Alex Margo Arden Will get Up Shut and Private With Amy Winehouse

This summer season marked 15 years because the demise of British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, however her spirit lives on. Now, her life and affect are the topic of “Nothing Private,” a just-opened exhibition by artist Alex Margo Arden unfold throughout three rooms of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Basis in London.

For the exhibition, Arden has created a whole bunch of simulacra of Winehouse’s private objects, recreating a pair of ballet slippers signed by followers left outdoors the singer’s residence after her demise and a birthday card from the music producer Mark Ronson and Adele that Winehouse by no means acquired. To spherical out this show, Arden bought actual copies of books present in Winehouse’s library, the make-up and fragrance she used, and boardgames and ornamental objects like mirrors that dotted her home. The show can at occasions really feel such as you’re surreptitiously searching essentially the most intimate components of somebody’s residence. Since 2021, Arden has been forensically dissecting pixelated photographs of Winehouse she’s discovered on-line, in catalogues, newspapers and magazines, to find out which objects she would want to trace down.

“This present is a very private perception into Amy,” Arden informed ARTnews, describing what’s on view as “parallel objects.” She feels that the hundred books on show create an intimate ambiance and add historic worth, extra so than if she truly had offered only one or two genuine objects from Winehouse’s property.

The sensitivity to element throughout the challenge is placing. At one level throughout this five-year scavenger hunt, Arden wound up with 20 variations of the identical ebook; she wished to match every copy’s backbone and canopy to ensure she had the right one. The majority of this labor is showcased in Library (2026), containing dozens of tomes from Vladimir Nabokov’s Converse Reminiscence subsequent to the cookbook The New Basic 1000 Recipes, which isn’t removed from a ebook on marriage. There are additionally biographies of David Beckham, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn.

“What I’m proposing within the paintings is that as a set, this offers us actually good perception” into Winehouse’s life, Arden mentioned, warning towards zeroing in on anyone ebook. She pointed to a Weight Watchers ebook, which some would possibly relate to Winehouse’s historical past of consuming issues, which have been put beneath a microscope by the British tabloids. “In isolation, these objects can be utilized to essentially push particular narratives about her,” she defined.

Within the subsequent room, Arden presents Similar In any other case (2026), a recreation of the hearth in Winehouse’s residence at 2 Jeffrey’s Place, the place she wrote her Grammy Award–successful album Again to Black. Simply as Winehouse as soon as had it, Arden has positioned framed problems with British Vogue, comedian ebook pages from Betty and Veronica, and a mirror with an image of Marilyn Monroe over the mantel. However the artist has left gaps the place the musician had private images of family and friends framed. “The gaps converse to the sensation of issues being current and lacking all the time,” she mentioned.

As we spoke, I grew to become captivated by a scent within the gallery. At first I believed it was Arden’s fragrance, however the perfume was, in truth, an paintings, Fragrance mentioned to have belonged to Amy Winehouse [I-IV] (2024–26). The Chanel No.5 I used to be smelling had been emitted from a customized dispenser by Arden. All through the exhibition’s run, the Chanel No.5 might be exchanged for different perfumes that Winehouse is alleged to have worn. Arden wouldn’t disclose which of them would function, however numerous accounts by trend publications beforehand reported that Winehouse additionally wore Alien by Thierry Mugler, Vera Wang Princess, and Givenchy’s Sizzling Couture. The work was a touching reminder of Winehouse’s tangible presence, wafting via the galleries.

The exhibition additionally contains extra intimate works that at occasions get overshadowed. Jigsaw (2026), for instance, is a stack of these titular puzzles of scenes of the Beatles, The Simpsons, and Casablanca. The endurance required to piece them collectively paints Winehouse as an introspective lady versus her occasion lady that the tabloids portrayed her as. Despatched In any other case (2026) is the recreation of the aforementioned birthday card that was solely found years later, a poignant reminder that even a decade and a half after Winehouse’s demise, her life remains to be being excavated. Taken collectively, they act as intelligent tidbits into Winehouse’s short-lived life.

To her tribute to Winehouse, Arden additionally provides a chunk of herself, by way of Show Identification Cubes (2026), an paintings made up of a thousand acrylic ice cubes that resemble the placards which are sometimes utilized in museum vitrines to match an object to its corresponding label. This numbering methodology recurs throughout Arden’s oeuvre. In All Clear (2022), these numbers seem as print-outs affixed subsequent to objects comparable to a brush, a ladder, and a woven basket, maybe evoking the objects discovered at a criminal offense scene, the mundane taking up a extra sinister connotation.

However in “Nothing Private,” on view via January 23, the plastic numbers function items that Arden hasn’t found about Winehouse but—and perhaps by no means will. “They draw consideration to areas the place issues are absent, however additionally they mark areas the place issues have as soon as been,” she mentioned.