THEASTER GATES – OH, THE WIND OH, THE WIND
2021-09-06Treating the medium of clay as an expanded field for enquiry, the exhibition consolidates many of the artist’s thematic preoccupations from the past two decades, and reflects upon Gates’ own identity in relation to this ancient and earthly material. As he says: ‘Clay made me and is forever the root of my artistic interest, but I don’t feel limited by any origin story to work solely within the confines of my origins. Blackness, clay, immateriality, and space are all launch pads that encourage advanced practice, reflection, trial, and iteration. I am practising acts of creation.’
The exhibition as a whole takes its title from Gates’ new film Oh, The Wind (2021), presented in the lower-ground floor gallery. Evoking the Black sermon and Baptist hymnody as a way of connecting Black religious music traditions to the history of ceramics, it was filmed in an abandoned conveyance structure for a brick manufacturing company, a site of intense ceramic production for over 50-years and now part of the Archie Bray Foundation.
Opposite – Earthwork, 2020
Exhibition runs through to October 30th, 2021
White Cube
25-26 Mason’s Yard
SW1Y 6BU
London
