As part of our current season of Contemporary African Art, October Gallery is pleased to present a panel discussion with speakers Elisabeth Lalouschek, Simon Njami, Keith Shiri and Hannah O’Leary.

The discussion will explore the trajectory of Contemporary African Art in London from the 1990s to the present day, reflecting on the evolving discourse, the artists and cultural figures who have shaped it, and its continuing impact today.

The gallery will have extended opening hours until 7 pm, with last orders at the bar at 6.30 pm, giving visitors the opportunity to explore the exhibition Romuald Hazoumè: My Blue Period and continue the conversation after the talk .

The event will take place upstairs in the Theatre, where seating is limited.
For those unable to attend in person, you can register for the livestream here

The livestream will also be shown in the Refectory on the ground floor, with seating available for those who cannot join the panel upstairs but would still like to watch the discussion and stay for drinks and conversation afterwards.

Livestream registration is free, but registration is required for both online viewers and those wishing to watch from the Refectory, so that we can manage capacity.

Presented by Art Ain’t Trash at October Gallery, DISPLACED brings together five intergenerational diaspora artists — Charlie Phillips OBE, Navinder Nangla, BAFTA winner Darcy Thomas, Ryan Hawaii and ARU — exploring waste colonialism, human migration and storytelling through upcycled art, archival photography and ancestral material practices.

Through discarded plastic, reclaimed textiles and salvaged media, the artists transform materials shaped by histories of displacement into works that explore resilience, resourcefulness and the enduring relationship between people, place and material.

October Gallery is pleased to present a conversation between the artist Romuald Hazoumè and October Gallery’s Director of Special Projects, Gerard Houghton, held in conjunction with the exhibition Romuald Hazoumè: My Blue Period.

The discussion will offer unique insights into Hazoumè’s distinctive art and the ideas that inform his sculptural language. Drawing on the works presented in the exhibition, Hazoumè will reflect on the conceptual, material and cultural frameworks that shape his work, together with the inspirations and concerns that underly his current practice.

The conversation will take place on the ground floor of October Gallery. Coffee and croissants are available before the event. Doors open at 10:30 am, with the talk starting at 11:00 am prompt.

Romuald Hazoumè at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair New works by Romuald Hazoumè will also be presented at Booth S7 at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, Strand — approximately 20 minutes’ walk or 5 minutes by taxi or public transport from October Gallery.

OG Lates returns with a special evening of contemporary art, live music and collective creativity in collaboration with TAOSOL. Bringing jazz fusion and soul/funk to the Gallery, TAOSOL will transform the exhibition space into an open, interactive jam session, bringing a new generation of audiences together through music, dance and art after hours.

The evening begins with a live set from the band before opening to audience participation. Bring your own instrument and take your turn joining the band on stage, or use the bass, keys, congas and microphones provided.

Set against the exhibitions Zana Masombuka and Spotlight: Benji Reid, the event offers a unique way to experience contemporary photography alongside live performance. Explore the exhibitions, enjoy the music and join the jam.

Last orders at the bar: 9.30 pm.

For any enquiries, please contact events@octobergallery.co.uk

An informal discussion with award winning artist Benji Reid about his artistic practice and creative journey.

Step inside the world of acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist and photographer Benji Reid for a special conversation with Jarelle Francis, Curator and Founder of Meadow.

Together, they’ll explore Reid’s distinctive artistic practice and the ideas, inspirations, and conceptual framework behind the striking works exhibited in the exhibition Spotlight: Benji Reid. This intimate discussion offers a unique opportunity to gain deeper insight into the exhibition directly from the artist.

Join us for a special opportunity to explore the exhibition Poetic Threads at October Gallery with exhibiting artist Xanthe Somers, and curator Eleri Fanshawe.

Inspired by weaving in Zimbabwe, Somers’ ceramic works are hand-coiled then disrupted by puncturing and deforming, before she revitalises them through the addition of vibrant painted details. Little listeners can get busy with some art exploration, while you tour the Gallery together. Following the walkthrough, you will then have the opportunity to sit and make together, creating your own artwork inspired by Somers’ bright ceramic vessels.

The exhibition walk-through will take place on the ground floor of the gallery.

Please note: this event is first come first served and when we are at capacity, we have a one in one out policy.

October Gallery presents a special conversation with James Barnor, the internationally acclaimed photographer whose pioneering work has helped shape the history of African photography.

