CHAPTER SEVEN
The ‘Black Art’ Generation and the 1980s
The 1980s was an unprecedented period of activity for Britain’s Black artists. The previous decade, the 1970s, had seen a number of important visual arts initiatives involving Black artists. These practitioners, for example Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede and Ronald Moody, were immigrants who had come to Britain from countries of the British Empire (or the Commonwealth). The 1980s, however, produced a new generation of artists, for the most part British-born, the majority of whom were art school graduates. The decade was significant for two reasons. Firstly, it produced many professional artists who went on to make important contributions within Britain and further afield. Sonia Boyce, Sokari Douglas Camp, Denzil Forrester, Rita Keegan, George Fowokan Kelly, Veronica Ryan, Eugene Palmer, Bill Ming, Ingrid Pollard and others all established reputations for themselves during the course of the decade. Secondly, the 1980s delivered many new opportunities for Black artists to have their work included in the group exhibitions that frequently took place within galleries and other venues across the country.
Until a new generation of practitioners emerged in the early 1980s, Black artists had been somewhat reluctant to name their practice with a racialised or politicised prefix. They were similarly reluctant to explicitly place social or political narratives at the core of their practice. John Lyons hinted at the profound changes that the profile of Black artists in Britain went through, between the early 1970s and the early 1980s. In Chapter Four it was noted that an important exhibition of work by Caribbean artists in England was held at the Commonwealth Institute in 1971.1 It was this exhibition that Lyons contrasted with a markedly different type of Black artists’ practice, a decade or so later:
Caribbean artists and writers like the Barbadian poet, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, the Jamaican novelist Andrew Salkey and John La Rose, the Trinidadian activist and poet, came together in 1966 to form the Caribbean Artists Movement. It was a coterie which, in the fostering of mutual respect and support, created confidence by maintaining cultural identity in a Eurocentric milieu fraught with numerous dangers of misappropriation. It also attempted to establish for Caribbean peoples in Britain a point of cultural reference. The Caribbean Artists Movement brought together a group of artists in an exhibition ‘Caribbean Artists in England’ mounted in the Commonwealth Institute Gallery in 1971 […] What started in 1971, significantly in the Commonwealth Institute Gallery, as relatively benign self-assertion was, within a decade, superseded by exhibitions of works of a politically rhetorical character by young Black artists of the generation born in England as British citizens. Unlike their parents and grandparents, whose illusion of England as the mother country was shattered by the stark realities of racism, these young Black British artists had the right by birth to claim England as their home.2
The genesis of this activity is often traced back to the early 1980s to a series of exhibitions mounted and organised by a group of young artists and art students who had grown up in the West Midlands. Chief amongst these practitioners was Keith Piper, who came to symbolise a new generation of younger Black artists whose work was characterised by what was, in a British context at least, a new attachment to social and political narratives, expressed through styles that drew heavily on the influence of Pop Art, found imagery, readymades and the use of mechanical forms of image making, such as the photocopy. Other artists utilised more traditional techniques of painting and drawing to comment on the Black experience. These artists, Claudette Johnson and Donald Rodney amongst them, took as their subject matter the history, culture, tribulations and aspirations of Black people throughout the world. Piper and others embraced and advocated the American ideology of ‘Black Art’ that had emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s (that is, a socially dynamic visual art practice, closely aligned to militant political and cultural agendas of progress for Black people). To this end, these artists’ work touched on the experiences of Black people in the United States, South Africa, and flash points of tension closer to home, such as Brixton.
Not only were these artists able to articulate themselves in their various practices, they were also able to express themselves in the various modest publications that often accompanied their exhibitions. Witness for example Keith Piper, in a statement for Black Art an’ done, one of the first exhibitions that heralded this new generation of Black Art practitioners. During his time at art school as an undergraduate student, Piper wrote:
To me, the black art student cannot afford the luxury of complacency as enjoyed by many of his white counterparts. These people, finding little worth responding to in their decadent lives of leisure and pleasure seek out ever more obscure playthings amongst the self indulgent vogue of art ‘for arts sake’. The black art student, by his very blackness finds himself drawn towards the epicenter of social tension. He is forced to respond to the urgency of the hour. The aspirations of the Black British are ripe, and our time is ‘NOW’. So let us in our work undersign the logical mechanics of our greater struggle. Let us strive by any means to raise the revolutionary consciousness of each other as to the form and functioning of the social, political and economic barriers which this man has placed all around us, and within our very minds.3
Within this statement, Piper was referencing not only the urgency of the hour, as regards the political agendas of Black people, he was also resisting the dominant approach to art school education. This approach insisted that students should concern themselves with no more than matters of academic learning – still-life drawing and painting, sketching nude models, perspective, colour, and other such areas. Students were discouraged from applying any explicit social and political narratives to their work. Piper and others breezily disregarded, or even challenged, such an approach, and insisted on a practice that had a pronounced social relevance and responsibility at its core.
