Notes

NOTE

 1  Gilane Tawadros, ‘Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire,’ in Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire (London: ICA/INIVA, 1995): 13.

 2  Ibid.

 3  Gen Doy, ‘Introduction’ to Doy, Black Visual Culture (London: I.B.Tauris, 2000): 9.

FOREWORD

 1  Simon Houfe, ‘Social Realism 1850–1890’, The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, 1800–1914, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Antique Collectors’ Club, 1978: 149.

 2  Ibid.

 3  Vagabondiana or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers Through the Streets of London; with Portraits of the Most Remarkable Drawn From the Life. London: Published by the Proprietor and sold by Messrs. J. and A. Arch, Cornhill; Mr Hatchard, Bookseller to the Queen, Piccadilly; and Mr Clark, Bond-Street. 1817, pp. v/vi.

 4  Ibid, p. v.

 5  Ibid.

 6  Ibid.

 7  Smith described his subject in the following terms:

 

The succeeding plate displays the effigy of Joseph Johnson, a black, who in consequence of his having been employed in the merchants’ service only, is not entitled to the provision of Greenwich. His wounds rendering him incapable of doing further duty on the ocean, and having no claim to relief in any parish, he is obliged to gain a living on shore; and in order to elude the vigilance of the parochial beadles, he first started on Tower-hill, where he amused the idlers by singing George Alexander Stevens’s ‘Storm’. By degrees he ventured into the public streets, and at length became what is called a ‘Regular Chaunter’. But novelty … induced Black Joe to build a model of the ship Nelson; to which, when placed on his cap, he can, by a bow of thanks, or a supplicating inclination to a drawing room window, give the appearance of sea-motion. Johnson is as frequently to be seen in the rural village as in great cities … (p. 33)

 8  Ibid.

 9  Ibid, p. 34.

10  For many years, the fourth plinth at the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square, London, stood empty. In 1999, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) conceived the Fourth Plinth Project, which temporarily occupied the plinth with a succession of works commissioned from contemporary artists Mark Wallinger, Bill Woodrow and Rachel Whiteread. As the RSA’s temporary custody of the Fourth Plinth as a site for contemporary art appeared to be popular with both the public and the media, the Greater London Authority (GLC) assumed responsibility for the fourth plinth and began its own series of changing exhibitions. These included works by Marc Quinn, Anthony Gormley, and Yinka Shonibare, whose Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle was unveiled on 24 May 2010. Ship garnered significant press coverage, and Shonibare was the first Black artist to receive a Fourth Plinth commission.

11 Michael McCarthy, ‘Nelson’s ‘Victory’ joins him in Trafalgar Square’, The Independent, 25 May 2010, p. 16

INTRODUCTION

 1  Afro-Caribbean Art was a large open submission exhibition organised by Drum Arts Centre, held 27 April – 25 May 1978 at the Artists Market, 52 Earlham Street, London, WC2. The artists were Mohammed Ahmed Abdalla, Keith Ashton, Colin Barker, Lloyd George Blair, Frank Bowling, Linward Campbell, Jan Connell, Dam X, D. Dasri, Horace de Bourg, Gordon de la Mothe, Daphne Dennison, Art Derry, Barbara Douglas, Reynold Duncan, Anthony Gidden, Lubaina Himid, Merdelle Irving, Siddig El N’Goumi, Anthony Jadunath (his name appeared in the catalogue as Jadwnagh), Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede, Donald Locke, G. S. Lynch, Errol Lloyd, Cyprian Mandala, Althea McNish, Nadia Ming, Lloyd Nelson, Eugene Palmer, Bill Patterson, Rudi Patterson, Shaigi Rahim, Orville Smith, Jeffrey Rickard Trotman, Adesose Wallace, Lance Watson, and Moo Young. (The last artist listed was likely to have been Tony Moo Young, from Jamaica, though the Moo Young listed in the catalogue was listed as coming from Trinidad.) The only substantial references to this exhibition are a review by Rasheed Araeen, published in Black Phoenix (‘Afro-Caribbean Art’, Black Phoenix, No. 2 Summer 1978, pp. 30–31), and a review ‘In View’ by Emmanuel Cooper, contained in Art & Artists, Hansom Books, London, Volume 13, No. 3, Issue Number 148, July 1978, p. 50. A feature on Drum Arts Centre, titled ‘Drum Call for Black Britain’, written by Taiwo Ajai appeared in Africa magazine. No. 44 April 1975, p. 43.

