Tag Archives: Gasworks Gallery

Critical Art Theory @ Gasworks Gallery

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We always enjoy the eccentric offerings at the quirky Gasworks Gallery in Oval, and their current exhibition certainly doesn’t disappoint. Previous shows have featured a giant Styrofoam coffin, and another saw the space turned into a Hampstead Heath cruising area. So we popped open the subterranean port hole to our office and went to inspect the latest offering.

And the offering is ‘Critical Art Theory’ by the very vivacious 87 year old Japanese/American artist Ben Sakoguchi. The artists’ earliest memories were of being held in an internment camp during WW2 with his family. This trauma informed his view of history only being developed by white American/European men, and their failings being conveniently forgotten. We hope our CEO Kevin is reading this.

The 67 paintings in the show draw a rough chronological timeline from cave paintings up to the invention of photography. Using primarily painters from the canon (read…white dudes) he turns their view of the world on its head by comparisons to metal band KISS, Back to the Future, and Teenage Mutant Turtles, as you do. And if you’re thinking ‘Pop Art’ then you’ve hit the nose on the head and you get a prize. Occupants of the White House are also not spared a satirical eye. God knows with the current one he has enough material to fill fifty galleries.

When we saw these paintings online we thought they were collages and stencilled letters. In reality they are meticulously drawn paintings reminding us of detailed Japanese prints. Some of the pictures within pictures also look like film posters. They could also spring to mind cartoons that your grandad sketched in anger after a few too many brandies on Christmas day.

Many of the paintings on show engage directly with racial subjugation and gender bias. And while Critical Art Theory might lack the side splittingly humorous appeal of a Styrofoam coffin, it’s an intriguing journey into how the world has been shaped by the white male gaze for millennia, as viewed by artists who we’ve learned not to question.  

Critical Art Theory is open now until 7 September and is totally free. But please remember that if you want to take part in the fun it is only open Wed-Sun 12 to 6. If you want even more fun they are having an artist open day on 6 September and details can be found here.

throwers at Gasworks Galley

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We always enjoy the eccentric offerings offered up by the quirky Gasworks Gallery in Oval, and their current exhibition certainly doesn’t let us down. Previous shows have included a giant Styrofoam coffin, and another saw the space turned into a Hampstead Heath cruising area. The current show is called ‘throwers’ by Johannesburg based artist Noland Oswald Lewis and is an altogether more serious offering, but just as surreal.  

In the first room we find a 3D printer furiously creating stones which appear to be large lumps of coal. When completed the stones are logged by Gasworks and either stored or put on display, creating what is called a ‘Black Earth Library’. The text on the walls place them as various rock samples extracted from settler communities in South Africa, Australia and the USA. As coal often turns into diamonds, to us it was redolent of how people have exploited indigenous lands for reasons of profit or settlement.  

The second room is a bit more playful, and invert familiar representations of the globe. We encounter a globe next to a giant black planet which invites the viewer to consider all manner of interplanetary ideas. A meteor? A threat to white dominance? Along the long wall there is a vast mural (stick with us, people) which weaves together that represents a social history of ‘stones that move’ which includes data from near earth asteroids and their cosmic journey. Accompanying this is a playful archive of people throwing rocks. Hopefully the synthetic ones that won’t split your head open. A recurring theme throughout is that of a thrown rock, be it a giant rock in space headed to earth or the equally symbolic sight of a person throwing a stone in apartheid Soweto which threatens the established order.  

Nolan Oswald Dennis – ‘throwers’ is on now until 22 June and is totally free. The gallery is only open towards the end of the week from 12 to 6 so over the bank holiday take a break and flex those brain muscles which have lied in repose for far too long.  And you can be amogst the bewildered patrons below.

Gasworks Gallery. Or is it a Mirage?

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When we take a needed break from our subterranean office beneath Kennington Cross we like to inspect the offerings at the never boring Gasworks Gallery in Oval. Previous exhibits have seen the space transformed into a gay cruising area, and another featured a giant Styrofoam coffin. The current show is called ‘Mirage’ and was created by Indonesian artist and filmmaker Riar Rizaldi.

The exhibit is composed of two film reels, and the first is Mirage – Eigenstate. It weaves together analogous investigations into the nature of reality, positioning western science as just one of many worldviews. The film then explores different interpretations of reality, from Sufi mysticism through to theories of quantum mechanics. We frankly have no idea what any of this means but the film is certainly nice to look at, with lots of Arabic fonts and words spinning around. 

The second film is called Mirage – Metanoia which is set in a kind of 1970’s Hanna-Barbera retro cosmic animation, where astronauts survive rocket crashes and pixie/cricket creatures wax philosophical about the presence of god in atoms, as you do. Again the artist visits Sufi metaphysics by means of a lady crawling out of a crater. Both films are presented in an immersive setting which includes a lovely Persian tiled floor and a wall mural based on the teachings of a Persian mystic. 

If this sounds like your kind of thing, and we really have no reason why it wouldn’t,  Gasworks are putting on a symposium called ‘Strangelet’ over the weekend of 16 – 17 November and tickets are available on their website. The press release describes the symposium as ‘a weekend of presentations, talks, screenings and performances that are categorised as gharib which means ‘weird or strange’ in Sufism (no, we didn’t know that off the top of our heads).

They are also hosting a much less strange sounding breakfast exhibition tour on 27 November and tickets for that on are their website

Riar Rizaldi – Mirage is on now until 22 December and is totally free. And they have a lovely, popup giftshop as well.