White Cube
Encyclopedia
Hoxton Square
Hoxton Square is a garden square situated in Hoxton in the London Borough of Hackney, in London's East End. Formerly home to industrial premises, since the 1990s it has become the heart of the Hoxton arts and media scene, as well as being a hub of the thriving local entertainment district...
in the East End of London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London. The gallery exhibits Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
, Marc Quinn
Marc Quinn
Marc Quinn is a British artist and part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs . He is known for Alison Lapper Pregnant , Self , and Garden .He is one of the Young British...
and other internationally-recognised artists.
History
White Cube is owned and run by the art dealer Jay JoplingJay Jopling
Jeremy "Jay" Jopling is an English art dealer and gallery owner. He is closely associated with the YBA artists and his gallery White Cube represents the commercial interests of YBAs Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Marcus Harvey, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn, and Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he...
(an Old Etonian
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and son of a Conservative MP) who, until September 2008, was married to artist Sam Taylor-Wood
Sam Taylor-Wood
Samantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
. It was first opened in a small, square room in May 1993 in Duke Street, St James's, a traditional art dealing street in the West End of London. In that location there was a gallery rule that an artist could only be exhibited once. The gallery achieved its reputation by being the first to give one person shows to many of the Young British Artists
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
(YBAs), including Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
.
It moved to one of its two present larger premises in April 2000. The 1920s building at 48 Hoxton Square had previously been occupied by the small publishing company Gerald Duckworth & Co., and had once been a piano factory. In 2002, an extra two stories (750 m²) were added by hoisting a prefabricated unit on top of the existing structure.
Hoxton
Hoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, immediately north of the financial district of the City of London. The area of Hoxton is bordered by Regent's Canal on the north side, Wharf Road and City Road on the west, Old Street on the south, and Kingsland Road on the east.Hoxton is also a...
/Shoreditch
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
area has been popular with the Young British Artists
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
(YBAs) since the 1990s, at which time it was a run-down area of light industry. More recently it has undergone extensive redevelopment with clubs, restaurants and media businesses. Hoxton Square is a prime site with a central area of grass and trees, which the vicinity is mostly lacking.
White Cube previews are open to the public and crowds fill the square on such occasions. Its publicly-accessible interior is a small reception area, which leads onto a 250-m² exhibition area downstairs, two storeys in height. Another smaller exhibition space upstairs often shows a different artist. Offices and a conference room are on the upper floors. On some occasions exhibitions have been installed on the grass of the square, one example being Hirst's large sculpture (22 ft, 6.7 m) Charity, based on the old Spastic Society's
Scope (British charity)
Scope is a London-based charity, which operates in England and Wales, focusing on people with cerebral palsy particularly, and disabled people in general. Its aim is that disabled people achieve equality....
model, which shows a girl in a leg brace holding a charity collecting box.
In September 2006, it opened a second site at 25–26 Mason's Yard, off Duke Street, St. James's, home of the original White Cube gallery, on a plot previously occupied by an electricity sub-station. The gallery, designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates, is the first free-standing building to be built in the St James's area for more than 30 years.
In October 2011, a third space, White Cube Bermondsey was opened on Bermondsey Street. The building was formerly a 1970s warehouse and was converted into 58,000 sq ft of interior space making it, at launch, Europe's biggest commercial gallery.
Criticism
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Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
art group declared themselves "opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system", and opened their own gallery (with coloured walls) in an adjoining street. On another occasion in 2002, while dressed as clowns, they deposited a coffin marked "The Death of Conceptual Art" outside the White Cube's door.
In 2003, Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...
launched an attack on the concept of the white wall gallery, calling it "antiseptic" and a "time warp ... dictated by museum fashion".
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman...
commented on the 2006 Gilbert and George show Sonofagod Pictures: Was Jesus Heterosexual? at White Cube, "Last week I went to the East End of London to witness the death of the avant-garde."
Artists
Artists shown at the gallery include:- Ellen AltfestEllen AltfestEllen Altfest is a realist painter based in New York. She paints still lifes and male figures from life in painstaking detail. Her work is noted for its precision and trompe l'oeil accuracy...
- Jake and Dinos ChapmanJake and Dinos ChapmanIakovos "Jake" Chapman and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman are English visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers, who work together as a collaborative sibling duo...
- Chuck CloseChuck CloseCharles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
- Gilbert and GeorgeGilbert and GeorgeGilbert & George are two artists who work together as a collaborative duo. Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore have become famous for their distinctive, highly formal appearance and manner and their brightly coloured graphic-style photo-based artworks.-Early life:Gilbert Proesch was...
- Antony GormleyAntony GormleyAntony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...
- Andreas GurskyAndreas GurskyAndreas Gursky is a German visual artist known for his enormous architecture and landscape color photographs, often employing a high point of view...
- Marcus HarveyMarcus HarveyMarcus Harvey is an English artist and painter, one of the Young British Artists .-Exhibitions:Harvey has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including ‘The Führer's Cakes’ at Galleria Marabini in Bologna, ‘Snaps’ at White Cube in London, ‘Sex and the British’ at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac...
- Mona HatoumMona HatoumMona Hatoum is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London.- Lebanon :...
- Eberhard HavekostEberhard HavekostEberhard Havekost is a contemporary German painter based in Berlin and Dresden. In 1985 he completed an internship as a stonemason. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden from 1991-1996, where he became a master student under Professor Ralf Kerbach in 1997...
- Gary HumeGary HumeGary Stewart Hume is an English artist. His work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early-1990s. In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.-Life and work:Hume was born in...
- Anselm KieferAnselm KieferAnselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac...
- Martin Kobe
- Elad LassryElad LassryElad Lassry is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Lassry received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003 and his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2007.- Life and career :...
- Julie MehretuJulie MehretuJulie Mehretu is an artist, best known for her densely-layered abstract paintings and prints. She lives and works in New York City...
- Sarah MorrisSarah MorrisSarah Morris , is a British-born American artist.-Education and exhibitions:Morris double majored in Semiotics and Political Philosophy at Brown University, graduating magna cum laude...
- Gabriel OrozcoGabriel OrozcoGabriel Orozco is a Mexican artist, who in 1998 was called "one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too." He was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and educated in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984. He then continued his education...
- Marc QuinnMarc QuinnMarc Quinn is a British artist and part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs . He is known for Alison Lapper Pregnant , Self , and Garden .He is one of the Young British...
- Doris SalcedoDoris SalcedoDoris Salcedo is a Colombian-born sculptor.Salcedo completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in 1980, before traveling to New York, where she completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at New York University. She then returned to Bogotá to teach at the Universidad...
- Neal Tait
- Sam Taylor-WoodSam Taylor-WoodSamantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
- Gavin TurkGavin TurkGavin Turk is a British artist and one of the Young British Artists . He often uses his own image in life-size sculptures of famous people.-Life and work:...
- Koen Van Den Broek
- Jeff WallJeff WallJeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...