Londoners have witnessed rising social inequality, homelessness and the closure of many independent businesses, community centres and venues, which have sadly given space to increasing gentrification, with the so-called ‘luxury flats’, becoming the material symbol of neoliberal greed.Īn appropriate example of this urban pattern was the legendary queer venue, The Joiners Arms, at the heart of London’s East End on Hackney Road, which sadly closed down in 2015. This should not come as any surprise, as Britain embraced the ideology of neoliberal economics forty years ago, added to the ruthless effects of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent Tory-led austerity. The survey suggests a direct link to real estate redevelopment in the city, as one of the main motives causing the closure of venues. Although there has been a general increase in the closure of pubs and bars overall in London as well as in other parts of the U.K., spaces dedicated to the LGBTQ+ communities have significantly been affected. The exhibition is also informed by a compelling survey produced by Urban Laboratory which examined the transformations in LGBTQ+ venues throughout the British capital between 20, providing evidence of the consistent closure of venues up to 2016, when according the survey, fortunately the number of closures appeared to have stabilised. Queer Spaces: London, 1980s - Today focuses on how queer identity has survived through the city's redevelopment with increasing gentrification. Such approach becomes evident as the visitor enters the exhibition, with the artworks blending in with archival objects, encouraging the viewer to explore the connections between the objects on view.Īs the visitor unravels through the historical significance embedded within both the archival objects and artworks, the core narrative of the exhibition arises, allowing the viewer to immerse into the informative material content, which is filled with a sense of history, memory, provocation and critique. The artists’ approach are very different to a historian or an archivist’s, but they all, in a way, contribute to an alternative historiography.’ We feel that they work together in bringing a different approach.
‘we are against hierarchies within materials themselves… whether they are from informal sources, formal, original, print-outs of tweets and the artworks. There is not any notion of hierarchy between the art and the archival objects, as noted by the senior curator, Nayia Yiakoumaki, The exhibition curators cleverly and deliberately arranged the artworks by visual artists, who have been dealing with LGBTQ+ themes in their practice alongside the archival material. Doupas and Whitechapel Gallery’s senior curator, Nayia Yiakoumaki, and assistant curator, Cameron Foote, envisaged an enthralling exhibition which combined captivating works of art by established and emerging contemporary visual artists, with some fascinating archival material from LGBTQ+ community centres, pubs and bars collected by Urban Laboratory at University College London. In this vein, the curator of programmes at the Contemporary Art Society, Vassilios Doupas approached the East London gallery’s curatorial team with a proposal to assess the transformations in LGBTQ+ spaces in the British capital. Since 2001, with the appointment of the art critic and lecturer, Iwona Blazwick OBE, as the institution’s director, the Whitechapel Gallery has been producing cutting-edge and thought-provoking exhibitions.
#GAY BARS LONDON 1980S ARCHIVE#
Two years later, in 2019, the Whitechapel Gallery - inaugurated in 1901 as a public art gallery exhibiting modern and contemporary art - opens in its compact Archive gallery, a highly informative and succinct exhibition examining the changes in the so-called queer spaces in London throughout the last forty years. Most recently, Tate Britain’s Queer British Art 1861 - 1967, taking place during summer 2017 with its particular focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) identities, marked the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England, in 1967. In the last couple of years, Londoners have taken notice of an increasing interest by the city’s cultural institutions to address and examine queer-related artistic themes through exhibitions.