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Since first opening its doors, the October Gallery has hosted many amazing events, including concerts of music from around the world, performances of dance, poetry readings, talks on various subjects of artistic and scientific interest and many exciting and innovative theatrical performances.
To find the October Gallery please check this map.

Being a special series of seminars, talks, film-shows and other events to celebrate twenty-five years of innovation in the arts.

Dance Up Close is a new series, giving audiences a rare chance to experience dance in an intimate setting. Set in the Gallery's intimate studio theatre, the spaces are limited, so advance ticket purchases are encouraged.

Club Ecumene series. Continuing lectures and workshops focusing on Ecological and Ecotechnic subjects. (from ecumene, Gk., "the inhabited world".)

Friday, 5th November
Fireworks! Poets!
19:00 - 22:00 (Doors open at 18:30)

Metaphoric Fireworks of Words with some of the world's wildest poets: Ira Cohen, Johnny Dolphin, Ruth Padel, Aidan Andrew Dun, Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede, Simon Vinkenoog and Sebastian Barker who will also offer a tribute to Tambimuttu - Editor, Poetry London 1948-1983.
Tickets: £8/£6 concessions.

Saturday, 6th November
A Seminar on the Transvangarde
10:30 - 13:00 (Doors open at 10:00 for coffee/tea)

Introduction by John Allen, co-founder of the October Gallery.
Slide presentation of the work of the October Gallery by Chili Hawes, Director, and Elisabeth Lalouschek, Artistic Director.
11:30: Round table discussion led by John Picton, Professor Emeritus of African Art at SOAS, with Augustus Casley-Hayford, Rose Issa, Robert Loder and Sajid Rizvi.
1-2:00 Lunch with speakers and artists
2-3:00 Guided Tour of exhibition in the compnay of artists of the Transvangarde.
Tickets: £5.00/£12.00 with Lunch included.

Saturday, 6th November
Dance Up Close - Molissa Fenley: Solo works.
19:30 (Doors open at 19:00)

Fenley is one of modern dance's living legends. After a critically-acclaimed season working with her ensemble in New York this September, Fenley makes a rare appearance, joining her friends at the October Gallery to launch Dance Up Close. She is known for her inventive and energetic style, which has been much praised by audiences and critics worldwide. Fenley founded her dance company in 1977, and has worked with composers such as Phillip Glass and John Cage.
Tickets: £12/£10 concessions.

Wednesday, 10th November
Club Ecumene - Dragons of the Sea.
19:00 (Doors open at 18:30)
UK premiere of a new film by Marie Arnaud and Michelle de Coust, about the conception, launch (in 1975), and ecological work of the Research Vessel Heraclitus. With its multicultural crew, the ferro-cement Chinese junk is commissioned by Planetary Coral Reef Foundation (PCRF) to map and assess the health of reefs worldwide. Question and answer session led by Abigail Alling, Director of PCRF. All proceeds from the event will go to support the work of the foundation.
Tickets: £8/£6 concessions.

Saturday, 13th November
Actor/Virtual Actor.
20:00 (Doors open at 19:30)
Theatre of All Possibilities and The Vasulkas collaborate in a demonstration of new digital art performance work based on a new type of electronically-generated emoting robotic characters. Theatre of All Possibilities is a 35-year-old company devoted to the exploration of new work, performing worldwide. The Vasulkas are pioneers of electronic art and digital media.
Tickets: £8/£6 concessions.

Tuesday, 16th November
Dance Up Close - Step by Step Since the Dawn of Time.
18:30 (Doors open at 18:00)
Houghton, a long-time student of Oriental movement, is one of the founders of Core of Culture, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the documentation and preservation of the world's cultural heritage of ancient dance. This talk will be illustrated by footage that documents the ancient tantric dance tradition of Ladakh, and Core of Culture's most recent project to analyse and catalogue the dances of an entire country, the Kingdom of Bhutan, over the next several years.
Tickets: £7/£5 concessions.