In discussion with curator Eleri Fanshawe, Barnor will reflect on a remarkable career spanning more than seven decades and share insights into the images that have established him as one of the most influential photographers of his generation.

The talk will take place on the ground floor of the gallery.

Join Moroccan artist Yacout Hamdouch for a lively discussion about her paintings with Eleri Fanshawe, Curator at October Gallery. The conversation examines her series Poetic Landscapes and Fertile Rainbows, which explores memory, emotion and human connection through layered compositions of colour and form. The event offers a unique opportunity to listen to Hamdouch discuss her practice while unpacking her philosophical approach to her work.

The talk will take place on the ground floor of the gallery and has disabled access.

Join October Gallery and WAAW (Women Artists Art Week) for a special evening walkthrough of Sokari Douglas Camp’s new solo exhibition Fashion & Fortune on Wednesday, 10th June. Led by the artist alongside curator Eleri Fanshawe and WAAW founder Annya Sand, this collaborative event will explore the exhibition’s rich intersections of fashion, colonial histories, trade, adornment and identity.

Presented at October Gallery, Fashion & Fortune brings together striking steel sculptures and prints that draw inspiration from histories of dress and self-fashioning across the African diaspora and the Atlantic world. Through intricate metalwork, elaborate headdresses and symbolic materials including coins, Sokari Douglas Camp examines how style can become both a form of resistance and a marker of power, resilience and cultural memory.

The evening will offer audiences an opportunity to hear directly from the artist about the ideas and historical references underpinning the works, while opening up wider conversations around creativity, craftsmanship and heritage. This event is part of Womens' Artists Art Week, an annual Impact Week in which WAAWWorld welcomes cultural spaces from around the globe that share a commitment to female artists and their practice.

About WAAW
WAAW World is an independent international organisation dedicated to advancing gender equality in the arts. We endorse cultural spaces that demonstrate a strong commitment to supporting and promoting women artists.

The Case of the Crushed Petunias is a “lyrical fantasy” written in 1941, focuses on Dorothy Simple, a woman whose restricted, orderly life in Massachusetts is disrupted when her petunias are destroyed, sparking a thematic exploration of routine, rebellion, and embracing a more vibrant life.

The Municipal Abattoir is a rare, politically charged one-act play written primarily in the late 1960s, exploring themes of totalitarianism and the loss of individual free will.

Studio 8 has been based at October Gallery since 1979. Their last production was Deconstruction of the Countdown, based on writings by William S. Burroughs. Refreshments available from 6 pm and after the performance.

*Please note there is no disabled access to the Theatre.

Bringing together the art film KIELI BI – Woman Who Raises the Wind and a live dance performance, Dana Mussa presents TENGRI WOMAN—an immersive exploration of memory, identity and the body.
Rooted in a spiritual and temporal journey, the project evokes a time when women lived in deep connection with nature. Moving between ancestral memory and contemporary experience, the work creates a bridge between tribal roots and modernity.

*Please note there is no disabled access to the Theatre.

An evening of thunderous rhythm and meditative precision awaits as internationally renowned percussionist Joji Hirota performs with The London Taiko Drummers at October Gallery.

The commanding presence of taiko drums will resonate through the gallery in a powerful 40-minute performance that reveals both the raw intensity and the disciplined grace of this ancient Japanese tradition. Driving, intricate rhythms unfold into immersive soundscapes — at once elemental and refined.

Presented in conjunction with Kenji Yoshida: The Meaning of Life, the exhibition and bar will remain open to ticket holders from 6.30 – 8.30 pm.

Join Joe Nickols, Project Curator of Samurai at the British Museum and Gerard Houghton, Director of Special Projects, October Gallery for a discussion about Kenji Yoshida and his solo exhibition, The Meaning of Life. The conversation will examine the late Japanese artist's extraordinary life and artistic career.

Join artists Eleanor Lakelin and Junko Mori in conversation with curator Eleri Fanshawe for a special gallery talk accompanying the exhibition Lineages.

Working across wood and metal respectively, Lakelin and Mori share a deep attentiveness to natural forms, processes and cycles of growth. This conversation will explore their distinctive material practices, tracing how each artist responds to the inherent qualities of their chosen mediums through making, repetition and transformation.