In part, the press release for the first Black Art exhibition read:
The exhibitors all share a common preoccupation with the culture and civil rights of Black people in this country and abroad … they are concerned with the propagation of … Black Art within the wider sphere of modern Black culture. The group believes that Black Art – which is what they call their art – must respond to the realities of the local, national and international Black communities. It must focus its attention on the elements which characterise … the existence of Black people. In so doing, they believe that Black Art can make a vital contribution to a unifying Black culture which, in turn, develops the political thinking of Black people.4
In the chronology contained in The Essential Black Art catalogue, Rasheed Araeen suggested (regarding the Black Art an’ done exhibition) that ‘This is perhaps the first time the term ‘Black art’ has been used in Britain in relation to a contemporary art practice.’5
It might now seem extraordinary that a group of young artists, none of them older than 20, could or should set themselves a collective agenda aimed at developing ‘the political thinking of Black people.’ But at that time, the development of race-based identity politics presented itself as a credible agenda of the moment. These young artists were mesmerised by the opinions of the US’s Black Art advocates such as Larry Neal and Ron Karenga, and Piper and his contemporaries were in effect either quoting from them verbatim, or passing their words off as their own. For example, Ron Karenga had, ten years earlier, written in a manifesto called Black Cultural Nationalism6 that ‘Black art, like everything else in the Black community, must respond positively to the reality of revolution … Black art must expose the enemy, praise the people, and support the revolution.’7 He continued in that vein, concluding with, ‘Let our art remind us of our distaste for the enemy, our love for each other, and our commitment to the revolutionary struggle that will be fought with the rhythmic reality of a permanent revolution.’8
Politically, these were heady and difficult days for Black people. Piper knew how to visualise the trauma and dynamism of the times and to this end, he produced some remarkable work. One particular example was his 1981 mixed media piece, 13 Killed. 1981 was the year of an event that became known, in certain quarters, as the New Cross Massacre, in which 13 Black youngsters, attending a birthday party, lost their lives in a suspicious house fire. The party took place in the home of one of the victims, whose birthday was being celebrated. This was a horrific incident that galvanised the Black community, acutely increasing its sense of identity and purpose.
In 13 Killed, Piper cut up and collaged one of the very few newspaper reports of the tragedy, overlayering image and text on a powerful background that consisted of a re-creation of a burned and charred wallpaper and skirting board reminiscent of a typical West Indian domestic environment.9 Using found materials in such a strikingly original and emotive way, Piper gave form to Black people’s tragedy, grief and outrage. This was a work of the most profound empathy, in which Piper paid homage to lives lived and lives lost. Using plain household postcards, Piper penned messages to each of the fire’s victims, naming them all and attaching portraits of them to each message. This effectively restored to each victim a humanity and an individuality that seemed robbed from them, not only by the fire itself but by the subsequent apparent indifference. The party at which the tragedy occurred was being held to celebrate the birthday of 16-year-old Yvonne Ruddock. Piper’s message to her read ‘SEND THIS ONE BACK TO THE PEOPLE! SISTER YVONNE SURVIVED 15 YEARS WITH US IN BABYLON. ON THE DAWN OF HER 16TH YEAR BABYLON SNUFFED HER OUT. SEND THIS ONE BACK TO THE PEOPLE + LET THEM DEMAND AN ANSWER!’ Similar messages were penned for the other victims: Humphrey Brown, 18, Peter Campbell, 18, Steve Collins, 17, Patrick Cummings, 16, Gerry Francis, 17, Andrew Gooding, 14, Lloyd Richard Hall, 20, Rosalind Henry, 16, Patricia Denise Johnston, 15, Glenton Powell, 15, Paul Ruddock, 22, and Owen Thompson, 16. An infamous episode of history occurred in January 1981. Piper benchmarked that history with a truly remarkable piece of work. Furthermore, the aesthetics of the work decisively pointed to a rebuttal of the art school ethos, whilst simultaneously pointing to the perceived social responsibility of the Black art student.
