Art Aloe Vera & Butter Opening February 8, 2012 Jennifer West’s first solo show in the UK opened last Friday at S1 Artspace in Sheffield

I really love summery exhibitions in the cold of winter. They are the perfect escape. Friday was fucking freezing, especially in the triple-height warehouse exhibition room in S1. But drinking beer, standing around in coats looking at trippy film isn’t the worst way to start a Friday night.

The exhibition features six large projects of 16, 35, and 70mm film that have been marinated in substances such as nail varnish, LSD, lithium and urine by West. The largest of the projections “Dawn Surf Jellybowl Film” shows footage of surfers on the California coast. The film itself has been treated on the beach to sand, beer, tar, sex wax and shark teeth amongst other substances. It’s a fun idea, exposing the film to the same sorts of things its images contain, and the effects are a psychedelic, trippy blur, like a good chillwave video of found YouTube clips, writ large on a gallery wall.

Aloe Vera & Butter is on at S1 Artspace until the 10th of March