Whitechapel Gallery - Power of Material

Reflection on Apprehensions, Whitechapel Gallery 

Encountering Hamad Butt’s Apprehensions at the Whitechapel Gallery was to confront the irreducible power of material presence.  

Installation of Cradle by Hamad Butt at the Whitechapel art gallery, London. July 2025

A wobblegif of Hamad Butt's 1992 sculpture, Cradle.

The glass flasks were arranged in the centre of the gallery like a large-scale version of a Newton’s cradle. Because they were made of glass, it was clear that if anyone set them in motion the way you would with the toy, they would break. That possibility seemed to draw people in, most of those I spoke to admitted they wanted to try it. However there was one pretty powerful caveat that each of these glass flasks, which had been in storage for almost 30 years, contained chlorine gas. 

This knowledge made the instinct to play with the sculpture something very different. What at first looked like a familiar toy suddenly became sinister and dangerous. I later learned that if all the flasks did break, it would create a genuinely hazardous situation in the gallery, and that threat was palpable. When the piece was first shown in 1992, it was not surrounded by the extensive cordoning that the Whitechapel now uses, which only underlined the risks of the material. 

When I first visited the work I had forgotten my camera, so I returned the next day to document it extensively. But even as I photographed it, I kept thinking about whether any documentation could really ever convey the power of the material. The knowledge that each flask contained chlorine gas, and the particular dangers associated with that gas, was inseparable from the encounter itself. I realised there was no way this could be substituted or fully carried through any form of digital or photographic mediation. 

Installation of Hypostasis by Hamad Butt at the Whitechapel art gallery, London. July 2025

A wobblegif detail of Hamad Butt's 1992 sculpture, Hypostasis. (Bromide)

a single glass tube filled with liquid bromide

Butt's Hypostasis sculpture was equally perilous in its construction. It appeared to invite you to step into a space formed by three tall glass forms, yet at the same time threatened to spear you. Again the modern reworking had the piece on a disappointing protective platform. These vacuum tubes, each ending in a sharp point, were filled with bromine, another highly toxic substance.

For me, this highlighted an important distinction between the appearance of matter and its reality. A simulation might reproduce the look of these tubes - which incidentally were very difficult to photograph, but it cannot reproduce the risk they contain - or the visual quality of the element itself. The threat, the danger, and the possibility of harm are what make Butt’s work both unsettling and compelling. The materials are not passive, they shape perception through their own agency.