Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art

Located on the campus of Goldsmiths, University of London, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art is London’s newest contemporary arts institution, and open to everyone. Hosting world-class exhibitions by international artists, and providing a space for established and emergent practices, the institution aims to enhance Goldsmiths’ reputation for excellence and innovation in the arts. Curatorially ambitious, the exhibition programme has been devised to encompass a wide-range of exhibition-making, including new commissions, historical presentations, survey exhibitions, and long-term research projects. These are iterated in response to the spaces that make up the institution, ranging from top lit white cubes to a converted iron-lined Victorian water tank.

The institution’s modes of address are responsive to a diverse range of audiences, through community engagement, educational projects, publications, an online journal, and roving public programme. The latter will be hosted in the Oak Foundation Gallery; a double height space set in the centre of the building. Punctured by apertures from other galleries, it spatially emphasises a porosity between artistic practice and theory. Hosting talks, performances, screenings and other events related to the wider exhibition programme, alongside a series of shorter-term exhibitions, this space is the discursive heart of the institution.

A Grade II listed building, designed by Turner Prize winners Assemble, CCA totals just under 1000m², with 700m² of gallery space, and was formerly a Victorian bathhouse. As an academic space on campus, and physically adjoining the Art Department’s studio spaces, CCA will engage with the student population of Goldsmiths University and draw on the research excellence of the college, creating a feedback loop between emergent and established practices, and academia. CCA reaches out beyond the university through staging a series of exhibitions and events with multiple entry points, appealing to inhabitants of Lewisham, London, and internationally.