Tuesday, 23rd November
Dance Up Close - Transmitting Dance: the Transvangarde of Movement
19:00 (Doors open at 18:30)
If one cannot tell the dancer from the dance, how can dance be recorded? Each dance tradition has at least one unique form of notation, but these have never been an artform in themselves. Can video-dance and new technology break this tradition? Can dead dance forms be resurrected from written records or is cultural salvage impossible? And is there a universal language of dance constrained by biology, or do different cultures reinvent ritual movements independently. With UCL neurobiologist Daniel Glaser chairing this illustrated discussion, three choreographers from contrasting traditions will use body doubles to tell their stories.
Tickets: £6/£4 concessions.

Date and Time: to be announced
1966 - 1976: from DIAS to Punk
19:00 (Doors open at 18:30)
In 1966, artist Gustav Metzger organised the international Symposium of Destruction in Art (DIAS) in London. It was attended by many visitors from Europe and America, including Yoko Ono. Ten years later, punk emerged, highly influenced by the ideas and practices of DIAS. A panel, including Metzger himself, discusses the development and relationship between the punk movement and autodestructive art.

Wednesday, 1st December
Brion Gysin: Perilous Passage
18:30 (Doors open at 18:00)
Gysin began his illustrious career by being expelled by Breton from the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris, with Barry Miles and Terry Wilson. Wilson's just-completed book, Perilous Passage (Synergetic Press, 2004), chronicles the influence and philosophy of Gysin. "Brion Gysin Loves Ya", a film by Marie Harding documenting Gysin's first October Gallery exhibition, will also be shown.
Tickets: £7/£5 concessions.

Tuesday, 6th December
Robert Beer: The Tantric Buddhist Vision of Death, Conception and Rebirth.
18:30 (Doors open at 18:00)
This illustrated talk will give a brief introduction to the esoteric and highly ornate iconography employed in Tibetan Buddhist art, entering into a wide-ranging discussion of the various levels of symbolic meaning contained within its imagery. Beer, the author of several authoritative books on the subject, including the monumental work, The Encyclopedia of tibetan Symbols and Motifs, has studied and practiced tibetan thangka painting for more than thirty years. Over the last two decades, Beer has concentrated on an extensive series of iconographical drawings depicting the major deities, lineage holders, and symbols that occur in tibetan art, and his evident passion for the subject make him one of only a few western speakers able to traverse this fascinating yet complex field with an insight gained from detailed practical experience.
Tickets: £7/£5 concessions.

Thursday, 9th December
A.G.E. Blake & John Allen Dialogue:
Structures of Experience and Experience of Structures
18:30 (Doors open at 18:00)
Continuing a thought-provoking series of dialogues, which began in 1994, Allen and Blake, two outstanding contemporary thinkers, will exchange views about human existence. John Allen is co-founder of the Institute of Ecotechnics, inventor of Biosphere 2, engineer, author, poet, and dramaturge; Anthony Blake is a philosopher, specifically interested in the history and philosophy of science and practical metaphysical and educational systems, author of A Seminar on Time, The Intelligent Enneagram and Structures of Meaning and founder of DuVersity, a non-profit organisation hosting workshops and seminars.
Tickets: £6/£4 concessions.

Sunday, 12th December
Dance Up Close: Jeux - Nijinsky's Bloomsbury Ballery
Premiere of the new reconstruction
18:30 (Doors open at 18:00)
A unique performance by 3 ballet dancers. Originally performed in 1911, Nijinsky's lost ballet, Jeux, has been newly reconstructed based on original choreographic notes by Nijinsky, discovered in December of last year. Dance historians Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer have done meticulous detective work, finally proving that this ballet, long called his "Bloomsbury Ballet", was indeed about Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, and faithfully reconstructing Nijinsky's choreography.
2 pm - £15 Performance and short presentation of history of the ballet, by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer.
4 pm - £25 Performance with full presentation by Hodson and Archer, followed by high tea and champagne.

