This time round the focus is on Labake. Labake has been coming to the Gate for around ten years, she is a key person in the group and likely the first person you'd come across on a visit as she loves meeting new people and making them feel welcome, often with a song if you happen to have visited in a group big enough to constitute an audience.
Living room.
One thing Labake really loves to do is sing and she can often be heard wandering round Shepherds Bush singing her songs at the top of her voice. Usually her songs are autobiographical and reflect some aspect of her life or often they have a social theme like the anti knife crime song in the video below (filmed by ace photographer Harley Weir on a recent photoshoot we attended for The Face Magazine) which on a recent trip to Scotland Yard Labake sang to the police commissioner Cressida Dick.
Dining room.
Generally though they're more directly autobiographical, songs about her experiences as both a physically and learning disabled mother of two or her or her Nigerian heritage, and often these themes also inform her visual art too. Under normal circumstances she can usually be found during gate art sessions constructing large sculptures out of cardboard boxes, or found objects (often toys like the dolls that she painted black and gave braided hair too), but since the isolation period began she has been busy drawing pictures of the home she shares with her family, examples of which can be seen here.
Kitchen.
Bedroom.
Front room.
In order to access cash and continue working with Gate artists while the gate is closed and they are locked down we have set up a gofundme to purchase materials - please click following link if you would like to contribute - https://www.gofundme.com/f/54-the-gate-covid19-lockdown-fund