 2  See, for example, Val Brown’s series of photographic portraits, A British Product (exhibited in Black Art: Plotting the Course, Oldham Art Gallery and touring, 1988). See also Black People and the British Flag (a touring exhibition which opened at Cornerhouse, Manchester, 1993). Both exhibitions were curated by Eddie Chambers. In A British Product, Brown critiqued and challenged the absence from the traditional notion of the ‘English Rose’ of women who looked like her. In Black People and the British Flag, a number of artists critically engaged with multiple notions of Britishness.

 3  This sense of resistance to the label of being British was explicitly apparent in a substantial feature on a London painter who went by the name of Caboo, which appeared in the February 1975 issue of Race Today. Though the Trinidad-born painter had been resident in London since the age of fifteen, and though he had come to art as an adult, the feature introduced him in the following terms: Caboo: The Making of a Caribbean Artist. Such distancing, such alienation, from notions of Britishness was in keeping with the times.

 4  Restless Ribeiro: An Indian Artist in Britain, 24 May – 29 June 2013, Asia House, London.

 5  ‘Backlash, Caboo: the Making of a Caribbean Artist’, Rasheed Araeen, and H. O. Nazareth, Race Today, March 1975, pp. 67-8.

 6  Surprisingly perhaps, Sulter’s death passed relatively unremarked, the most substantial obituary appearing in the Herald, Glasgow, 22 March 2008, a few weeks after her death.

 7  Brenda Agard was born in 1961 and died in 2012. She was a familiar and consistent presence in the exhibitions of the mid 1980s that reflected the emergence of a new generation of Black-British artists. A photographer and artist, her work sought to create affirming images centred on the resilience of the Black woman. An early showing of her work was Mirror Reflecting Darkly, an exhibition of work by Black women artists held at Brixton Art Gallery in 1985. Her work was included in the important The Thin Black Line exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts later that year. Agard’s work featured in Lubaina Himid’s Elbow Room exhibition of 1986, titled Unrecorded Truths. Agard appeared in the Black Audio Film Collective film, 3 Songs on Pain, Light and Time (1995), speaking about the artist Donald Rodney.

 8  14 October 1997 – 15 March 1998, Studio Museum in Harlem; 15 October 1997 – 15 March 1998, Bronx Museum of the Arts; 16 October 1997 – 15 March 1998, Caribbean Cultural Center, the venue for Picturing England: The Photographic Narratives of Vanley Burke.

 9  Courtney J. Martin, ‘Surely, There Was a Flow: African-British Artists in the Twentieth Century’, Flow, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 2 April – 29 June 2008, pp. 63–9, (exhibition catalogue).

CHAPTER ONE

 1  The Veerle Poupeye quote is taken from her entry on Ronald Moody in the St. James Guide to Black Artists, Detroit, St James Press and New York, Schomburg Center, 1997, pp. 364–5.

 2  Cynthia Moody, ‘Ronald Moody: A Man true to his Vision’, Third Text 8/9, Autumn/Winter 1989, pp. 5–24.

 3  Guy Brett, ‘A Reputation Restored’, Tate International Arts and Culture, March/April 2003, pp. 78–80. The piece was extensively illustrated, including a dramatic full-page reproduction of Seated Sarong Figure (1938). The article related to a display of Moody’s work that took place at Tate Britain, 24 March – 30 May 2003.

 4  Guy Brett, ‘A Reputation Restored’, p. 79.

 5  Marie Seton, ‘Prophet of Man’s Hope: Ronald Moody and his Sculpture’, The Studio, January 1950, pp. 26–7.

 6  Ibid p. 27.

 7  Ibid p. 27.

 8  See Rasheed Araeen’s discussion of Frank Bowling in ‘In the Citadel of Modernism’, The Other Story, exhibition catalogue, p. 39.

 9  Kobena Mercer, ‘Black Atlantic Abstraction: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling’, Discrepant Abstraction, The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts and INIVA the Institute of International Visual Arts, London. 2006, p. 183.

10  Ibid p. 186.

11  Ibid p. 186.

12  The obituary was written by Anne Walmsley and appeared in the Guardian, Tuesday 1 May 1990, p. 25.

13  1962 was also the year in which the Arts Council bought a work of Bowling’s for its collection, making him among the first Black artists in Britain to be recognised in this way. The work was Birthday (1962), oil on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm.

14  G.S.W. [G.S. Whittet], ‘Two New Imagists at the Grabowski’, The Studio, International Art, November 1962, Vol 164, No 835, p. 195.

15  Frank Bowling, quoted in Rasheed Araeen’s discussion of Bowling in ‘In the Citadel of Modernism’, The Other Story, exhibition catalogue, p. 39.

