INTRODUCTION

Some Problems with History and its
Treatment of Black-British Artists.

In seeking to contribute to the researching and establishing of more substantial and credible histories of Black artists in the UK, the would-be researcher is faced with a number of difficulties and issues. These difficulties and issues begin with the question of terminology. Strictly speaking, ‘Black artists’, as a self-declared and self-identified body of practitioners, did not emerge in the UK until the early 1980s. Before this time, there were no ‘Black artists’ as such. There were, instead, ‘Afro-Caribbean’ artists, ‘West Indian’ artists, ‘African’ artists, ‘Asian’ artists and so on. And within artists signified as ‘African’ or ‘Asian’, there were, oftentimes, more specific labels of nationality such as ‘Nigerian’, ‘Ghanaian’, ‘Ceylonese’, ‘Indian’, and so on. This particular history of Black artists in Britain begins with those young artists from African, Asian, and Caribbean countries of the then British Empire, who made their way to Britain in the decades of the mid twentieth century, to begin, or continue, careers as visual artists. Without exception, none of these artists referred to themselves, or their practice, as ‘Black’. Many of these artists presupposed, or imagined, that they were part of a cosmopolitan, metropolitan art world in which seemingly blunt labels of ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ difference had no substantial place. A history of Black artists in Britain, stretching back to the mid twentieth century, tends to presuppose that ‘Black’ artists existed as such, over the duration of many decades. With ‘Black artists’ only emerging and being so named in the early 1980s, there is perhaps a need for circumspection in the use and application of labels, as well as adjectives such as ‘Black’.

No one knows when the first artists of African, Asian or Caribbean origin made their way to Britain. It could have been 100 years ago; it could have been several centuries ago. It could have been, as I speculate in the Foreword to this book, in 1815, when Joseph Johnson, a black sailor, with a model of the ship Nelson on his cap was documented. It could have been earlier than that. Simply put, we don’t know, because either no records were made, or no records were kept within reach of subsequent generations of researchers and scholars. There is a terrible burden of invisibility and eradication that history has bequeathed the Black-British artist. Setting aside what we don’t know leaves us with what we do know, and we know for certain that a substantial history of Black artists practicing in Britain can be traced back to at least as early as the 1920s, with the arrival in Britain of Jamaican-born Ronald Moody, who would go on to become a much-respected pioneer figure in the sorts of histories this book seeks to bring together.

Perhaps most alarmingly, what might be called an invisible-izing of Black-British artists continues right up to the present time. Certain histories (such as the recent revisiting of the work of the Blk Art Group of the early 1980s) are being excavated and reconsidered. But the overwhelming body of material and knowledge on Black-British artists remains vulnerable to the same sorts of adverse pressures and conditions that have existed in this country for centuries, when it comes to the contributions of certain artists and people.

So although the history presented here starts with Ronald Moody, it does so knowing, or at least suspecting, that Moody could well have been preceded by other, equally singular artists with skins as similarly dark as his. The problem of the invisible-izing of Black-British artists has other, equally alarming dimensions. In a great many instances, not even the scantiest records of important exhibitions taking place in decades such as the 1970s have been produced or kept in safe custody for reference by researchers or historians. Whilst being mindful not to cast researchers and art historians as gatekeepers of knowledge, it is certainly the case that a paucity of historical information on Black-British artists translates into, or corresponds with, a paucity of general awareness of said artists. Little is generally known, for example, about an important exhibition of Afro-Caribbean Art that took place in 1978 in London that included work by Frank Bowling, Lubaina Himid (her first documented exhibition), Donald Locke, and Eugene Palmer.¹ Learning about, or finding out about, such exhibitions inevitably involves a certain amount of digging. We do not know for certain which artists were practicing in the time period covered by this study. Furthermore, this formidable problem of not knowing continues right up until the present time. In time, historians of the future may well uncover hitherto hidden histories of Black-British artists.

Wherever possible, this book draws from contemporary sources relating to the artists it discusses. (That is to say, texts written at particular moments during the course of the artist’s life or career). Though such texts frequently reveal – at times inadvertently or unconsciously – particular prejudices that were dominant at the time (especially with regards to matters of race, culture, and identity), they nevertheless embody a usefulness that oftentimes far exceeds posthumous texts, or writing otherwise disconnected from its subject’s space and time.

