First Thursdays is back! What could be better than a lovely stroll around East London on such a sunny day? Join today’s one-hour-long walking route to Gallery 46 and Seventeen Gallery. And don’t forget, it’s also the last Thursday Late at Whitechapel Gallery, where you can visit, free of charge from 6 to 9 pm, our main exhibition by Donald Rodney before it closes on 4 May.
The first stop will be at Gallery 46 for Chez Moi, the exhibition emphasise the emotional and lived experiences that underpin artistic creation. The notion of home, a space shaped by routine, intimacy, and personal memory – becomes both the subject and the setting. By placing artworks within familiar, lived-in environments, the exhibition fosters a continuous viewing pathway, creating an intimate yet confrontational viewing experience. In classical Chinese philosophy, “ascending the hall” (升堂) symbolises the initial mastery of a discipline, while “entering the inner chamber” (入室) signifies reaching a state of complete enlightenment – a process of progression from mere perception to profound understanding. Reflecting this progression, the exhibition brings together works by artists represented by SWANFALL GALLERY, selected emerging voices, and significant pieces on loan from private collections. The Artworks are selected to articulate a progression from form to concept – a trajectory from hall to chamber.
The second stop will be at Seventeen Gallery for two openings. The first show will be Many Ghosts, Many Shells. The show debuts new collaborative work by Petra Szemán and David Blandy, in parallel with other artists working in the realms of identity and selfhood, reality and simulation. Each artist uses radical gameplay practices to ask where the self ends and the character begins, and what gets left behind. Also featuring works by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and John Powell-Jones, Many Ghosts, Many Shells presents gaming experiences as devices for establishing surrogate modes of existence, a new world through new selves.
The second show opening at Seventeen Gallery will be Dreamland, the first solo exhibition in London by Belgian artist Ingrid Castelein. The exhibition will be an opportunity to engage with Castelein’s practice, spanning nearly 50 years of consistent experimentation and focused, process oriented output. Consciously rejecting outcomes, Castelein focuses on action and reaction in what she describes as a game between ‘the painter-maker and the painter-viewer’, a succession of provocative moves and thoughtful countermoves. The practice has outlasted many of the spaces that exhibited her work.
