Black Cube is a studio complex and contemporary art gallery operated by STOT21stCplanB and affiliated to the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop.
Sited on Fish Island (off Wick Lane between the used fridge & freezer depot and the Lea River Navigation Canal) the network of large exhibition spaces are built into the subterranean storage tanks of an old petroleum processing plant, while the windowless upper galleries hide in the ominous looking black cube that looms over the neighbourhood.
It is joked that the gallery was built on this land as it’s so toxic the authorities would only allow it to be used for showing art.
The Black Cube Gallery: A Short History
The gallery first opened in the early 1990s with a programme of exhibitions and events that championed the emerging (now irrelevant) Brit-Art, but fell into disuse at the turn of the century. STOT21stCplanB took it over as their HQ in 2004, primarily to use as a studio and storage facility, but also briefly running a programme of exhibitions for fellow L-13 artists such as Jimmy Cauty, Billy Childish and Jamie Reid. These events drew great numbers of dysfunctional hipsters, oddballs and creatives to the then derelict area, spurring on the rapid development and gentrification that we see today. Unimpressed with the type of people they were attracting STOT21stCplanB closed the Black Cube doors to the public on 24th December 2008 and no one except the artists and their assistants have been allowed to enter since.
In a statement issued at the end of 2022, it was pronounced the gallery was once again to open its doors, and in February 2023 a major exhibition of the Fish Island Prophecies would be revealed.
Visitors by appointment only.
Queue to view Billy Childish exhibition at Black Cube Gallery, 2004
Black Cube Gallery in Hackney Wick as it stands today.