Although this book carries the title Black Artists in British Art, in reality virtually all of the artists studied within it are based in England, (and more specifically than that, in London). With rare exceptions, these narratives hardly venture west into Wales or north into Scotland. In that sense, it might be more accurate to speak of Black Artists in English Art, but the explicitly parochial sentiments attached to the notion of English art are self-evident. Furthermore, the strong suspicion exists that few Black British-born artists/people, if any, would signify or designate themselves as primarily English, or would choose England as their primary point of geographic or national identity and location. They would instead, one suspects, identify or signify themselves as being British if pushed or prompted. Similarly, they would instead, one suspects, identify or signify Britain as their primary point of geographic or national identity and location. Although the reasons for a resistance to the label of Englishness as opposed to Britishness, (or a preferred use of Britain, rather than England) might be imprecise and, indeed, ultimately ambiguous, the differences between English and British and between England and Britain matter enormously. Certain Black artists have a marked history of criticality when addressing notions of either their Englishness or their Britishness, so my concern about England/Britain is perhaps to some extent a moot point.²

Nevertheless, within this study, Britain, as a national and a geographic entity (and as an attendant signifier of identity) is preferred to England, the latter having arguably greater and more pronounced connotations of insularity, jingoism and racism than the former. It is for these reasons that this study is titled Black Artists in British Art. Similarly, although there is – again, arguably – a widespread ambivalence amongst some Black people to identify themselves as British, in the absence of any single, widely accepted alternative signifier, this study uses the term British, in relation to Black British Artists. It does so in the knowledge that many of those to whom the term is applied might well, to varying degrees, find the term to be somewhat lacking.

By way of an addendum, another word of caution about the limits of labelling should be offered. Although many artists in this study might resist, or have resisted, the term British³, there can be no question that throughout much of the period of this study, a number of these artists were struggling to be included in the notion, the entity, the history, of British art. Bluntly put, for much of the mid twentieth century onwards, British art may not have wanted these artists, but many of these artists most assuredly wanted to be a part of the mainstreams of British art. Needless to say, with the specific and notable exceptions discussed in this study, British art itself has tended to keep Black artists – both British-born as well as immigrant – at arm’s length.

We must also consider the extent to which the foreign-born artists referenced in this study retained, or were frequently not seen beyond, the labels of nationality such as ‘Jamaican’, ‘Indian’, ‘ Nigerian’, and so on. Many of these artists may well have wanted to maintain an explicit association with the countries from which they migrated, but beyond this, these artists on occasion found themselves gravitating towards, or being pushed towards, catch-all exhibition labels such as ‘Asian’, African’, ‘Afro-Caribbean’, and, in time, ‘Black’. Within such exhibitions, these artists were drawn to, or were obliged to, keep each other company. Such considerations should lead us to ponder the limitations, contradictions and on occasion, the difficulties of seemingly emphatic labels of identity, imposed, declared or aspirational.

A fairly familiar aspect of the attention paid to a number of the artists discussed in this study is the level of posthumous attention they received. A somewhat lavish monograph on Francis Newton Souza appeared in 2006, the artist having died some four years earlier. The most substantial publication on Souza to appear during his lifetime had been published more than four decades previously. In similar regard one can consider Ivan Peries, who died in 1988, and who was the subject of a splendid monograph, issued in 1996, the best part of a decade after his death, not having been the focus of such substantial scholarship during his lifetime. Lancelot Ribeiro is another artist for whom significant and notable attention could only be enjoyed posthumously. He died in 2010, and within three years, was the subject of a major exhibition and substantial monograph.⁴ Aubrey Williams and Ronald Moody, both pioneering artists within this study, posthumously experienced similar escalations in critical attention to their practices following their deaths. Williams has been the subject of two substantial publications, relating to major exhibitions of his work, taking place some years after his death. Likewise Ronald Moody, who, more than two decades after his death, found himself being somewhat rehabilitated into narratives of British art.

Lavish posthumous attention paid to an artist is in so many ways the flip side of these same artists being consistently ignored or marginalised during their working lifetimes. The phenomenon that certain artists have to wait until they are dead before scholarship is advanced on them has had a quite debilitating effect on the creating of histories of Black-British artists’ work. Being compelled to practice in relative or absolute obscurity during their lifetimes ensures that these artists themselves cannot be a part of a living, functioning history, but must exist as minor characters with bit parts, as far as their individual contributions to this history is concerned.

In examining archival documents relating to Black-British artists, (particularly from the 1970s onwards) the question, where are they now? is never far from the mind of the researcher, such is the speed and regularity with which certain artists pass into relative or absolute obscurity. One particular artist – one of many – to have suffered this fate was a painter going by the name of Caboo. Referenced elsewhere in this study, Caboo was the subject of an extensive, four-page article in Race Today magazine in February 1975. Not only was the magazine’s cover given over to trailing the text on Caboo, but the following month’s issue of Race Today featured two substantial responses to the feature on Caboo, one of which was signed by Rasheed Araeen and H.O. Nazareth. This particular response concluded, ‘Roy Caboo, in the courageous pursuit of artistic creation, affords an example for black youth. He also helps to teach us some mistakes we must avoid in our development.’⁵ What became of Caboo and numerous others like him?

