Whitechapel Gallery will devote its public spaces to Through Holes in the Clouds: Artists and the Postcolonial Imagination from Tuesday 17 March to Sunday 5 September 2027. The six-month group show looks at British colonialism and what followed it, through two generations of artists. Love London Love Culture reported the dates on 3 November; the gallery posted its press release on 29 October.
Galleries 1, 2 and 3 will be ticketed. Galleries 4 and 5 and the Assembly Room will be free. Ticket prices have not yet been published.
What it covers
More than 80 paintings, drawings, sculptures, films, photographs and installations are planned. The title comes from a poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. The gallery ties the timing to the 80th anniversary of the partition of British India in 1947.
Its press note says that between 1945 and 1965 the number of people under British rule outside the UK fell from about 700 million to 5 million, of whom 3 million lived in Hong Kong, and that Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Artists named so far
Named artists include Frank Bowling, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Runa Islam, Mohammed Joha, Nasreen Mohamedi, Sam Ntiro, Mohammed Sami, Larissa Sansour, Yinka Shonibare, F.N. Souza and Ala Younis. The exhibition page also lists Bani Abidi, Zarina Bhimji, Dia al-Azzawi and others.
The gallery says the hang will not follow a simple chronology or map, and that it includes both postwar work made as countries left empire and contemporary work on conflict, borders and migration.
The essentials
- What: Through Holes in the Clouds: Artists and the Postcolonial Imagination
- Where: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
- When: 17 March to 5 September 2027
- Price: Galleries 1 to 3 ticketed (price TBC); Galleries 4, 5 and Assembly Room free