Thu 7 Aug, 6:30pm
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
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).
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
Join the Whitechapel Gallery for an Audio Description tour of Hamad Butt: Apprehension. This tour is designed for B/blind and partially sighted visitors, but open to all for an enhanced experience of the exhibition’s visuals.
Hamad Butt: Apprehensions is the first major survey of Hamad Butt (b. 1962, Lahore, Pakistan; d. 1994, London, UK).
One of the most innovative artists of his generation, Hamad Butt was a pioneer of intermedia art, bringing art into conversation with science, whilst also referencing his Queer and diasporic experiences. He offered a nuanced artistic response to the AIDS crisis in the UK, taking a conceptual rather than activist approach.
Butt’s conceptually and technically ambitious works seamlessly interweave popular culture, science, alchemy, science fiction, and social and cultural concerns, as forms that are simultaneously poetic and provocative. They imagine sex and desire in a time of ‘plague’ as seductive yet frightening, intimate yet isolating, compelling yet dangerous – literally, in some cases, threatening to kill or injure.
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, and raised in East London, Butt was British South Asian, Muslim by upbringing, and Queer. A contemporary of the Young British Artists, and their peer at Goldsmiths’ College, London, Butt was described by art critics as epitomising the new ‘hazardism’ in art of the 1990s, as his works often imply physical risk or endangerment.
Before his untimely death in 1994, aged 32 of AIDS-related complications, Butt had completed and shown four major sculptural works; Transmission (1990) and the three-part installation, Familiars (1992), as well as leaving behind writings, drawings and plans for new installations. Butt’s work offered a potent and critical response to HIV/AIDS, while opening up new dialogues between art and science to explore themes of precarity, toxicity, the spread of viruses, homophobia and racism – issues that continue to resonate with frightening poignancy today.
Please note that this tour is for blind and partially sighted visitors. Sighted companions and guide dogs are welcome.
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. Step free access to all gallery spaces is available, unless stated otherwise on our website. If you have any other access needs that you would like us to know about, please contact us by email access@whitechapelgallery.org or call +44 (0)20 7522 7888.
