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Announcing our Spring Events Programme!
Swipe to discover live performances, collaborative workshops, artist talks and more.
Don’t miss out – save this post and add the dates to your calendar!
Book today, via the #LinkInBio
From leading workshops with young people in Stepney Green in 1984 to exhibiting in the Whitechapel Open and the 1986 group show ‘From Two Worlds’, Veronica Ryan’s history with Whitechapel Gallery makes ‘Multiple Conversations’ a full circle moment.
Book your tickets via #LinkInBio. Members go free.
#WhitechapelGallery
#VeronicaRyan
#MultipleConversations
Take part in a participatory work exploring faith and collective experience with artist Aliaskar Abarkas @aliaskar______abarkas at Whitechapel Gallery.
To Re-Cite is a new sound-based co-commission by Counterpoint Arts and Whitechapel Gallery, that explores Qur’anic recitation, with Muslim communities, taking Ayat al-Kursi verse as its starting point.
Workshops are free to join and will take place 17 May, 31 May, 28 Jun, 12 Jul, 26 Jul and 16 Aug 2026.
Book via the #LinkInBio
Image: _Reverberance_, Chapter 3 of _Living, Rehearsing…_, performance series at YDP, 2026. Photography by Anne Tetzlaff. Image courtesy of YDP
#OnThisDay in 1988, Whitechapel Gallery opened ‘Sonia Boyce: Recent Work’, her first solo institutional exhibition.
Boyce went on to become one of the most significant British artists of her generation, from her figurative pastel drawings addressing race and gender in the early 1980s, to winning the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
We’ve been lucky enough to show her work multiple times since. Explore the full history in our archive, open to all by appointment.
📩 [email protected]
Image: Sonia Boyce: portraits – during exhibition 1988 at Whitechapel Gallery. Photographer: Sue Ormerod. Courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery Archive.
#WhitechapelGallery #SoniaBoyce
‘All kinds of things come up in the woodwork.’
Some of the works were found in a barn in Fingringhoe, Essex. Others had been sitting unexamined in Cambridge since the late 1980s. Two were rediscovered in our own archive.
‘Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations’ brings together four decades of the artist’s work, including pieces unseen for nearly forty years, now restored and shown together for the first time.
Book your tickets via #LinkInBio. Members go free.
#WhitechapelGallery #VeronicaRyan #MultipleConversations
Join us on Thu 28 May 6.30pm for Attunement - a movement and sound performance by @seyi_adelekun
Attunement explores the body as both an instrument and site of healing – constantly listening, negotiating and realigning itself in relation to its environment. Working with resistance bands as a system of tendons stretched across the space, the performance draws from Adelekun’s ongoing recovery from chronic pain through physical therapy and rituals of care.
The performance is a response to ‘Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972-1982’ currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery.
Find out more and book your tickets via the #LinkInBio.
Image: Seyi Adelekun, Alters of Planetary Healing, 2025. Performed at Iniva, Start Hall Library. Courtesy the artist. Photo Jahzerah Sharman.
#OnThisDay in 1978 ‘Art for Society: Contemporary British Art with a Social or Political Purpose’ opened at Whitechapel Gallery.
Aiming to challenge the notion that art and politics do not mix, and focusing on socially engaged art, the exhibition used a public call for submissions, with the final selection made from over 300 artists by the organising committee.
The exhibition included work by artists such as Bruce Lacey, Conrad Atkinson, Stanley Conroy, Peter Kennard, Andrew Turner, and David Redfern, and highlighted the role of Whitechapel Gallery in hosting socially relevant, contemporary, and often challenging, art in London during the 1970s.
Public access to the Whitechapel Gallery archive is available to all by appointment - come and explore for yourself!
Email [email protected]
Images: Art for Society: Contemporary British Art with a Social or Political Purpose, 10 May - 18 June 1978, courtesy of the Whitechapel Gallery archive.
Save the date: Caribbean Jazz, curated by Rhea Dillon, Thu 4 Jun, 6.30-8pm.
Artist, writer and poet Rhea Dillon @rheadillon presents an evening focusing on the often forgotten existence and spirit of Jazz in the Caribbean.
Inspired by Veronica Ryan’s current exhibition, the gallery will be transformed into a lo-fi listening room, where musicians will perform works in progress, responding to how memory is held and transformed, both individually and collectively.
The full line up will be announced soon. Book the tickets via #LinkInBio.
Studio Studio’s Happenings, curated by Rhea Dillon, are a series of public convenings that are born from her and interlocutor’s research practices as a means of direct conversation, deeper listening, and radical sharing. @__studio__studio
These images are excerpted from Dillon’s research and references for the evening.
Images:
Count Ossie & the Rasta Family ‘Man from Higher Heights’ album page
Source: /sjr/product/man-from-higher-heights
Swing Caraïbe, Caribbean Jazz Pioneers in Paris (1929 - 1946)
Source: /swing-caraibe-caribbean-jazz-pioneers-in-paris-1929-1946-compact-disc-double-fa069
Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie by Allan Grant for Life Magazine, 1948
Source: /wp-content/uploads/2012/01/jungle-type-drum-being-played-by-drummer-of-dizzy-gillespies-band-he-beats-on-the-drum-with-his-hands-instead-of-a-drum-sticks-0.jpeg
‘It’s political, but it’s also psychological. It’s about the subtext’
Veronica Ryan transforms everyday materials into art objects layered with meaning, history and memory. She is interested in exploring the invisible aspects of human experience; the unseen forces that shape the inner workings of the mind, as well as themes around the environment, history, trauma and recovery.
Book your tickets via #LinkInBio. Members go free.
#WhitechapelGallery
#VeronicaRyan
#MultipleConversations