Running concurrently with 'nother side, an exhibition of work by the young Aboriginal artist Rosella Namok, the October Gallery is proud to present 'nother voice, a season of films honouring the achievements of Australia's Indigenous actors, writers and directors. Until the 1970s, cinematic representation of Aboriginal people was limited to ethnographic films, or melodramas such as Charles Chauvel's Jedda, which perpetuated colonial stereotypes. Jedda has nevertheless been included in this season, as it marks the first casting of Aboriginal actors in leading roles and an attempt to explore cultural difference, albeit from a white perspective. In recent decades, the medium of film has increasingly enabled Aboriginal people to speak with their own voice. Indigenous filmmakers are still in a minority and most productions are a collaborative effort between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Sunday 19th September
Radiance (1998)
Dir: Rachel Perkins. 83 min.
Deborah Mailman, Rachel Maza, Trisha Moreton -Thomas. Nominated for best film 1998 AFI awards. Deborah Mailman won Best Actress in her screen debut.

In Rachel Perkin's adaptation of Louis Nowra's play three sisters gather in their childhood home in far north Queensland for their mother's funeral. There are family secrets and problems to be resolved before their mother can finally be laid to rest.

Monday 20th September
Double Bill: Night Cries - A Rural Tragedy (1990)
Dir: Tracey Moffatt. 17 min.
Selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

A middle aged Aboriginal woman nurses her invalid white mother. Moffatt has taken two protagonists from Jedda, and placed them 30 years in the future. The roles are reversed. The colourful and highly stylised set recalls the work of Hermannsburg watercolourist Albert Namatjira.

followed by:
Jedda (1955)
Dir: Charles Chauvel. 101 min.
Ngarla Kunoth and Robert Tudawali. First Australian feature to be selected for Cannes.

Director Charles Chauvel cast Aboriginal actors Ngarla Kunoth and Robert Tudawali in leading roles. Jedda is a young Aboriginal girl raised by a white family on a Northern Territory cattle station. She is attracted to a young Aboriginal man (Tudawali) who kidnaps her and is subsequently rejected by his people. Jedda is trapped between two worlds, belonging to neither. This first Australian colour feature is a melodramatic white interpretation of Aboriginal people during the 1950s.

Tuesday 21st September
Australian Rules (2002)
Dir: Paul Goldman 98 min.
Nathan Phillips, Luke Carroll, Lisa Flanagan.

Australian Rules is based on the novel Deadly Unna? by Philip Gwynne. Blacky is from a dysfunctional and abusive white family. His Aboriginal mate Dumby lives just outside town on a mission and the two play for the local football team. The film is set in an isolated coastal town in South Australia where simmering racial tensions explode with tragic consequences.

Wednesday 22nd September
Beneath Clouds(2003)
Dir: Ivan Sen. 87 min.
Danielle Hall, Damian Pitt. Awarded Best Debut Film Award - Berlin Film Festival (2002) Best Young Actress in a Leading Role - Berlin Film Festival (2002).

Lena rejects her Aboriginal family, running away from the isolated country town in search of her Irish father. She teams up with Vaughn, a petty criminal who escapes jail to see his dying mother. The film follows their journey hitchhiking to Sydney and their quest for identity and love.

Black Chicks Talking screened to full houses at the 2002 Sydney Film Festival. It won the audience vote award for the most popular documentary and the most popular film overall at the 2002 Brisbane Film Festival, and was the only non-American documentary film selected to screen in competition at the inaugural Tribeca Film Festival 2002 held in New York. Leah Purcell's documentary draws together five Indigenous women from diverse backgrounds for a girl's night out, exploring what it means to be a woman in contemporary Aboriginal Australia.

Tuesday 5th October
Rabbit Proof Fence (2001)
Dir. Philip Noyce 100 min.

Three young Aboriginal girls forcibly removed from their parents are taken to a settlement 1,500 miles away to be trained as domestic servants. Kenneth Brannagh stars as West Australian Chief Protector of Aborigines who tries to recapture them with the aid of a tracker (David Gulpilil).

The October Gallery would like to thank the following organisations for their help in mounting this programme of films

To coincide with the 23rd June to 31st July exhibitions of paintings by Frantz Lamothe and photographs by Leah Gordon with metalworks from Haiti, the October Gallery will also play host to the 2004 Music Village Festival Club. The Music Village Lunchtime Festival Club features a stimulating mix of talks on Culture and Migration by expert commentators; recitals by some of London's best diasporic storytellers and poets: and a series of informal concerts by visiting international artists all in the intimate setting of the Gallery's beautiful open-air courtyard. The Lunchtime Events are composed of three events daily:

Doors open 30 minutes before all events, refreshments are available. Call (020) 7242 7367 for tickets and information.

