Cathy's Art Diary

Superb exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey of new projects by Theatser Gates. One piece in particular, a huge shelving unit full of vases, took my breath away and I’m not sure why. I have no idea what it meant but I am a sucker for ceramics and I loved the monumentality of it. I think a good summation of the show was that I didn’t really understand it but that didn’t stop me being moved by it. There was a link to the archive of late Japanese journalist Ei Nagata and his partner Haruhi Ishitan who were at the assignation of Malcolm X in 1965 and who went in the collect material on his final months and impact and to bring that to the Japanese people. Aesthetically the show brought together Japanese culture and the Black Liberation Movement. A strange mix but it worked! Closed 6 April 2025 Reviews Guardian  

Austere Pavilion at the Serpentine gallery designed by Theaster Gates. I always enjoy coming to this annual installation and this year's is large and impressive. It’s less open than other years but I love the vista through it and the deep, dark space it creates. Outside there is wood at the bottom and a soft metal like zinc round the top but inside it is all lined in back wood. There are benches around the walls with a lovely set of seven silvered pictures on one side. Reading the commentary it references ceramic kilns both from Stoke on Trent and America as well as various African buildings and the Rothko chapel. I love the fact the pictures are made with a roofing technique as a nod to Gates father who was a roofer. Outside the structure is a bell salvaged from St. Laurence, a landmark Catholic Church that once stood in Chicago's South Side where Gates was born. Closes 16 October 2022 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Fascinating exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery of work by the contemporary artist Theaster Gates. I confess I didn’t know Gates work so I found the introduction boards really helpful. He mainly works in clay quoting Isiah 64:8 which likens God and humanity to a potter and his clay. Gates himself said “as a potter you learn how to shape the world”. He has founded the Rebuild Foundation to rejuvenate his neighbourhood in Chicago where he trains potters. T he show started with a historic display of ceramics from his Stony Island Arts Bank, many linked to colonialism and global trade, and including items made by Gates. I was particularly interested to see works by Dave the Potter, recognized as the first enslaved potter to inscribe his work.   There was an excellent video of him talking about his work and clips of him working in his studio as well an inviting musicians in to play there. The upstairs room showed new work, such as that pictured here, made during a reside...

Interesting exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey of new work by the American artist Theaster Gates. The show included a number of groups of work on the theme of the first amendment of the US Constitution which protects the freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble and the free exercise of religion. I’m not always sure I could see how some piece fit the theme but there were some interesting works. I liked the pieces best which had reused material from disused buildings in South Side Chicago such as a wall sculpture made of fork lift truck lifts and panels made from old gym floors with the tape marking left on but now in a different pattern. These felt like then held the echo of the people who had used them before. I wasn’t so sure about the large tar pictures and the ceramics covered in tar but I did find them rather beautiful and mesmeric. I also liked a group of ceramic figures where one had escaped! My positive mind said escaped but it may be that he’d been ...