In both practices, the artists’ use of line emerges as a connective thread between material and gesture as a method of ‘way finding’ that interlinks nature with contemporary sculptural form. The talk offers insight into the artists’ influences and shared sensibilities, inviting audiences to consider how an expanded notion of line operates as both concept and form within their work.

The talk takes place on the gallery’s ground floor and has disabled access.

Join Govinda Sah ‘Azad’ in discussion with Dr. Katie Hill, Academic Lead, Asia and Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, on the occasion of his solo exhibition, Journey to the Heart of Light at October Gallery.

This exhibition highlights Sah’s latest large-scale oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and presents selected smaller scale works. Journey to the Heart of Light weaves together the artist’s personal journeys through both inner and outer realms. Beginning his artistic career in the Himalayan mountains close to where he was born, Sah first moved to London to study at Wimbledon College of Arts, before moving from London to Margate, where he recently opened a purpose-built studio.

The conversation will examine Sah’s creative process and unpack the influence of the different environments that the artist has lived in upon his artistic progress.

The talk takes place on the gallery’s ground floor and has disabled access.

To accompany the exhibition Freedom Rising: The Art of Owusu-Ankomah, join Papa Essel, Artist and Gerard Houghton, Director of Special Projects at October Gallery, for a conversation exploring the complex paintings by the late Owusu-Ankomah.

5.00 pm Paid bar open in the Gallery (free drop-in)
6.30 pm Theatre doors open
7.00 pm Film Screening (52 min)
Location: Theatre (2nd floor)
Entry: Free admission (booking required)

To coincide with the exhibition Aubrey Williams: Elemental Force, October Gallery will present a special screening of Mark of the Hand: Aubrey Williams, directed by Imruh Bakari. 

This remarkable film follows the artist, Aubrey Williams, as he returns to his birthplace of Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city. After restoring one of his murals at Timehri International Airport, the artist travels on to Hosororo, in the depths of the rainforest, returning for the first time, in forty years, to visit the Warrau people who originally inspired him to follow his lifelong path as an artist. That once arduous, days-long journey through deep forest by canoe and on foot has since become a forty-five-minute hop by plane, and the film traces the course of that surprisingly emotional return.   

Visitors are invited to explore the exhibition Aubrey Williams: Elemental Force from 5 pm to 7 pm in the Gallery — a paid bar will be available (free drop-in). Doors to the screening will open at 6.30 pm. 

*Please note there is no disabled access to the Theatre on the 2nd floor. 

To accompany the exhibition, Aubrey Williams: Elemental Force, join artist Hew Locke, art historian and curator Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani, for a discussion about Williams’ legacy and innovative approach to his practice. The talk will be moderated by art historian and curator Indie A. Choudhury. The talk takes place on the Gallery’s ground floor and has disabled access. The gallery’s bar will be open from 5.30 – 8.30 pm.

Dr. Hew Locke, OBE, RA was born in Edinburgh, raised in Guyana and lives in London. He knew Aubrey Williams personally from when he was a child in Guyana. In 2022, Locke's installation The Procession was presented by Tate Britain, London and he was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to create an installation for its façade, titled Gilt. He recently curated the exhibition, What Have We Here? at The British Museum, London.

Dr. Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani  is an art historian, curator and Lecturer in History of Art, Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh. She has widely published on the postcolonial histories of African, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Black British art in Britain and beyond. Funded by fellowships from Leverhulme and the Paul Mellon Centre, her current book project, The Commonwealth of Art and Visual Culture, examines the visual construction of the 'Commonwealth,' reflected or criticised in art practices, films and exhibitions produced between 1948-1978.

Dr. Indie A. Choudhury is an art historian and curator. She holds the post for Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art (Global Black Diasporas and Black Studies). She is currently working on the first monograph of Frank Bowling’s White Paintings as a body of work spanning more than six decades of his career. Recent and forthcoming publications include Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin published by Duke University Press and on Hew Locke published by Yale University Press. Recent exhibitions include In Praise of Black Errantry for Unit London at the Venice Biennale 2024.

Join October Gallery in marking the final day of the art of William S. Burroughs with extended opening hours and a celebratory gathering. The exhibition features rarely seen works from spray paint, ink and acrylic to markers and gunshots. More about the exhibition here

At 3 pm, the panel discussion What’s Left of a Radical Vision When It’s All Come True? will take place upstairs in the Theatre (Sign up for the waiting list). Following the discussion, The Cat Inside (2007), a soundscape by Ramuntcho Matta, will be played in the Gallery along with Matta’s film of the seminal Electronic Revolution, describing the concept and method of Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s genre-defining literary multimedia experiments.

