Theaster Gates, Sanctum

Sanctum was Theaster Gates’ first public project in the UK, produced by Situations, as part of Bristol 2015 European Green Capital. Whilst open and free to visit day and night, the schedule remained secret.

“Like being in a village community. I never thought you could create a village hall in a city!” – Visitor

“It kept drawing us back. There was the call to prayer one morning and the woman handed over to an acoustic act just as the sun started to come up. A seamless transition. Each time I haven’t failed to feel uplifted. I always come away feeling my spirits are lifted.” – Visitor

Having sought out discarded and dormant materials from former places of labour and religious devotion across Bristol, Gates built this extraordinary work, working alongside AN-Architecture.

Entitled Sanctum, the artist invited musicians and performers across Bristol to sustain a performance of sound and spoken word continuously for 24 days, 24 hours a day. Sanctum was open to visitors day and night, capacity remaining limited to ensure the intimacy of the space. Whether a headlining band, spoken word artist or gospel choir this secret schedule contributed to the sense of Sanctum as a gathering space for collaboration and new encounters.

About the performers
Over 800 performers took part in Sanctum. You can explore who played when on the Sanctum Tumblr page here. (Please note this is an archived tumblr page and some of the links to personal instagram posts may not be live.)

About the artist
Theaster Gates is an artist, musician and activist based in Chicago. Trained as both a sculptor and urban planner, his artworks are rooted in social responsibility as well as a deep belief system. Gates often works with architects, researchers and performers to create artworks.

His most acclaimed work, Dorchester Projects, began in 2009 with Gates transforming a cluster of buildings on Chicago’s South Side into alternative cultural spaces. The artist used repurposed materials from across the city to rehouse retired collections of objects such as 14,000 books from the former Prairie Avenue Bookstore, glass slides from the art history department at the University of Chicago and 8,000 vinyl records from the Dr. Wax record store.

Gates is winner of the 2015 Artes Mundi prize, the founder of the non-profit Rebuild Foundation and Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, University of Chicago.

About the location
Bristol’s Temple Church on Temple Street, off Victoria Street, was the first English parish church to be taken into ownership by the then Ministry of Works, and is today in the care of English Heritage. It is a Grade II listed building and scheduled monument and is popularly known as Temple Church because the original circular church was built by the Knights Templar.

In the 18th century the interior was refitted. The shape of the original Templar church is now marked out on the ground. The famous tower leans 5 feet (1.6 metres) out of the vertical. The church was bombed during the Second World War and gutted by the resulting fire. Only the shell of the building, dating mainly from the 14th century, remained after the bombing on 24th November 1940, 75 years prior to the arrival of Sanctum. Temple Church is not usually open to the public so Sanctum offered rare chance to step inside the building.