Other factors, equally dispiriting, must be brought into the consideration of the oftentimes skewed ways in which so many Black-British artists are ignored or only attended to posthumously. A relatively successful artist such as Maud Sulter could pass away (as she did in 2008) with hardly anything in the way of acknowledgement and obituaries.⁶ And an artist such as Brenda Agard, relatively young though she was, could fall from view and pass into oblivion as if her stellar contributions were somehow insignificant and unimportant.⁷ In effect, a colossal number of artists who have made important contributions to the history of Black artists in Britain have passed into obscurity or disappeared from all vestiges of public professional view. In reality, each of this book’s chapters could have been titled Problems and Progress, because each step that Black artists have taken towards greater visibility has been invariably accompanied by either an entrenching of ongoing challenges, or the creation of new difficulties. In so many ways, the history of Black artists in Britain could be told as a despondent narrative of interlinked episodes of thwarted ambition, born of an art world steadfastly indifferent to the practices of these artists. Notwithstanding these pressures of invisibilisation, the work of Black-British artists has been, and continues to be, deserving of ever-greater levels of critical attention. But until the artists discussed in this study are accorded more respect and attention during their lifetimes, it seems inevitable that Black-British art history will continue to be, in some measure, a skewed and lopsided construction.

To date, there have been two principal attempts at compiling and presenting a history of Black-British artists from the mid twentieth century onwards: the exhibitions and related catalogues for The Other Story (1989), and Transforming the Crown (1997).

The Other Story was a landmark exhibition which sought to outline a history of ‘Afro-Asian artists in postwar Britain’. The exhibition took place towards the end of what had, in turn, been something of a landmark decade for Black-British artists, insofar as a range of new artistic voices and initiatives relating to these practitioners had emerged, taken place, or established themselves over the course of the 1980s. The exhibition was curated by Rasheed Araeen and organised by the Hayward Gallery in the South Bank Centre, London, 1989. Following its showing in London it travelled to galleries in Wolverhampton and Manchester. There were many significant aspects of The Other Story, but perhaps the two central achievements of the exhibition were the ways in which it fashioned an art historical framework within which to locate the practices of Black artists in Britain, and the extent to which it introduced this broad range of work to new audiences. This latter endeavour was accomplished, in part, through the sheer volume of press coverage the exhibition generated. The considerable amount of press attention that the exhibition garnered included broadsheets such as The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and other mainstream magazines and newspapers that reviewed the exhibition, creating a volume of press coverage relating to one particular exhibition which even today remains unsurpassed in its scope and scale.

The Other Story featured work by the following artists: Rasheed Araeen, Saleem Arif, Frank Bowling, Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Avinash Chandra, Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Uzo Egonu, Iqbal Geoffrey, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid, Gavin Jantjes, Balraj Khanna, Donald Locke, David Medalla, Ronald Moody, Ahmed Parvez, Ivan Peries, Keith Piper, A J Shemza, Kumiko Shimizu, F N Souza, Aubrey Williams and Li Yuan-Chia. These artists were grouped into something of a chronological narrative, locating the work of Jamaican-born sculptor Ronald Moody in the first room of the exhibition, and thereafter taking its audiences through artists of the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. The final sections of the exhibition related to those artists who themselves had emerged into practice only a few years earlier, in some cases, well into the Eighties.

Within The Other Story, Araeen was able to fashion a sense that Black-British artists not only had their own history, or even histories, but perhaps even more importantly, they were part of a wider art history, from which they were, or had been thus far, routinely excluded. With the ambitious scope of the exhibition, Araeen was able to excavate and narrate histories that were, astonishingly, relatively unknown to even some of the exhibitors themselves. The challenges that faced certain artists were presented in a chronology in which such challenges resurfaced, facing different artists, some years later. Likewise, the triumphs achieved by certain artists were set within the context of subsequent achievements by other artists.

The other hugely significant aspect of Araeen’s exhibition was that the histories it excavated and narrated were committed to print and took the form of a fairly substantial catalogue, which ran to some 160 pages. Thus, for the first time, a sort of history book of Black-British artists was brought into existence, thereby emphatically challenging the exclusion of Black artists from all manner of narratives of British art history of the twentieth century. The exhibition catalogue featured an introduction, four essays and a postscript by Araeen. The catalogue also had room for a range of other voices, including those of Balraj Khanna, Guy Brett, David Medalla, and Lubaina Himid and Maud Sulter. As if to embellish the sense in which histories were being presented in both exhibition and catalogue, there was also, within the publication, a Chronology and a summary of Artists’ biographies.

