Goldsmith’s CCA closes due to pro-Palestine occupation

Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art has announced that with “extreme sadness and sorrow”, it will close until October following its occupation by the student-led group Goldsmith’s for Palestine.

The activists have occupied various university buildings since February and last month “pressured” CCA to close on 31 May and for the remainder of its current exhibition in June as part of a widespread cultural strike in solidarity with Palestine.

Among its demands, Goldsmiths For Palestine (GFP) is asking the university to end its involvement with honourary fellow Candida Gertler and her husband Zak, who are “major benefactors” to CCA and have a gallery named after them. GFP claim the couple are closely linked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and involved with supporting illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

On 11 June, CCA posted that “with regret,” the gallery would be closing its doors until October. The gallery's statement said: "We are closing because a student group has been occupying the space, which prevents us from operating properly as a public art gallery.

“We’re doing this because while the occupation continues, we are unable to fulfil the terms required by our insurers for keeping artworks safe and unable to maintain health and safety standards for visitors and staff.”

As a result, its upcoming exhibition, featuring the work of German artist Galli, has been rescheduled to early 2025, while its residents programme, which houses school groups, student groups, and artist and community groups, has been “paused for the time being.”

Artist Mark Corfield-Moore, who, along with Matt Connors, had his exhibition at CCA cut short after the gallery occupation in May, posted a message of support for the GFP on Instagram, saying that despite the premature closing, “some things are rightfully more important right now.”

GFP told The Arts Newspaper that after initial concession from the university’s senior management following earlier occupations, they had since missed two meetings with the group 

In a statement, the group said: “We reiterate that our action is a direct result of senior management's failures and any decisions made by CCA to close were entirely their decisions. The closure until October was neither a suggested nor intended part of our campaign.

"We were not told that this would be a possibility or outcome of our actions before it was publicly announced, and we had been attempting to negotiate with the CCA in good faith to navigate the de-installations/installations of exhibitions and with the knowledge of impacts on precarious workers at the CCA, namely the front of house staff who are mostly students like us.”