Genuine Fake Premium Economy – ICA, London (LAST CHANCE TO SEE)

More artists who reflect on economic structures and their meanings in Genuine Fake Premium Economy at the ICA.

Genuine Fake Premium Economy

Today’s exhibition is but a small one, so this will be but a small review. Its subject is Genuine Fake Premium Economy, the latest exhibition at the ICA in London. The exhibition brings together work by three artists born in the mid 1980s (“a generation shaped by a broken global economy” – wait, that’s me too!), who “interrogate ideas about class, labour and value in a time of increasing wealth inequality”. I thought it sounded interesting, and also thought it might be a counterpoint in some way to Currency Exchange, which I have just seen at the Gallery of Everything.

So who are these artists, then? Millennials, as we’ve established, and originating from the US. Jenna Bliss works in film and other moving images, and lives and works in New York. Buck Ellison was born in San Francisco and now lives and works in Los Angeles: he works in photography, and also installations. Finally Jasmine Gregory, who paints and creates mixed media works, was born in Washington D.C. and is now based in Zurich. With only ten works in the exhibition, then, we get quite a good range of media and perspectives.

How the artists approach the subject is interesting. One commonality I noticed between them was the blurred line of reality and satire. Both Ellison and Gregory repurpose the language of advertising. When I first saw Ellison’s newly-commissioned series of chromogenic prints, it took me a moment to parse out what was happening. “Virtue is not a single act, it’s a habit.” That one could almost be a genuine ad for a multinational bank. “In the hands of the many for the good of the few.” OK, probably not. But definitely deploying the techniques through which such institutions legitimise themselves and build trust with customers. Likewise with Gregory’s greyscale Patek Philippe advertisements.

There’s a tension here between what we are sold as aspirational, and genuine value. Should the detritus of a luxurious life (Jack’s Room 2026, Buck Ellison) spark envy? Pity? Acceptance that apparent meritocracies are often old boys’ or old school networks? The precarity of this web of art and finance makes itself abundantly apparent in Bliss’s 2023-4 True Entertainment. This 30 minute fictional reality TV-style film, set in a Swiss art fair, is mesmerising. It’s set in 2007, so we, the viewers, have knowledge that it’s all about to come crashing down. Not so the gallery staff, clients desperate not to miss out on the next big thing, or the artist permanently on the verge of a crisis. I couldn’t stop watching it, and noticed other visitors also watched it in its entirety.

Is there a link back to Currency Exchange? That exhibition, of work by artists from outside the artistic mainstream, is about harnessing the visual language of economic systems for commentary of great significance to the artists. This exhibition isn’t quite that. Although these artists critique (the American Dream, the art world), they come from within the artistic mainstream and work with it. Theirs is also a harnessing of familiar imagery for personal commentary, though. It’s just that their artworks are in direct rather than interrupted communication with an audience. Both exhibitions certainly encourage us to rethink art and money, and need very few artworks to do so. I wonder which other galleries will be encouraging my Millennial anti-capitalist bent over the summer?

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Genuine Fake Premium Economy on until 5 July 2026 only.