Rachel Whiteread, William Kentridge, Barbara Kruger…” (Obviously just to name a few. Ha!)
They are arranged in groupings over three tables in Hotel (a gallery Londonist became familiar with at the first Zoo Art Fair this past fall.) The collection is inspired by Ericksen and Rogers’s interest in the social aspect of the art experience. In addition, the two plan to continue collecting cups for the rest of their lives. That is going to be a lot of cups. If this exhibit seems like your cup of tea (it was too easy, apologies) it will be on until March 6.
