From 28th June – 10th August 2025, Conditions in Croydon will present the free exhibition HARDCORE / LOVE. For the first time, Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016) will be shown alongside Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) – widely considered as two of the most important moving-image artworks of the past thirty years. The exhibition will be held within a former electronics shop in the Whitgift Shopping Centre in Croydon.
Founded in Croydon in 2018, Conditions is an independent project, run by artists, for artists. Conditions provides studio space and structured critical conversations to develop each artist’s work. It also foregrounds the importance of sociability and makes a space for artists to connect, via talks, exhibitions and events. Since its founding, Conditions has supported over 170 artists and is committed to providing an alternative model to the increasing cost of both studio space and education for artists in London.
The premise of HARDCORE / LOVE emerged from a conversation with art dealer Gavin Brown, who grew up in Croydon and wanted to help support the future of Conditions. The organisation is currently raising vital funds to achieve long-term security on its studio building.
HARDCORE / LOVE will offer visitors a unique chance to experience two landmark artworks which combine video, music and montage. Made over 15 years apart, both works use the emotional and physical experience of music, along with a process of video editing that cuts fragments of images to create artworks that are social, political and personal.
Arthur Jafa’s seven-minute video Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016) offers a swift-moving montage of the African American experience as captured in moving images, from nineteenth-century silent films to today’s camera phone recordings of police killing unarmed civilians. Clips sourced from the internet are interwoven with Jafa’s own home movies and past projects, and set to Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” itself a compendium of Black music history and voices. The selection whiplashes viewers between moments of celebration and mourning, humor and crisis, profound historical significance and everyday intimacy. Throughout, Jafa edits and adjusts playback speeds to mimic the exceptional tempo and tone control of Black musicians. This technique represents one way in which he pursues his long-stated goal of a “Black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of Black music.”
In Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), Mark Leckey splices altered video footage from dance clubs with an amalgamation of sounds to examine countercultural nightlife, revealing the poignant interpersonal energy and socio-economic aspirations of its revelers. The fifteen-minute video is sourced from footage of British clubs that spans trends in fashion and attitude from the 1970s to the 1990s. Despite the differences among the partygoers, Leckey’s film unites the disparate cultural moments in a frenzy of youthful, euphoric ritual, but the artist also points to the come-down of rave culture and describes the work as “a ghost film” and “ghosts dancing”. The title alludes to Italian fashion house Fiorucci, wildly popular during the artist’s youth in the late ’70s. Although dress and taste evolve through Leckey’s edited juxtapositions, brand allegiance and material symbolism are undeniable constants in an otherwise fleeting remix of three decades of dance culture.
To accompany the exhibition, a talk between Arthur Jafa and Mark Leckey, organised by Conditions, will take place at the ICA in London on Thursday 26th June at 7pm. Tickets are available via the ICA website.
A club night is being held by Conditions at Ormside Projects on the evening of Saturday 28th June. Tickets will be available on Resident Advisor.
Matthew Noel-Tod and David Panos of Conditions said:
“These works blur the lines between art and popular culture, breaking away from the art world and pointing towards something far more widely resonant. We’ve also tried to offer a space away from many of the conventions and expectations of contemporary art in its institutional or academic form, as well as responding to the urgent need to provide spaces and dialogue in a city that has become harder and harder for artists.”
Gavin Brown said:
“These two artworks, made by artists I could not respect more, have each had a profound and lasting effect on me, becoming enmeshed in the story I tell myself about my life. To see them now, together, in a deep and heavy exchange of call and response, is a very personal wish fulfillment. And for this to be taking place in Croydon, in the Whitgift Centre, where I spent so many confused and troubled afternoons and evenings, takes the cake of all cakes. But beyond that blather, Conditions is the best place for all this to be happening. Conditions, and so many other places like it, are addressing head on the slow-motion cultural train wreck that is arts education in our neo-liberal world. They are making available real, concrete and affordable options to young artists for whom the traditional route is a financial impossibility. What they do is crucial for a vibrant culture to sustain itself. So please take the train from Victoria to East Croydon and have a look for yourselves.”
ARTHUR JAFA / MARK LECKEY: HARDCORE / LOVE
Conditions, 48 Whitgift Centre, Croydon CR0 1UQ
Sat 28th June – Sun 10th August | Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sat 11am – 6pm, Sun 11am – 5pm
Free entry conditions.studio/ | @conditionstudioprogramme
Supported by Gladstone Gallery, New York, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne, Shane Akeroyd, Charles Asprey and Marlies Hessel.
About
Conditions is a low-cost studio programme for artists. The project is an artist-run studio space in Spencer Place, Croydon, used for production, development, exhibitions and events, started in 2018 by Matthew Noel-Tod and David Panos. Conditions has also used short term spaces in the Whitgift Centre, Croydon. Conditions are currently fundraising to ensure its sustainability for the future.
Arthur Jafa (American, b. 1960) is an artist, filmmaker and cinematographer. Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artifacts and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of black being.
In 2019, the jury for the 58th Venice Biennale presented its Golden Lion award to Jafa, recognized as best participant for the film The White Album. His films have garnered acclaim at the Los Angeles, New York, and Black Star Film Festivals and his artwork is represented in celebrated collections worldwide including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, High Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, MCA Chicago, The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Luma Foundation, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
Mark Leckey (b.1964, Birkenhead) is known for his innovative work at the intersection of video, sound and popular culture or even punk subculture. Winner of the prestigious Turner Prize in 2008, he explores themes linked to memory, technology and the impact of cultural objects on our identities.
His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2025); Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo (2024); Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome (2022); Tate Britain, London (2019-2020); Glasgow International, Glasgow (2018); Cubitt, London (2017); SMK, Copenhagen (2017); MoMA PS1, New York (2016-2017); Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (2016); Cabinet, London (2015); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2015); WIELS, Brussels (2014); Hayward Gallery Touring (The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea) (2013); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); The Banff Center, Banff (2012) ; Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York (2010); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2009); Le Consortium, Dijon (2008); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2003).
His work can be found in numerous public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
