Workout at The Bottle Factory
The current way we view fitness and sport is undoubtedly different to previous generations. Under the twin gazes of consumerism and social media, the performance of fitness has never been as pristine, polished, and poised as it is in 2025. I wonder what PE classes are like in schools; if I were a teenager today, would I be a social pariah if I cooked up any (and every) excuse under the sun to withdraw my participation in physical education? Would I be deemed as lazy and therefore an unacceptable junior member of society?
A bizarrely large proportion of people with a significant social media following are now into fitness in a big way. You cannot un-see it once you realise that this has seeped into the content of people who otherwise do not make ‘fitness’ content. Although now that everything is documented online, before being commodified into sponsorship deals with relevant companies, perhaps I am naive in my shock. In the lockdown years, I understood the uptick in exercise routines; with sanity in short supply and daily step counts often amounting to around a thousand, it was all fair game. Everything was closed except the open road, and of course, running is free. But, there are levels to fitness, and the slope between competition (see: the Strava app) and obsession is a slippery one.
‘Workout’ is a group exhibition taking place at The Bottle Factory, a disused Victorian warehouse located off the Old Kent Road in South London. Whilst not the most instinctive spot to find contemporary art, the pay off is delicious once you find it.
Installation view: Workout, curated by OHSH Projects. The Bottle Factory, London. 25 April - 24 May 2025. Image courtesy of OHSH Projects.
It is difficult to made group exhibitions on the topic of health and fitness without falling into the trap of the aesthetically pleasing, and the uncritical. Throw (predominantly the widespread Hollywood use of) Ozempic into the mix, and the cocktail of misogyny and fatphobia now throws in classist ideals to produce the potion of nightmares. You’re not fat, you’re just poor, and if you’re not fat, you’re not fit. Women, especially, cannot win this fight. It is gaining weight to the sound of “she’s let herself go”, or losing a few pounds to hear “she’s dangerously ill”.
As I have discussed previously, there is a surplus of content out there to pummel the ego even lower if one is feeling insecure or unsure around their body image. Fitness plays a big part in this; for something that is at first glance innocent, productive, and part of a healthy lifestyle, there are many ways in which we can observe fitness through the lens of its contemporary performative nature.
‘Workout’ at The Bottle Factory, curated by OHSH Projects, is incredibly well curated. It crosses the different mediums of video, sculpture, installation and painting smartly and tactfully, while also managing to make the viewer laugh in between pondering the obsessions of fitness. One such amusing work is Rosie Gibbens’ video, The New Me, which presents a cleaning tool for the home which is to be worn as a body suit. Filmed in high resolution with advertisement-friendly block background colours, Gibbens demonstrates the satirical product in use, as the artist glides herself across surfaces, rubbing off stains using different parts of her body whilst wearing this suit. It is reminiscent of women’s labour since time immemorial, and oddly an uplifting reminder of how far women’s domestic lives have (mostly) come. It’s funny, faintly euphemistic, and a good amuse-bouche for setting the scene of the absurdity of performing fitness and perfectionism online. Trad wives, beware.
Installation view: El Hoskyns-Abrahall, Altar, 2025. Porcelain, glass, aluminium potassium sulphate, ceramic tile, gym bag, epoxy, 760mm x 760mm x 500mm. Image by Issey Scott for Post-Art Clarity.
The readymade in contemporary art seems to be coming back in a major way, and El Hoskyns-Abrahall’s installation, Altar, partly comprised of a gym bag and ceramic tiles is a sobering look at the ways in which gender seeps into the discourse around fitness. Goals around fitness and ‘results’ are split between genders. Women must emanate a glow while they work out, and emit the right amount of sweat, one which produces endorphins and pheromones, and they must be aiming for a peachy bum and a flat stomach. It is not difficult to see how patriarchal expectations (and conditioning) as well as misogynistic voyeurism comes into play. Meanwhile for men, the ‘before and after’ shots are welcome, but no real content predating significant muscular progress. No weakness or unsuccessful attempts can be documented at the nascent stages of a fitness journey; the only possible masculine option is being hench, threatening, powerful. Of course, all of this should be challenged intently, studied, and subverted. I love how Altar has presented the readymade gym bag with white powder on it, bringing the gym and the potential manual workplace into the gallery space. The workplace, although for many not as laborious as it once was, is still labour, and to perfect our image we have to seamlessly glide from a day of hustle to evenings and weekends of the different kind of labour found in fitness regimes.