A measure of Piper’s significance as an artist was the purchase, for the Arts Council Collection, of his work (You are now entering) Mau Mau Country.10 Painted in 1983, the piece was included in the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield exhibition of the following year, Into the Open, and was purchased in 1984, making it one of the first works by the new generation of Black artists to enter a major public collection.
Another important young artist of the period was Donald Rodney who, on arriving at Trent Polytechnic in 1981, met Keith Piper who was a year ahead of him. Rodney, a British artist of African-Caribbean background, was born in Smethwick, Birmingham, England in 1961.11 Embracing both the aesthetics of Pop Art and the ideology of ‘Black Art’ (that is, a socially dynamic visual art practice closely aligned to militant political and cultural agendas of progress for Black people), Piper’s practice even as a student was, as evidenced previously, sharp, powerful and engaging. Piper had argued that the work of Black artist/art student should speak to ‘the Black experience’. To this end, Piper’s work touched on the experiences of Black people in the United States, Africa, and elsewhere in the world. Rodney found himself charmed and persuaded by Piper’s position and practice, the two going on to collaborate on a number of occasions. The work and the exhibitions they produced together represented a decisive meeting of minds. In 1987, they issued a statement called ‘Piper & Rodney On Theory’. Its opening paragraph read:
20. Donald Rodney, Doublethink (1992).
In Britain’s art schools, where the mythology of individual self-expression is held at a premium, collaborative activity is discouraged. Apart from throwing a spanner into bureaucratic machinery geared to assess the virtuoso, collaborative activities begin to counter many of the negative effects of an individualism which leaves the art student isolated and vulnerable. Supporting collaborative activity has therefore never been in the interest of the art school hierarchy, as many students expressing an interest in working collaboratively have learned to their cost.12
Donald Rodney, like Keith Piper, paid particular attention in his work to the harsh realities of the lives and histories of Black people.13 In this regard, Rodney was one of the first Black artists of the 1980s generation to pay particular, considered and deeply penetrating attention to the iconography of slavery. One of the most consistently innovative, resourceful and intelligent artists of his generation, he battled with sickle-cell anaemia – a frequently debilitating disease of the blood, from which he suffered – until he succumbed to the condition, dying in March of 1998. Rodney’s work, from his earliest days as an art student at Trent Polytechnic, in Nottingham, in the East Midlands, through to his final one-man show at South London Gallery, some six months before he died, had consistent and distinctive qualities that marked him out as a practitioner of unique ability and sensitivity. In a gesture that was typical of his devastating intellect, Rodney made a seemingly simple, yet profound work that utilised the familiar, everyday box of household matches, England’s Glory. Manufactured by Bryant and May, the boxes of matches were commonly used by smokers, householders, and anyone else who needed to strike a light. The trademark on the front of the box of matches, garlanded by the words ENGLAND’S GLORY, was a lithograph of a sea-going vessel, above and below which, the words MORELAND GLOUCESTER appeared, a reference to the Gloucester match maker S. J. Moreland and Sons, a firm who made and sold matches under the trade name England’s Glory, and was taken over by Bryant and May early in the twentieth century. In a simple yet brilliant act, Rodney replaced the familiar image of the vessel with an equally familiar, but altogether different ship, the Brookes of Liverpool, which infamously depicted captured and shackled Africans. With this singular montage, Rodney effortlessly parodied England’s glory, and in so doing advanced the proposition that England’s glory was more accurately, England’s shame.
Rodney’s work, even those pieces that touched on issues of slavery, sometimes contained a marked and distinctive humour, and were always executed with considerable intelligence. His work of the early 1980s consisted largely of loose, exuberant paintings on canvas and wall-mounted assemblages, such as 100% Cotton, the South’s Favourite Cloth, a large diptych which depicted a white lady and a military gentleman of the Confederate South, waltzing at a ball, their faces twisted in grotesque, manic grins. No images of slave ships, no images of brutalised Black people. Yet the painting’s messages were clear and its readings were strong. Two figures – her ball gown puffed out by folds of cotton canvas – used to comprehensively reference the whole wretched enterprise of American slavery and its attendant legacies and manifestations of racism. To some, 100% Cotton may at first have seemed harmless enough, playful even. Others, more perceptively, could see the menace of its subtext that lay immediately beyond the humour of the painting and the effective, seemingly effortless ways in which it parodied Gone with the Wind and the frequently troubling nostalgia that the film evoked in certain quarters.
