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Theaster Gates

June 2023

  • Feast for the eyes … À Table, named after the French call to sit down together to eat.

    Serpentine Pavilion 2023 review – giant cocktail umbrella gives the park a party vibe

    French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh has unveiled her festive big top. And this symphony of timber is a lovely place to eat and think about food – if you can overlook the clumsy flat-pack feel

June 2022

  • Black Chapel by Theaster Gates, the 2022 Serpentine pavilion.

    Theaster Gates’s Black Chapel Serpentine pavilion review – a welcoming labour of love

  • Partly inspired by the death of Gates’s father … the Black Chapel in the London park.

    A monument to a roofer that lets in the rain: Theaster Gates’s Serpentine Pavilion

February 2022

  • ‘I love the idea that nature will come in’ … Theaster Gates on his proposed Serpentine Pavilion 2022, Black Chapel.

    ‘It’s got great drainage!’ – Theaster Gates on his open-to-the-elements Serpentine pavilion

    Inspired by the kilns of Stoke-on-Trent, the Chicago artist’s Black Chapel will host bands, including his own, and also provide ‘a place of quietude’ where even the British weather is welcome

December 2021

  • Clockwise from top left: the Sara Cultural Centre; Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Farbige Abstufung (1939); Jean Dubuffet, Garden with Melitaea; the Serpentine Pavilion 2021; Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon, Whitechapel Gallery.

    Best culture 2021
    The best art and architecture of 2021 – the year the galleries reopened

    As the galleries reopened, Jean Dubuffet was recast as an incendiary prophet, Poussin revealed his raunchy side – and a giant Swedish ‘plyscraper’ showed the miracle of wood. Our critics rank the highlights of 2021

October 2021

  • Theaster Gates: ‘Clay feels perverse because it’s lowly.’

    ‘Clay feels perverse’ – Theaster Gates on working on Obama’s library and going back to pottery

    The superstar ‘social artist’ has revived derelict buildings and rescued a legendary record collection – but in lockdown, as two new UK exhibitions show, it was singing and throwing pots that made him happy

September 2021

  • Whitechapel Gallery preview of their Autumn exhibitions., Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK - 27 Sep 2021<br>Mandatory Credit: Photo by Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock (12471315am) Chorus, 2016 - Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon - Whitechapel Gallery's previews thei Autumn exhibitions. Whitechapel Gallery preview of their Autumn exhibitions., Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK - 27 Sep 2021

    From a cookie jar to couplets and cocaine – Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon review

    This sprawling trio of exhibitions collects objects from many sources, marked by sometimes traumatic history, alongside Gates’s own, magnificent work

August 2021

  • The best art and design of autumn 2021.

    Autumn arts preview 2021
    From Hokusai to Himid: the best art and architecture of autumn 2021

    Hokusai explodes into Britain, Sebastião Salgado paddles up the Amazon, Lubaina Himid gets a retrospective – and an eccentric postmodern bath finally opens to the public

October 2020

  • PRADA MODE LONDON<br>LONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 02: Theaster Gates attends PRADA MODE LONDON on October 02, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images for PRADA)

    Theaster Gates: 'Art and protest are forms of political thought'

    The artist talks about the work behind his first ever New York show, Black Vessel, and why white supremacy still threatens vital cultural institutions

December 2019

  • a still from the show’s centrepiece, Theaster Gates’s film Dance of Malaga.

    Theaster Gates: Amalgam review – memorial to America’s island of shame

  • Tourlbed past … So Bitter This Curse of Darkness by Theaster Gates.

    Theaster Gates review – shocking lament for the ransacked paradise of Malaga

November 2019

  • Theaster Gates. Black Madonna. the Kunstmuseum Basel<br>Theaster Gates. Black Madonna. the Kunstmuseum Basel, June 2018

    'My duty as a black man': the artist preserving gazebo where police killed Tamir Rice

    Theaster Gates collects neglected black cultural objects in the hopes of preserving and displaying complicated history of race in America

July 2018

  • Theaster Gates during the installation of his exhibition Black Madonna at the Kunstmuseum Basel.

    Theaster Gates: 'The male, Caucasian world as we've known it is over'

    Whether he’s saving condemned buildings, playing jazz or redistributing Frankie Knuckles’s record collection, the artist wants to spread the word about the black experience – and point the way to salvation

January 2017

  • Theaster Gates

    Theaster Gates: 'I want to believe that there is power in my poverty'

    The Chicagoan artist, who made a name for himself with his art-meets-urban regeneration projects in the city, is back in a gallery with work that challenges assumptions about race, class and what it means to be poor

July 2016

  • London, UK. 28 April 2015. Pictured: American artist Theaster Gates. The exhibition Freedom of Assembly, new work by American artist Theaster Gates opens at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, London. The artworks are on display from 29 April to 5 July<br>EN5J0K London, UK. 28 April 2015. Pictured: American artist Theaster Gates. The exhibition Freedom of Assembly, new work by American artist Theaster Gates opens at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, London. The artworks are on display from 29 April to 5 July 2015.

    Theaster Gates on the nuts and bolts of life – all 30,000 of them

    The US artist has transplanted his South Side Chicago hardware shop to Milan’s Fondazione Prada to highlight the disappearing store of human knowledge

November 2015

  • The Stony Island Arts Bank ... Theaster Gates’s modern archival and arts facility.

    Resilient cities
    From Theaster Gates to Assemble: is there an art to urban regeneration?

    The Chicago planner-turned-artist’s transformation of Stony Island bank is the latest high-profile example of how the arts can drive a city’s redevelopment. But is this always a good thing?

October 2015

  • Iwan and Manuela Wirth

    Swiss couple Iwan and Manuela Wirth top art power list

    Wirths praised for changing model of how art is bought and sold, while Ai Weiwei ranks second and Nicholas Serota falls to fifth

July 2015

  • Theaster Gates art

    US artist Theaster Gates to help Bristol hear itself in first UK public project

    Dramatic ruins of city centre Temple Church will host performances – from pop music to poetry readings – around the clock for 24 days

May 2013

  • LS Lowry Piccadilly Circus 1960

    Summer arts preview 2013
    The best art exhibitions and events for summer 2013

    Adrian Searle: Lowry gets a reappraisal, Edinburgh-born Peter Doig gets his first major Scottish exhibition and Theaster Gates shows his pottery at the Whitechapel Gallery

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