16  Ibid p. 40. For more on this, see Mel Gooding, ‘Dying Swans and a Spiral Staircase: Images of Crisis’, Frank Bowling, Royal Academy of Art, 2011, p. 41.

17  1st Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art, Commonwealth Institute, London, 19 September – 13 October 1963, exhibition catalogue, unpaginated.

18  Martin Gayford, catalogue essay on Frank Bowling, in Frank Bowling: Bowling on Through the Century, exhibition catalogue, Bristol, 1996, p. 3. This exhibition was shown at Leicester City Gallery, 11 September – 12 October 1996; Gallery II, University of Bradford, 12 January – 7 February 1997; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, 27 February – 31 March 1997; South Hill Park, Bracknell, 5 April – 10 May 1997; Midlands Arts Centre, 14 June – 27 July 1997 and Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, 6 September – 26 October 1997.

19  Frank Bowling, quoted in Rasheed Araeen’s discussion of Bowling in ‘In the Citadel of Modernism’, The Other Story, exhibition catalogue, p. 40.

20  Ibid.

21  Kobena Mercer, ‘Frank Bowling’s Map Paintings’, in Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, edited by Gilane Tawadros and Sarah Campbell, INIVA, London, 2003, p. 140.

22  Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story: Afro-Asian artists in post-war Britain, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery London, 1989, p. 40.

23  The exhibition’s dates were 28 November 1973 – 13 January 1974.

24  For a discussion of the honours system’s embrace of Black-British artists, see Eddie Chambers, Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain, Rodopi Editions, 2012; in particular, Chapter Two, ‘Service to Empire’.

25  Edward Brathwaite, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement’, in Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1/2, A Survey of the Arts, March – June 1968, p. 58.

26  Guy Brett, ‘A Tragic Excitement’, Aubrey Williams exhibition catalogue, published by the Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA) in association with the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1998, p. 24

27  Guy Brett, introduction to Aubrey Williams, exhibition catalogue, Shibuya Tokyu Plaza, Japan, 1988, unpaginated.

28  From the entry on Williams in The Other Story catalogue (p. 32), taken from Rasheed Araeen, ‘Conversation with Aubrey Williams’, Third Text, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1987–88, pp. 25–52.

29  Guy Brett, ‘Aubrey Williams obituary’, the Independent Tuesday 1 May 1999, p. 15.

30  Gallery-going audiences of a certain age may well have availed themselves of such an opportunity several decades earlier, when Williams exhibited in 1st Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art, alongside painters such as Frank Avray Wilson, Peter Lanyon, Denis Bowen and Victor Pasmore. Scholarship on Williams continues to be published (see for example, Leon Wainwright’s ‘Aubrey Williams: A Painter in the Aftermath of Painting’, Wasafiri, issue no. 59, Autumn 2009, pp. 65–79).

31 Guy Brett, ‘Aubrey Williams obituary’.

32  Commonwealth Art Today, Commonwealth Institute, London, 7 November 1962 – 13 January 1963.

33  The Indian Painters Collective was established in 1963. Though the group was relatively short-lived, it was reborn a decade and a half or so later as IAUK (Indian Artists United Kingdom), a body that had an altogether more substantial, productive and influential programme and profile.

CHAPTER TWO

 1  Commonwealth Art Today, Commonwealth Institute, London, 7 November 1962 – 13 January 1963.

 2  For a discussion of this, see Eddie Chambers, ‘Coming in From the Cold: Some Black Artists Are Embraced’, in Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain. Editions Rodopi, 2012, pp. 210-11.

 3  GALLERY ONE – TEN YEARS, Gallery One, London, 19 August – 6 September 1963, catalogue, unpaginated. This was a hugely important document covering the first ten years of activity of Gallery One.

 4  Ibid.

 5  Victor Musgrave, in GALLERY ONE – TEN YEARS.

 6  Ibid.

 7  Reyahn King, Anwar Shemza, catalogue essay in Anwar Shemza, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 12 November 1997 – 1 February 1998, p. 6.

 8  Ibid p. 4.

 9  W. G. Archer, ‘Avinash Chandra: painter from India’, The Studio magazine, Vol. 161, No. 813, January 1961, pp. 4–7. Like the Introduction to Chandra’s Hamilton Galleries exhibition of 1965, this article was written by W. G. (William George) Archer, an ‘expert’ on Indian poetry, culture and art. He was born in 1907 and worked for the Indian Civil Service from 1931 until about the time of Indian independence in 1947. He was, subsequently, Keeper, Indian Section, Victoria and Albert Museum 1949–59. W. G. Archer died in 1979.