On Tuesday, 9th March, the October Gallery presents an evening reception for
Steina & Woody Vasulka
with an informal presentation of
spontaneity and fun....

For forty years, the American electronic artists Steina and Woody Vasulka have consistently produced original art
which has defined the electronic age.
This is a rare chance to meet these seminal artists.
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Sasha Pushkin is a Berlin-based composer and performer, who originally hails from St. Petersburg. He is well-known for his dynamic avant-garde piano compositions. Following his sell-out concert earlier this year, Sasha returns to the October Gallery Theatre space for two very special solo performances on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th of January.

Wali Cham Jobarteh and Al Hagie Pampo Jobarteh on Kora
and
Maya Jobarteh on Kora and Guitar.

All were students of the late master Kora player Amadu Bansang Jobarteh and are now well-known musicians in their own right

21st January, 2004
7 :30 pm (Doors open 7pm) . Refreshments.
Tickets: £5 on the door
for more information about Tunde Jegede's music and CDs: www.tundejegede.com/tunde-biog.html

Friday 30th January and Saturday 31st
7 :30 pm (Doors open 7pm) . Refreshments.
with a Matinee Performance on Sunday, 1st February,2004 at 4:00pm
Tickets: £10 / £6 conc.

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Simon Green - SOLO
with Musical Director David Shrubsole

Simon Green brings his internationally acclaimed cabaret - a collection of music, lyrics and poetry from names as diverse as Coward, Lennon & McCartney, Tolkein, Auden and Sondheim - to the October Gallery Theatre for three days. Take this opportunity to enjoy the wit and style of some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century in these unique surroundings.

Monday, 2nd, Tuesday, 3rd and Wednesday, 4th of January
8:00 pm (Doors open 7pm) . Refreshments.
Tickets: £15

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Wednesday 23rd June	12:15 - 12:45 Talk: Melanie Abrahams: Diaspora Literature; exploring myths, magic and illusions of contemporary writers and writing 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: Tuup: Tales from Africa and the Caribbean 1:30 - 2pm Concert: Maalem Abdenbi and Sidi Mimoun Group (Gnawa Music from Marrakesh, Morocco)
Thursday 24th June	12.15 - 12.45 Talk: Laudan Nooshin and Tina Ramnarine Music Tradition and Innovation in the Diaspora 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: A Spell in Time - Storytelling, ritual, music and song from Bulgarian myth and Folklore 1:30 - 2pm Concert: Yarehma (Klezmer music from Krakow, Poland)
Friday 25th June	12:15 - 12:45 Talk: Martin Short - A Well-Kept Secret: Palestinian and other Arab achievers in Britain 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: Leah Thorn - The Art of Dis/appearing 1:30 - 2pm Concert: Al Ahmady Group (Traditional Yemeni music from Mukalla, Yemen)
Tuesday 29th June	12.15-12.45 Talk: Debjani Chatterjee - Ghazals and Bengali songs in Translation 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: Kathy Hall - Transmigration - An Encounter with Foxes 1:30 - 2pm Concert: Green Mamba (Isicathamiya Choir, Johannesburg, South Africa)
Wednesday 30th June	12:15 - 12:45 Talk: Bernard Canavan - The Irish Diaspora 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: Vergine Gulbenkian - Armenian Tales 1:30 - 2pm Concert: Skiffle Bunch Steelband and Tassa Drummers (Trinidad and Tobago)
Thursday 1st July	12:15 -12:45 Talk: Harry Cumberbatch The Power Writers: Five African Writers in 18th Century London 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: Kate Corkery - Stories from Ireland 1.30-2pm Concert: Shyam Brass Band (Jabalpur, India)
Friday 2nd July	12:15 - 12:45Talk: In Conversation with Gurinder Chadha, Director of Bend it like Beckham 1:15 - 1:30 Spoken Word: Mr Gee - Poetically on time, in a world of uneducated rhymes 1.30-2pm Concert: Maalem Abdenbi and Sidi Mimoun Group (Morocco)