Thinking outside the box

The term white cube, denoting a pure white gallery environment designed to display contemporary art with minimal distractions, was coined by artist and critic Brian O'Doherty in 1976. It then entered the art lexicon and in 1993 was appropriated by London contemporary art dealer Jay Jopling as the name of his first London gallery.

The Chisenhale Gallery is a classic white cube that for decades has been seen by artists as an irresistible, if somewhat intimidating, platform in which to show. The director of the London gallery, Polly Staple, says the white cube model is more relevant now than ever.

"In a world of information overload, the white cube's somewhat privileged, slightly rarefied atmosphere has come into its own again as a welcome, contemplative space."

Despite brief diversions off the pure white cube road map - Tate Modern and the Baltic in Gateshead, for example - the core concept is as strong as ever, particularly in new-builds. The Towner gallery in Eastbourne, by Rick Mather Architects, and the forthcoming Turner Contemporary in Margate and Hepworth Wakefield, both designed by David Chipperfield Architects, all testify to the durability of the genre.

"We wanted a very open-plan, geometrical space," says Towner director Matthew Rowe. "We didn't specify a white box, but among the specifications was that the main gallery be column free, allowing views across the space. The white cube approach gave us the flexibility we required."

Towner's modernist design was also a deliberate reaction against the gallery's original location in an 18th-century manor house where the domestic interiors imposed limitations on the display of contemporary art.

"I was also partly influenced by my own history," says Rowe, who previously worked at Tate St Ives. "In St Ives we often found ourselves almost fighting against the architecture to create exhibitions."

The Towner is typical of the new breed of Arts Council England (ACE)-supported coastal galleries that constitute the so-called "string of pearls" laced across the south of England.

But these ventures - which include the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea and the Turner Contemporary - show how the "placeless" quality of the classic white cube format is now giving way to a greater sensitivity to regionalism and the broader context beyond the gallery walls.

But not all contemporary art is shown against bare white walls in square rooms. Ben Harman, curator of contemporary art for Glasgow Museums, is based at the city's Gallery of Modern Art (Goma), the UK's second most visited contemporary art gallery outside London.

Harman describes Goma's grand neoclassical interiors and vaulted ceilings as "almost the opposite of the white cube space" and yet they are invariably treated as an exciting challenge by contemporary artists.

Harman says: "Most artists walk into our space and go: 'Oh, wow, let me do something in here.' If an artist's work is strong enough it will hold its own anywhere."

The main argument against the white cube model centres on the clinical nature of the environment it engenders, which sanctifies the objects within it, placing an exaggerated emphasis on their value and depriving them of any social context.

This may partly explain the appeal of the white cube to commercial galleries for whom those sanctifying qualities become an elegant means of showing, and selling, the art.

Stephen Snoddy, director of the New Art Gallery Walsall, and former director of the Baltic, helped found the Milton Keynes Gallery, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

He believes the white cube theory falls down over the question of context: "How can you seal art off from its environment, from the politics of the day, the social context in which it was made? In a public institution we have a duty to tell the public the context behind the work."

Meanwhile, proof of Harman's point - that the best art often benefits from being seen in environments with strong characters of their own - can be found in the Artist Rooms project, which is showing works originally owned by the collector and gallerist Anthony d'Offay, currently touring the UK.

The Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney, and the De La Warr Pavilion, both galleries rooted in their local contexts, are currently hosting works by Bill Viola and Joseph Beuys respectively.

Joanne Bushnell, director of Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth, thinks the white cube model is now a dated concept. Originally located in a converted Methodist chapel in Southsea, Aspex Gallery moved in 2006 into the Grade II-listed Vulcan Building in Portsmouth. Part of a former naval storehouse, the new 110-sq-metre gallery by architect Glenn Howells won a Royal Institute of British Architects award in 2007.

The Aspex Gallery features a huge wooden door directly opposite the entrance, massive cast-iron columns, three windows and a brick wall that can only be lime-washed. It is as unwhite a cube as a gallery interior could get and yet artists love it, says Bushnell.

"Because we're commissioning artists to work in this space, they invariably see it as a challenge. We've always been prepared for artists to decline our offer because of the gallery's heritage features, but that has never happened. They always embrace it."

The previous Aspex gallery in the chapel was big and square, but it was not necessarily better, says Bushnell. "We never aspired to the white cube model, although the chapel space was closer to it. That was the 1980s and it was an artist-led space. Now we have a publicly funded space with different challenges."

Another pearl in the ACE necklace, Aspex is succeeding in nurturing contemporary artists within an environment that is sensitive to local history and culture.

That sensitivity to local context is something that Nottingham Contemporary is all too aware of. When it opens next month it will be one of the largest contemporary arts centres in the UK with a total floor area of 3,000 sq metres.

Caruso St John Architects has come up with a design that can house contemporary art and performance, while at the same time being sympathetic to the setting in the city's historic lace quarter. Part of the solution has been to clad the building with panels embossed with a giant lace pattern.

Snoddy thinks the public sphere can learn from the private sector. "Commercial galleries strive to create the most beautiful surroundings possible in which to show the work. The most successful galleries, public or commercial, are usually a succession of beautifully proportioned rooms, each subtlety different from the next."

He believes David Chipperfield is the finest exponent of this approach. "He designs sensitive, minimalist buildings of exceptionally high quality that also have a human touch."

The human touch was an alien concept to the classic white cubes that Brian O'Doherty skewered in his 1976 essay. Thanks to a more sympathetic approach to local context, the human touch seems to have been welcomed back into the contemporary gallery. Perhaps we now have the best of both worlds.

Tom Flynn is a London-based writer