Late in 1985 Rodney had his first solo exhibition. Alluding in part to the forthcoming ‘festive season’, the exhibition was titled The First White Christmas and Other Empire Stories. It was held at one of Birmingham’s community arts centres, Saltley Print & Media, commonly and affectionately known by its acronym, S.P.A.M.14 The exhibition was in effect an installation of works, a number of which were executed directly on to the walls of the spaces it occupied. The dominant motifs used in the exhibition related to slavery and the slave trade. Rodney’s thoughtful engagement was with not only the legacies and consequences of slavery but, just as importantly, the ways in which we navigate or read the troubling yet on occasion curiously sanitised images relating to slavery that are to be found in no end of history books.
The exhibitions in which the likes of Piper and Rodney played a part took place between 1981 and 1984 and featured an ever-changing line-up of artists.15 By the mid 1980s, these young Black Art advocates had begun to drift away from their pronounced embrace of the ideology. They would, in effect, leave it to the likes of Shakka Dedi and Rasheed Araeen, to champion their own respective positions on, and interpretations of, Black Art.16 By the end of the decade, Keith Piper, who had been the most articulate of the early 1980s exponents of Black Art, opined on the dramatic changes his practice went through in the middle of the decade. In 1990 he declared himself to be interested in:
the open-ended and contradictory puzzle of elements thrown into a heap in order to tease and irritate the spectator, rather than the presentation of the closed and logical arguments with their honourable aims of ‘education’ and ‘upliftment’ so favoured by myself and my compatriots in earlier, more lucid days.17
In reality, Piper’s work had always reflected a multi-layered sophistication and a dynamic grasp, utilising various art historical narratives.
Meanwhile, Creation for Liberation, a group of cultural activists based in Brixton, took a pronounced interest in Black artists’ work and organised a series of open exhibitions that attracted the work of a great many artists. The first such exhibition was held in 1983 and others followed throughout the course of the decade.18 Within these open submission exhibitions, the work of lesser-known and newly emerging artists was hung and shown alongside professional and established painters, printmakers and sculptors, thereby giving many artists important exposure that had traditionally been denied to them by many of the country’s art galleries. The profile of Black British artists received a further and major boost with the opening (again, in 1983) of The Black-Art Gallery in Finsbury Park, North London.19
During the course of the 1980s, Black artists were able to open up another front of important activity when a number of the country’s municipal museums and independent galleries took an interest in their work, exhibiting it in often large-scale group exhibitions. The first such exhibition was Into the Open, held at Mappin Art Gallery Sheffield in 1984.20 Selected by Lubaina Himid and Pogus Caesar, Into the Open featured a mix of artists, some familiar, some less so, who were exhibited together in what was to be become one of the landmark exhibitions of the decade. Many other such exhibitions were to follow, the most high profile of which was From Two Worlds, held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery just over two years later, in 1986.21 Important though such exhibitions were, they tended to present Black artists as somewhat generic or homogenised groups of practitioners, rather than as individual artists befitting of more substantial attention. Nevertheless, these exhibitions, which took place at galleries in Bradford, Manchester, Leicester and elsewhere in the country, often represented valuable, albeit relatively fleeting, opportunities for Black artists. It was during this period of the mid 1980s that the GLC took something of a pronounced interest in Black artists, and worked with a number of them on exhibitions and murals.22
Fittingly perhaps, the decade of the 1980s ended with a substantial exhibition curated by Rasheed Araeen and hosted by London’s Hayward Gallery. Araeen had had the idea for The Other Story a number of years earlier, but it was not until the late 1980s that he was able to realise the project. The Other Story showcased the work of African, Asian and Caribbean artists working in postwar Britain.23 The exhibition generated unprecedented levels of press attention and did much to give credibility to the notion of a tangible history of Black-British artists’ practice.