Last chance: Theaster Gates at White Cube Bermondsey

Posted: 05 November 2012 by Sam Phillips

This Sunday the doors close on an engaging exhibition by Chicagoan artist and designer Theaster Gates, on view at White Cube Bermondsey.

_{Theaster Gates, 'My Labor Is My Protest', South Galleries and 9x9x9, White Cube Bermondsey. 7 September - 11 November 2012. © Theaster Gates. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy White Cube and Johnson Publishing Company, LLC. All rights reserved.}

Gates’ project in a dilapidated Huguenot House in Kassel was a highlight of this year’s exhibition Documenta 13, directed by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who topped last month's Art Review Power 100 list (for a review of this influential show, see my recent blog). For those who didn’t make it to Documenta, White Cube offers a similar examination of themes close to Gates’ heart and art: social activism, urban regeneration, and the promotion of African-American culture, history and industry.

The artist’s highly collaborative work does not explore these ideas from afar but participates in their achievement, often under the auspices of Rebuild Foundation, the non-profit organisation he has established. Dorchester Projects, for example, is his project to regenerate into a community hub a cluster of abandoned properties in Chicago’s neglected South Side area.

An example of this approach in the exhibition is Johnson’s Editorial Library (2012). The books collected by the Johnson Publishing Company, pioneering producer of the African-American lifestyle magazine Ebony and Jet, are arranged top to bottom along a tall gallery wall. Ranging from a rebound copy of an 1866 tome on the history of slavery to more contemporary books on black artists and musicians, the library is now in Gates’ custody and available for the public to use at White Cube – a long table with chairs and a helpful librarian beckon visitors to take a book and sit down.

Thanks to the artist, there are plans afoot with the Chicago City Council for a permanent home for the collection in a public space in the city. Its journey across the world to White Cube and elsewhere afterwards publicises its significance, and the information and stories it includes, as well as the groundbreaking Johnson Publishing Company, set up by John Johnson in 1942. In the same gallery space, the cosmetics company Fashion Fair – established by Linda Johnson, wife of John – offered visitors makeovers during the first two weeks of the show. Fashion Fair was one of the first companies of its kind to develop products for black skin.

Elsewhere in the exhibition Gates’ subject is the 1968 Chicago race riots, which were sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. One resonant salvaged object is hung on an adjacent wall to the library – a small dust-covered display window, which the artist found in a school, which contains a scrunched-up photograph of King. The other sculptures, although featuring found objects and materials, are all mediated or constructed by Gates and the craftsmen with whom he collaborates.