Hurrah for Gasworks! For more than twenty years this small Victorian warehouse behind The Oval cricket ground has provided studio space, international residencies and essential early exhibitions to a multitude of artists from the UK and worldwide. Its alumni include Chris Ofili, Yinka Shonibare, Song Dong, Subodh Gupta, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Goshka Macuga, Alexandre da Cunha, to name but a few. Twenty former Gas-workers are currently taking part in this year’s Venice Biennale.
Now, this much loved organisation will be able to keep up its crucial work having managed to raise £2.1 million to purchase and redevelop the building—no mean feat given the current economic climate and the speculative building boom that is now raging throughout its south London neighbourhood of Vauxhall. Even the adjoining Victorian gasometers, that provided the name, are being dismantled to make way for yet another property development. Spirits were therefore very high at last night’s grand unveiling of the new-look Gasworks, with everyone agreeing that architect Hana Loftus of HAT Projects had preserved the building’s character brilliantly whilst giving it a much needed refurb. There was a characteristically lively speech by Gasworks chairman David Elliott who remembered that when the highly risky option of purchasing the building arose, the board’s response was, “hell, yes!” While Alessio Antoniolli, who has been the director of Gasworks for over a decade, applauded the fact that over the past few weeks his team had “torn up their job descriptions” and done whatever was needed “without too much resentment.”