10  Ibid p. 5.

11  See GALLERY ONE – TEN YEARS.

12  Avinash Chandra, Hamilton Galleries, London, 10–27 March 1965.

13  W. G. Archer, introduction to Avinash Chandra, exhibition catalogue, Hamilton Galleries, London, 10–27 March 1965, unpaginated.

14  W. G. Archer, ‘Avinash Chandra: painter from India’, p. 6.

15  Ibid.

16  Rasheed Araeen, ‘In the Citadel of Modernism’, The Other Story, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London/South Bank Centre, 1989, p. 23.

17  Francis Newton Souza, The Supper at Emmaus, 1958.

18  Geeta Kapur, ‘London, New York and the Subcontinent’, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, by Aziz Kurtha, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Ahmedabad, India, 2006, p. 72.

19  Aziz Kurtha, ‘Origin and Influence’, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art , Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Ahmedabad, India, 2006, p. 57.

20  India: Myth and Reality Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The exhibition was selected by David Elliott, Director of Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Victor Musgrave, and E. Alkazi. The artists exhibited were M F Husain, F N Souza, Satish Gujral, S H Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar, Mohan Samant, Tyeb Mehta, K G Subramanyan, Krishen Khanna, A Ramachandran, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Jogen Chowdhury, Rameshwar Broota, Ranbir Singh Kaleka, Gieve Patel, Sudhir Patwardhan, Nalini Malani, Mrinalini Mukherjee, and Anish Kapoor. The exhibition’s dates are not included in the catalogue.

21  Entry on F. N. Souza, in India: Myth and Reality Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 8.

22  Philip Rawson, text for Balraj Khanna: Paintings, October Gallery, London, 16 April – 10 May 1980.

23  Rasheed Araeen, ‘In the Citadel of Modernism’, p. 43.

24  Rasheed Araeen, ‘The Art Britain really Ignores’, Making Myself Visible, London, Kala Press, 1984, p. 102.

25  Balraj Khanna, New Vision Centre, 18 October – 6 November 1965.

26  Ahmed Parvez, a Pakistani modernist painter, was born in 1926, in Rawalpindi (then in India, now in Pakistan) and died in 1979. In the words of Rasheed Araeen, writing in The Other Story catalogue (page 34), ‘Parvez belonged to the first group of artists in Pakistan for whom ‘modern art’ was everything.’

27  Senake Bandaranayake and Manuel Fonseka, ‘An Introduction to the Paintings’, in Ivan Peries: Paintings 1938–88, Tamarind Books, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1996, p. 9.

28  Six Indian Painters, Gajanan D. Bhagwat, Balraj K. Khanna, Yashwant Mali, S. V. Rama Rao, Lancelot Ribeiro, and Ibrahim Wagh, Tagore India Centre, London, 9 – 28 November 1964.

29  Catalogue flyleaf, Six Indian Painters.

30  Brochure (unpaginated) for an exhibition at Burgh House Museum, New End Square, Hampstead, London NW3 of Exhibition of Paintings by IAUK Indian Artists living in UK. The exhibition took place 27 January – 24 February 1980, and featured Yeshwant Mali, Prafulla Mohanti, Lancelot Ribeiro, Suresh Vedak, Ibrahim Wagh, and Mohammad Zakir.

31  The letter was copied to this author.

32  Mali, Horizon Gallery, London, 29 August – 21 September 1990.

CHAPTER THREE

 1  Brochure (unpaginated) for an exhibition at Burgh House Museum, New End Square, Hampstead, London NW3 of Exhibition of Paintings by IAUK Indian Artists living in UK. The exhibition took place 27 January – 24 February 1980, and featured the artists above, all of whom were involved with IAUK.

 2  Letter from Lionel Morrison, then Principal Information Officer of Commission for Racial Equality dated 6 February 1980 and originally sent to Sheldon Williams, 64 Clissold Crescent, London, N16, drawing attention to Exhibition of Paintings by IAUK Indian Artists living in UK.

 3  Catalogue for Festac’77: ‘The work of the artists from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Introduction by Yinka Odunlami, Exhibition Officer of UKAF’, London, p. 4.

 4  The Arts Council of Great Britain, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Community Relations Council had commissioned this report. It was published in May 1976.

