Last Saturday, 200 members of the Dazed Club community came down to the Barbican for an exclusive private viewing of the arts centre’s ongoing Noah Davis exhibition. Alongside the chance to see this incredible new landmark exhibition after hours, we also hosted an enlightening conversation between art writer Alayo Akinkgube and assistant curator of the exhibition Kitty Gurnos-Davies. The talk was followed by a reception in the iconic Barbican Conservatory, with drinks courtesy of Tico Tequila, Noam beer and Dalston’s Soda.
Clubbers had the entire exhibition to themselves as the gallery closed to the public at 6pm, and were free to roam and contemplate the works with fellow Club members in one of London’s most architecturally stunning spaces. After an hour of perusing Davis’ work, they were ushered past the bar where they could grab a complimentary cocktail before settling in for the talk in the warmly lit Garden Room.
The talk afforded Dazed Clubbers a behind-the-scenes insight into what it was like building the exhibition and what a curator’s day-to-day looks like, as well as a deeper understanding of Davis’ life and the works they had seen in the exhibition.
Gurnos-Davies gave expert context to Davis’ guiding artistic sensibility – a commitment to art through community-building and healing. She explained how Davis, through his optimism for the collective, spearheaded an entire movement in the Los Angeles arts scene that prioritised community and how the assembled works, depicting Black life in LA, were able to reflect this passion for humanity and the people around him.
The audience asked plenty of questions. They discovered more about the ambitious undertaking of constructing an exhibition on this scale, how the wildfires that broke out in LA posed a challenge to the exhibition, and how Davis’ legacy continues to inspire an emerging generation of artists to create under a guiding principle of community-building – both in LA and beyond.
Clubbers got to pick up the latest spring issue of Dazed, meet new members of the Dazed community, and talk about the exhibition over Tico’s unique spicy cucumber margaritas and grapefruit palomas, all while taking in the brutalist architecture at the heart of the Barbican.
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