Goldsmiths alumni, students and supporters all gathered at a special dinner on Wednesday night (24 May) to celebrate the past, present and the future of this creative crucible in the gilded 19th century opulence of the Goldsmiths Hall in the City of London. The purpose of the evening was to introduce—and drum up support for—the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (Goldsmiths CCA). This important new gallery will occupy a series of spaces in the heart of university’s south London campus, including a pair of steel water tanks that formerly supplied the Laurie Grove public baths. The capital’s new kunsthalle is being designed by the Turner Prize winning Assemble architects and is scheduled to open in May 2018.
Under the watchful eye of a magnificent portrait of the young Queen Victoria, the gathering was welcomed by Judith Cobham-Lowe, the wonderfully named prime warden of the Goldsmiths Company, who cheered hungry souls by revealing that her worshipful company not only had a time-honoured reputation for fine metalwork but was also apparently renowned for what one early commentator memorably described as “monstrous city belly worship”. (As the fulsome banquet unfolded, this hedonistic heritage was amply honoured).
The evening’s enthusiastic belly worship was then punctuated by guest speaker Julia Peyton-Jones, who traced the seismic changes in the London art world in which Goldsmiths has played such a crucial part. There were also virtuoso interludes from current Goldsmiths music students Eleanor Rashid and Francis Devine. However, everyone agreed that the show was comprehensively stolen by the searing, passionate vocals of the fuchsia-coiffed artist and Goldsmiths alumnus Adam Christensen, who graduated in Fine Art in 2007. Christensen raised the (gilded) rafters by giving it his all, and then some, accompanied by swooping blasts of accordion. According to the Goldsmiths CCA director Sarah McCrory, the last time she heard Christensen perform was at 3am outside Bar Basso in Milan when his extraordinary sound brought all the traffic to a halt. On Wednesday, the audience and location might have been somewhat different, but the effect was certainly the same.