Thu 24 July, 6.30-8pm
Zilkha Auditorium
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
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.
If the ticket price affects your attendance, please email tickets@whitechapelgallery.org to be added to the guest list (no questions asked, but dependent on availability).
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.
Meditating on Hamad Butt’s poetic and pioneering practice, join us for a conversation situating his work art historically and interrogating his singular ability to provoke, seduce, and inspire across generations of artists and audiences.
Chaired by Dominic Johnson and featuring contributions from art historian Alice Correia, IMMA curator Seán Kissane, and more, we will trace the key moments and thematic strands that define Butt’s work – a practice defying categorisation, weaving together a constellation of references from popular culture, alchemy, and science fiction, to intimacy, risk, and sex and desire.
Following the screening of a newly commissioned short film accompanying the exhibition by Farah Qayum and an extended introduction by Johnson, the panel will ground Butt’s practice within the art historical canon, considering the specific artistic, cultural, and socio-political contexts that he was practising within.
Moving between conceptual, technical, and critical responses to his work, we will explore the ongoing resonances of Butt’s practice and share insights into his language of desire, fragility, and fear that continues to enthral and inspire today.
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 purchasing your ticket – your Reader will be available to collect from the info desk on the night of the event.
Alice Correia is an art historian and curator specializing in late twentieth-century British art. Her edited book, What is Black Art?: Writings on African, Caribbean and Asian Artists in Britain, 1981-1989, was published by Penguin in 2022. In 2023 she co-curated the exhibition, A Tall Order: Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s at Touchstones Rochdale. She has worked at the Decolonising Arts Institute, UAL; Tate; and the Government Art Collection. She is a Trustee of Third Text.
Farah Qayum is a producer and director for TV/film at Clockwork FIlms. She produced the BAFTA-winning Muslims Like Us (BBC2), Great British School Swap and Make Bradford British (Channel 4); and BBC’s Ramadan in Lockdown: five short films exploring the experiences of British Muslims in Ramadan in the Covid-19 pandemic.
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.
Seán Kissane is a curator and art historian whose work recovers overlooked figures in modern and contemporary art, particularly queer and female artists. As Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA, Dublin, he has produced major retrospectives for Leonora Carrington, Derek Jarman, Mary Swanzy, and may others, as well as thematic exhibitions such as Queer Embodiment and Self-Determination: A Global Perspective. His 2016 exhibition Patrick Hennessy: De Profundis was the first queer reading of Irish modern art in a public institution and informs his PhD research at TU Dublin on queer subjectivities in Irish visual art, 1939–1980.
Kissane has edited and authored monographs on artists including Carlos Garaicoa, Romuald Hazoumè, and Isaac Julien, with contributions to major institutional catalogues. His writing has appeared with IMMA, D.A.P., Charta, Thames & Hudson, and the Centre Pompidou. A member of AICA, he has lectured widely, bringing marginalised voices in Irish art history into public and scholarly discourse.
