Past Event
Access requirements
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
About This Event
This event takes place in the Zilkha Auditorium at Whitechapel Gallery, located on the ground floor.
This event lasts approximately 1.5 hours. There are no rest breaks currently scheduled during this event.
You must book a ticket to attend the event.
This event is suitable for those over the age of 16.
We are unable to provide British Sign Language interpretation for this event.
We are unable to provide live closed captioning or CART for this event.
An audio recording of the event can be obtained by emailing publicprogrammes@whitechapelgallery.org following the event.
Transport
To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
Live Recording
Please note: we audio record all events for the Whitechapel Gallery Archive and possible future online publication via Soundcloud.
Join us for a panel talk chronicling the legacies of queer visual cultures, organising histories, and how contemporary artists are dialoguing with the past and responding to HIV and AIDS in their work today.
After starting provocations from east London-based charity Positive East and Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan, in this discussion Dominic Johnson, Ash Kotak, Prem Sahib, and Simon Watney will use Hamad Butt’s practice as a starting point to interrogate how artists have used creativity to interrogate, reflect, and agitate around HIV and AIDS.
Grounding itself in the context of the 80s and 90s and attitudes towards HIV and AIDS, we will move between the cultural, medical, and socio-political impacts of the AIDS epidemic and its ongoing impact on artists and queer communities today.
Shining a light on the long legacy of artists responding to and creating dialogues around HIV and AIDS, the conversation will tease apart the relationship between art, activism, and the slippages between the two.
This event accompanies our current exhibition Hamad Butt: Apprehensions.
Attendees to this event can access an exclusive 30% discount on the accompanying catalogue to the exhibition, Hamad Butt: Apprehensions, featuring contributions and newly commissioned essays from art historians, curators, and artists that look at Butt’s encounters with science and alchemy, his relationships with diasporic and queer communities in the 1990s, and his lasting impact and legacies.
To redeem this discount, please select the “Admission + Book” option when booking your place – your catalogue will be available to collect from the info desk on the night of the event.
Supported by the Centre for Public Engagement at Queen Mary University of London
Positive East, London’s East End HIV charity, has been on the forefront of HIV service and care for over 30 years, supporting people from the point of HIV diagnosis to longer term care. Guided by the mission – to improve the quality of life of individuals and communities affected by HIV – Positive East has developed a holistic range of health and wellbeing programmes from counselling, peer support and information and advice to HIV testing and HIV prevention outreach.
Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan is an NHS Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust and Deputy Director of the SHARE Collaborative for Health Equity, Queen Mary University of London. Her clinical work, research and advocacy focus on improving health equity, particularly at the intersections of gender and ethnicity. She has held numerous national charity and policy positions and regularly works with patient organisations. Rageshri is also the author of Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing (Trapeze, 2024).
Dominic Johnson is guest curator of Hamad Butt: Apprehensions. He is the author of four books including most recently Unlimited Action: The Performance of Extremity in the 1970s (2019) and The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art(2015). He is the editor of six books, including Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013). He is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London.
Ash Kotak (he/him) is playwright and a cultural producer. He is founder/artistic director of AIDS Memory UK – the charity set up to deliver The AIDS Memorial in London, a new public artwork commission by Anya Gallaccio.
Ash is working on two new plays: Freddiebhai (the true Indian story of Freddie Mercury) & The AIDS Missionary – a profile of gay Catholic priest, Bernard J Lynch
His past works as a playwright includes Maa (Royal Court) & Hijra(Bush Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, WYP, Theatre Du Nord, Lille (in French), New Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, USA).
His most recent films includes: The Joneses(Exec Producer, USA, 90 mins, 2017); Punched By a Homosexualist (Exec Producer, Russia, 55 mins, 2018).
Simon Watney is an art historian and activist of the original GLF generation. A former member of the Gay Left Collective, he was a co-founder of OutRage in 1989, and a founder-trustee of Gay Men Fighting Aids and the National AIDS Manual (NAM). He chaired the Health Education Group at the Terrence Higgins Trust throughout the second half of the 1980’s and the early1990’s. He is a prolific writer, and the author of numerous books including Policing Desire: PornographyAIDS & The Media (London & Minneapolis1987), and Imagine Hope: AIDS & Gay Identity (London, 2000).
