Jack White is opening his first visual art show in London this spring. Find all the details below.
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Titled ‘These Thoughts May Disappear’, the show opens at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery on May 29, and will run to September 13.
It marks the first time the former White Stripes frontman has ever shown his visual art in a gallery setting and will showcase his work through a range of mediums, including sculpture, furniture design, and installations.
According to an Instagram post announcing the show, much of the work will be “forged from reclaimed materials, hardware store conveniences, and industrial remnants” and will draw “upon themes of assemblage and reappropriation, reflecting influences from movements such as Dada and De Stijl”.
The show will also feature works by artists Gordon Newton and Robert Sestok.
White and Hirst are friends and have previously publicly collaborated when White played a surprise set on Hirst’s London rooftop in 2021 to celebrate the grand opening of his new Third Man Records store down the road. The performance was later released as a live album.
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White also has a background in visual art, and launched the website ‘Jack White Art & Design’ in 2021 to showcase a host of his non-musical activities.
The website included a number of creations never previously released to the public, and features sections including Industrial Design, Interior Design, Furniture & Upholstery, Graphic Design, Instruments & Hardware, Sculpture, Vinyl Concepts, Film Directing, and Photography.
Prior to his musical career with The White Stripes taking off, White apprenticed with another Detroit musician and upholsterer, Brian Muldoon, at Detroit’s Third Man Upholstery.
Muldoon and White were once in a band called the Upholsterers. In the early 2000s, the two of them pressed 100 copies of their second single, ‘Your Furniture Was Always Dead … I Was Just Afraid To Tell You’, and hid them in furniture that was being upholstered.
In 2014, two of those records were found in some furniture. And, in 2016, a furniture owner got excited at the prospect that their Jack White-upholstered chairs had some vinyl inside.
White also had his own furniture-upholstery business named Third Man Upholstery.
In other news, The White Stripes were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, though Meg White wasn’t present at the ceremony, as she has stuck to keeping out of the spotlight since The White Stripes broke up in 2011. Instead, Jack accepted the honour on her behalf.
White has also been repeatedly critical of the Trump administration, recently attacking him over his military campaign in Iran.