Anyone who visits the Whitechapel Gallery, London, this summer will find a skilled potter training an apprentice in a studio installed in the space, making utilitarian pots that are displayed on shelves, alongside a series of working drawings. This project, entitled Soul Manufacturing Corporation, is the creation of American artist Theaster Gates, and forms part of The Spirit of Utopia, an exhibition in which ten leading international artists and collectives speculate on alternative futures, the economy, and the environment. Soul Manufacturing Corporation investigates skill, teaching, and craft as part of an ambitious multi-city initiative that started in the US and is now being staged in London for the first time. The wares produced will be used in a cafe project in Chicago - a space for artist residencies, arts education, and community-based arts projects. This entrepreneurial approach to artistic practice is deeply embedded in Gates' personal history and way of 'making art-as-life'.
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