Mention should also be made of another significant aspect of The Other Story. That is, the extent to which responses to it brought out into the open divergent and sometimes discordant voices, ranging from a handful of high-profile artists who let it be known that they would rather not participate in what they perceived as a problematic and peripheral curatorial construction, through to harsh critics of the exhibition, who took to task different aspects of The Other Story. Criticisms ranged from a perceived racial segregating (a sentiment expressed by several white critics), through to an alleged bias that saw women artists under-represented in the exhibition.

Some seven years after The Other Story, another exhibition and attendant catalogue that had the aim of fashioning a substantial history of Black-British artists took place, though in a number of ways it was quite different from its predecessor. Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996⁸ was a curatorial venture presented by the Caribbean Cultural Center, New York. The exhibition was shown across three venues in and around the greater New York area. Between October 1997 and March of the following year, Transforming the Crown was shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Caribbean Cultural Center itself. Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, who was at the time Curator and Director of Special Projects at the Caribbean Cultural Center curated the exhibition. Transforming the Crown was an ambitious exhibition and though there were several notable and conspicuous omissions, it was nevertheless a comprehensive undertaking which brought together a large number of artists, all of whom had connections to the UK, either by birth, or by residence, either permanent or temporary.

Transforming the Crown featured work by Faisal Abdu’Allah, Said Adrus, Ajamu, Henrietta Atooma Alele, Hassan Aliyu, Marcia Bennett, Zarina Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas, Sylbert Bolton, Sonia Boyce, Winston Branch, Vanley Burke, Chila Kumari Burman, Sokari Douglas Camp, Anthony Daley, Allan deSouza, Godfried Donkor, Nina Edge, Uzo Egonu, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Denzil Forrester, Armet Francis, Joy Gregory, Sunil Gupta, Lubaina Himid, Bhajan Hunjan, Meena Jafarey, Gavin Jantjes, Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede, Claudette Elaine Johnson, Mumtaz Karimjee, Rita Keegan, Fowokan George Kelly, Roshini Kempadoo, Juginder Lamba, Errol Lloyd, Jeni McKenzie, Althea McNish, David Medalla, Shaheen Merali, Bill Ming, Ronald Moody, Olu Oguibe, Eugene Palmer, Tony Phillips, Keith Piper, Ingrid Pollard, Franklyn Rodgers, Veronica Ryan, Lesley Sanderson, Folake Shoga, Yinka Shonibare, Gurminder Sikand, Maud Sulter, Danijah Tafari, Geraldine Walsh, and Aubrey Williams. Donald Rodney was included in the catalogue, but his work was not in the exhibition itself.

Though the reasons for the 30-year focus of the exhibition were not particularly clear, the exhibition was nevertheless a bold undertaking that included a number of artists that The Other Story had not taken into consideration. One of the biggest problems with exhibitions (and indeed publications, for that matter) that attempt to fashion grand historical narratives is that the more artists are included, the smaller the individual contributions can be made by each artist. The Other Story, featuring as it did some 24 artists, ensured that each practitioner’s contribution, or section, was relatively substantial, thereby allowing audiences a significant opportunity to appraise each artist’s work. With Transforming the Crown including the work of almost 60 artists, spread across several venues, there were perhaps ways in which the exhibition relied on sheer numbers to support its historical narratives and arguments. Like The Other Story catalogue before it, the Transforming the Crown catalogue proved to be a most useful document in fashioning and presenting tangible histories that, even a decade earlier, had largely existed as fragments, rather than as a recognisable whole.

The catalogue was extensively illustrated throughout, thereby adding another dimension to its usefulness, particularly to those people in Britain who had not been able to travel to New York to see the exhibition for themselves. Furthermore, essays by writers such as the exhibition’s curator, Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, Okwui Enwezor, Kobena Mercer, Gilane Tawadros, Anne Walmsley, Deborah Willis and Judith Wilson ensured that a range of voices contributed to the telling of the story of the history of Black-British artists. The exhibition secured a significant amount of press coverage, both within the US and the UK.

In addition to these two major attempts at compiling and presenting a history of Black-British artists from the mid twentieth century onwards, one should also be mindful of shorter, but nevertheless important texts such as Courtney J. Martin’s ‘Surely, There Was a Flow: African-British Artists in the Twentieth Century’, in the Flow exhibition catalogue.⁹

Finally, I should stress that this study is not, and does not claim to be, a definitive account. Such a study would run to several substantial volumes. My intention, in presenting this material, is to point to a number of the significant personalities, exhibitions, and other initiatives that have bench-marked the postwar history of Black artists in Britain. I seek to embellish dominant narratives of the history of Black artists in Britain and in so doing, the reader will likely notice that a number of artists are referenced who have, in effect, become somewhat obscure or unfamiliar names. In seeking to create a textured history, I freely admit that more research is needed, and more scholarship is needed, before a comprehensive and exhaustive history can be truly brought into existence.