Visitors can also browse a selection of books and catalogues by Burroughs and those who were closely connected to him. Books and catalogue selection

A discussion on how do we maintain legacies of queer and radical vision, on the occasion of an exhibition by William S. Burroughs. Panelists: Ira Silverberg, Andrew Durbin, Neil Bartlett, OBE, Kathelin Gray.

William S. Burroughs was a seer. Using new forms of writing for his visionary social satire, Naked Lunch, he altered the course of letters, foresaw the future of the planet and its inhabitants, and was censored in the U.S. upon publication in 1959. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, he continually broke boundaries, and moved into new forms including painting, film, musical collaborations, and acting. Burroughs and his work retain an ongoing influence nearly thirty years after his death. How do legacies of queer and outsider artists help navigate the daunting challenges and opportunities of the present moment?

The event is fully booked — sign up for the waiting list

5.00 pm Paid bar and specially curated queer soundscape in the Gallery
(free drop-in until 6.30 pm)

7.00 pm Film Screening (2h 16min)
Location: Theatre (2nd floor)*
Entry

Ahead of this special screening of Queer, visitors are invited to explore the exhibition. Immerse yourself in the world of William S. Burroughs from 5 pm accompanied by a curated playlist, a paid bar and the chance to browse Queer, the novel that inspired the film. Doors to the screening will open at 6.30 pm.

Queer, directed by Luca Guadagnino, is a 2024 adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ book of the same title starring Daniel Craig.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a "meaningful connection with someone."

Originally penned in 1952, Burroughs’ novel remains an iconic love story in LGBTQ literature and was unpublished until 1985.

This award winning documentary, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, features exclusive interviews with his closest friends and colleagues. Leyser released the film at the age of 24. A Man Within is an unflinching exploration of one of the world’s first openly queer poets, junkies and challengers of censorship. Variety Magazine wrote “Like his subject, Leyser strives to disengage from the conventional, while still being lucid. He succeeds admirably.” It screened on over 15 TV stations around the world as well as on Netflix. A Q&A with the director, Yony Leyser, will take place after the film screening, (duration 87 minutes. Doors open at 2:00 pm and the film starts at 2:30 pm.

A bar will be open for paid refreshments in the Theatre from 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm.

This event will take place in the Theatre on the second floor and has no disabled access.

Andrew Wilson is an art historian, curator and critic. He was senior curator of modern British Art and Archives at Tate Britain 2006-2021, and was previously deputy editor of Art Monthly 1997-2006. He is the editor and author of the Patrick Heron catalogue raisonné of oil paintings (Art Publishing Inc, forthcoming 2027). Wilson has curated major exhibitions and written widely on post-war British art over the last 40 years, including exhibitions and accompanying publications on Conceptual Art in Britain (Tate Britain 2016), David Hockney (Tate Britain and tour 2017-18) and Patrick Heron (Tate St Ives and tour 2018-19). He was the author of Richard Hamilton Swingeing London 67 (Afterall/MIT Press 2012). He is a founding fellow of the London Institute of ’Pataphysics.

Barry Miles has written extensively on the Beat Generation and the sixties counter-culture including biographies of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Paul McCartney and Frank Zappa, as well as London Calling: A Countercultural History of London Since 1945 . He was the co-founder of Indica Bookshop and Art Gallery (1965) and of The International Times (IT), Europe’s first underground newspaper. In 1968-9 he was the label manager for the Beatles’ experimental Zapple label. Miles was awarded an Honorary D Lit by University of Gloucestershire. A full biography and bibliography can be found at www.barrymiles.co.uk He lives in London.

The talk takes place on gallery’s ground floor and has disabled access. Doors open at 2:30 pm with a 3:00 pm start.

To accompany the solo exhibition of works by William S. Burroughs, October Gallery will show Naked Lunch, the 1991 film directed by David Cronenberg, starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm and Ros Scheider. The film is an adaptation of William S Burroughs’ 1959 groundbreaking novel, Naked Lunch. Burroughs himself was on the set during the making of the film.

This event will take place in the Theatre on the second floor and has no disabled access.