So where are the gender non-conforming goals? Perhaps in transcending gender norms and expectations, we can relegate the idealised body to (art) history. Altar shows the gym bag lying on the tiled floor; one might perceive that it has been abandoned in favour of a new healthy way of life that doesn’t care for the consumerism or tight rules of the ‘glow up’. Elsewhere, Gabriela Pelczarska has also used the readymade in Though time never lasts, only tough people last, an artwork using pieces such as exercise mats and weights alongside a poetic title that has an air of being tongue in cheek, making us wonder why we see so much fitness content, when one can so easily do this in solitude, in reflective, offline mode. Interestingly, while there is a large amount of satire at play within the exhibition, there are few tender moments. We are in a world filled with so many images of fit bodies, sometimes so impossibly fit that one wonders 'at what cost?’. Unlike the range of fitness personalities flogging their respective app, diet plan, or virtual PT packages, there is a chasm where real bodies should be. Neither of the readymade artworks are fit for purpose (so to speak); the beautiful gallery space at The Bottle Factory almost feels as if a theatrical performance has taken place, but the actors have left the stage.
Installation view: Gabriela Pelczarska, Though time never lasts, only tough people last, 2025. Aluminium, steel, pleather, exercise heavy duty mats, thread, foam, MDF, acrylic. Image by Issey Scott for Post-Art Clarity.
Judith Butler said that “gender is an ‘act’, broadly construed, which constructs the social fiction of its own psychological interiority” [1] and perhaps the same can be said for the contemporary state of fitness. Like many endeavours and activities that were once harmless, leisurely, and enjoyable, our health and fitness routines are now under surveillance and scrutiny from both our online audiences (who ultimately don’t care, but are conditioned to make judgments based on myriad other content creators, models, and miscellaneous bodies in the virtual realm) and ourselves. How much of these fitness regimes do we actually want to participate in, and how much have become an enforced part of our social fabric, our “social fiction”?
Installation view: Moussa David Saleh, A Golden Weight, 2025. Oil on canvas, 20cm x 20cm. Image by Issey Scott for Post-Art Clarity.
Michel Foucault defines the ‘docile body’ as a body that “may be subjected, used, transformed and improved.” [2] Under late-stage capitalism and neoliberalism, we are all in fierce competition with each other, whether as friends, colleagues, neighbours, social media users, or fellow gym-goers. Under the framework of competition, and optimisation towards being the best version of ourselves (in order to make the most money through entrepreneurial spirit or being the best worker), it is essentially impossible to defy our descent into being a ‘docile body’. Despite the symbolic polarities between docility and fitness as terms, we find ourselves compounded in a bind of Foucault’s theory of subjection, transformation and relentless improvement, instilled by the workplace (whether physical or virtual and immaterial) and ourselves. These pressures are conveyed well in Moussa David Saleh’s painting, A Golden Weight, which isolates and fragments the face of someone straining and struggling under the literal weight of exercise. Saleh’s work is positioned by the entrance of the gallery space, welcoming the viewer in but also markedly present at their point of departure. In this curatorial decision, we are reminded of the social and physical pressures of excessive fitness and exercise, and it forces us to ask why we do this, and why we are constantly considering the limits and parameters of our own bodies, our own PBs, instead of making the most of the remarkable lives our bodies accommodate on a daily basis. Blissfully, our strengths and abilities look different for every single body. Comparison and competition, surely, is futile.
Workout, a group exhibition curated by OHSH Projects. 25 April - 24 May 2025. The Bottle Factory, London. ohshprojects.com | thebottlefactory.london
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