Thirsty Thursday: “Go hard or go home is all well and good, until it’s not”

A Thirsty Thursday rolls around as quickly as a blue-chip gallery intern scrambles to Pret to satisfy their director’s coffee cravings. It’s Wet February now (thank god), and that can only mean one thing: unprecedented levels of thirst. 

This week we have planned a special south London lineup starting at the White Cube, Bermondsey for Theaster Gates’ exhibition ‘1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise’, then to Goldsmiths CCA for Galli, ‘So, So, So’ and finally down to the dirty depths of Seager gallery, Deptford for ‘The Archive of Forgotten Forms’, curated by DUMP. It was an  ambitious agenda, a Lord of the Rings level journey, but when there’s a will, there’s a way. 

Plaster HQ is based in potentially the thirstiest area of London: Soho. We fall out of the office with hair sprayed to breaking point and into the booming guffaws of finance bros congregating at Mr. Foggs (Who let the dogs out?).  Sweaty and flustered after batting off all the Simons and Marks, “splitting the G”. We arrive at Soho square and mount our trusty steeds (Lime bikes) and head southwards. “Bermondsey ain’t gonna know what’s hit it!”, Dora quips. 

It’s 6 pm and the journey to the White Cube is straight up treacherous. We’ve somehow ended up in the middle of the Tour De France. “Don’t worry guys, we’re all going to get home!” Billy shouts with a rolled eye as lycra-lined alphas swing their dicks and tussle for prime spot in the traffic light bike boxes. Who gets the prize for thickest thighs? 

We arrive on Bermondsey Street in a daze. It feels a bit like we’ve walked onto the set of the new Bridget Jones film: a parodied version of London. We run straight into a pub. How else do you come down from a Lime high/ NDE (near death experience) than with a half pint and a shot of tequila?

The parking lot of ‘the Cube’ is overflowing with hotties, thotties and half of Billy’s crush roster. We file into the crowd, grab a beer and down them like it’s freshers week. 

At 7 pm we decide it’s finally time to see some art. We instantly bump into The Artist Room artist Kristy Chan and begin a fame-core photoshoot, batting away the likes of Nimrod Kamer, most likely armed with some fresh-off-the-press art world gossip.

After finally  pushing through a man carrying what appears to be full camping equipment on his back, the exhibition reveals itself. Gates’ show, looks back 60 years to Malcom X’s assassination, through the lens of the Japanese journalist Ei Nagata and his partner Haruhi Ishitani – both of whom were present during X’s murder. 

The size of the White Cube is ambitious, and there are not many artists who could fill its cavernous halls as Gates has. The sound of Gil Scott Heron’s Don’t Give Up floats in from the main gallery as London-born and LA-based DJ and music producer Ade ‘Acyde’ Odunlami plays soul and jazz mixes from a colossal shelving unit lined with Japanese-style ceramic pots. On the left of the wooden booth is television playing archival footage of musicians. We are particularly enamoured by the two star paintings. Weathered yet electric, like they have been left outside in the rain, anything impure washed away.

 All too often, spaces like these can stand somber and imposing with the power to suck any life out of art that battles against it. Gates teaches us how a body of work can live harmoniously in such an imposing environment. How exhilarating to hear music blasting through these normally silent spaces.

Walking around the space, a shed-like wooden structure stands in the middle of the room, containing a framed photo of Martin Luther King and two panthers on each wall. Back in Chicago, Gates has renovated and repurposed a number of buildings in the city, of which he calls ‘real-estate art’, like the Stony Island Savings Bank, which he saved from demolition and turned into a space for Black contemporary art. It feels particularly pertinent that the show, which reflects on the politics and revolution of the 60s, coincides with Donald Trump reassuming office. We agree that the show warrants a second visit, and  as we have to dash to the next opening, the tune of Gil Scott Heron lingers. 

The Lime bike odyssey continues even further south and we arrive at Goldsmiths CCA fashionably late. We catch the tail end of the crowd – namely artist Louis Blue Newby, and art PR daddy Sam Talbot who bashfully shies away from the Plaster disposable camera. We pap his colleague Isabel Davies, and someone in their dressing gown and slippers (presumably a final year Goldsmiths student braving it out of the studio for a quick £2 glass of wine – who can blame them). ‘So, So, So’ is Galli’s first UK solo exhibition of Galli and her work has been rarely exhibited since her initial commercial success in the 1980s. The paintings are guttural and intense, but truthfully our minds still linger on the Theaster Gates show.

The now squiffy Billy has to be dragged out of the tank-like gallery as he tries to take some final pics of the bare, black shiny metal walls proclaiming, “I will have my black cube gallery one day… One day!”

After a quick whizz around we head back out into the streets of New Cross for the last show of the night, and with energy levels becoming dangerously low, Dora runs on ahead to buy some crisps to muster some fuel for the final lap. Back to the Lime bikes we go. With a sour cream and onion induced burst of energy we head for Deptford and see the glowing red and white beacon that is Seager. A trendy looking crowd drips out of the doorway, the windows steamed with breath . ‘Archive of Forgotten Forms’, curated by DUMP is a group show and launches the video game DUMP Doom Simulator, alongside the work of seven other artists. Dora recognises AC Larsen from the New Contemporaries show a few weeks ago. After a poor attempt at levelling up on the video game, we decided it may be time to call it a night. Turns out that we may have Thirsty Thursdayed a bit too close to the sun. As Dora stumbles home to a pot noodle, Billy slinks into The Royal Albert to finish the night with one final half pint and an explosive blast in the face guitar riff off by the live blues band. Go hard or go home is all well and good, until it’s not. Here’s to next week. Billy and Dora signing off. x