 5  Rasheed Araeen, ‘The Arts Britain really Ignores’, Making Myself Visible, London: Kala Press, 1984, p. 101.

 6  Rasheed Araeen ‘Afro-Caribbean Art’, Black Phoenix No. 2 Summer 1978, pp. 30–1.

 7  Emmanuel Cooper ,‘In View’, Arts & Artists, Hansom Books, London, Volume 13, Number 3, Issue Number 148, July 1978, p. 50.

 8  Rasheed Araeen ‘Afro-Caribbean Art’, originally published in Black Phoenix 2, Summer 1978. Reprinted in Rasheed Araeen, Making Myself Visible, London: Kala Press, 1984, pp 124–5.

 9  Third World Within, Brixton Art Gallery, London, 31 March – 22 April 1986.

10  From Two Worlds, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 30 July – 7 September 1986, Rasheed Araeen, Saleem Arif, Franklyn Beckford, Zadok Ben-David, Zarina Bhimji, the Black Audio Film Collective, Sonia Boyce, Sokari Douglas Camp, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid, Gavin Jantjes, Tam Joseph, Houria Niati, Keith Piper, Veronica Ryan and Shafique Uddin.

11  Keith Piper, foreword to The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art, exhibition catalogue, 13 June – 19 July 1987, Manchester, Cornerhouse, 1987, unpaginated.

12  Double Vision: An exhibition of contemporary Afro-Caribbean Art, Cartwright Hall, Bradford, 8 November 1986 – 4 January 1987, Franklyn Beckford, Margaret Cooper, Uzo Egonu, Amanda Hawthorne, Lee Hudson Simba, Debbie Hursefield, Tam Joseph, Johney Ohene, Keith Piper, Madge Spencer, and Gregory Whyte.

13  ‘DRUM ARTS CENTRE’, Race Today, March 1975, p. 72.

14  John La Rose and Andrew Salkey, preface to Writing Away From Home, Savacou 9/10, p. 8.

15  ‘Caboo: The Making of a Caribbean Artist’, Race Today, February 1975, p. 37.

16  Rainbow Art Group exhibition, Action Space, leaflet, London, 22 May – 9 June 1979.

17  Throughout the 1970s and 1980s there were periodic attempts to establish a national Black arts centre for London, most notably, perhaps, the one centred on the Roundhouse in Camden, North London. Ultimately, however, these efforts came to naught, though the Keskidee Centre in Kings Cross, North London operated for two decades, between 1971 and 1991. It was not until the period around the new millennium that a number of new Black arts centres were brought into existence.

18  Taiwo Ajai, ‘Drum Call for Black Britain’, Africa magazine. No. 44 April 1975, p. 43.

19  The work was titled Spirit of the Carnival and is further discussed in Chapter Five.

20  Rasheed Araeen, ‘The Arts Britain really Ignores’, p. 104.

21  The following biographical summary on Rasheed Araeen appeared in Wasafiri, Volume 23, Number 1, Issue 53, Spring 2008, p. 22. The text, an interview with Araeen conducted by Richard Dyer covering some eight pages, was liberally illustrated with archival images of Araeen’s practice. The front cover of the issue featured an archival photograph of Araeen’s ‘Paki Bastard (Portrait of the Artist as A Black Person)’, a live event with slides and sound, first performed at Artists for Democracy, 31 July 1977.

 

Rasheed Araeen was born in 1935 in Karachi, Pakistan. Although he first trained as a civil engineer, he later began to work as an artist, first producing figurative work and then abstract painting. Restricted by attitudes to modernity in Pakistan, he moved to England in 1964 after a brief stay in Paris. A year later, he encountered the work of Anthony Caro which was a transformative experience for him and encouraged him to start making his own sculptures. Rather than producing sculpture based on traditional composition or pictorial structures, Araeen argued that ‘symmetrical configuration, rather than composition, should be the basis of a new sculpture’. Consequently, Araeen became a pioneer of Minimalist sculpture in Britain, although his contribution was largely unrecognised at the time. Araeen did not discover the New York school of American Minimalism until 1968 when a friend in Paris told him of the work of Sol LeWitt. It was at this time that he also began to devote himself full-time to art. In 1970, Araeen became increasingly politically active, joining both the Black Panthers (later re-named the Black Workers Movement) and Artists for Democracy. Later in the decade, he explored performance art, concentrating on political issues and identity politics. In 1978 he founded Black Phoenix, a magazine which dealt with radical contemporary art from the ‘Third World’. This was the precursor to Third Text magazine which he launched in 1987 and which is one of the leading academic journals of contemporary art and culture today.

 

Araeen regarded his practice as being reflective of, and having made quantum contributions to, both modernism and post-modernism. (See the artist’s exhibition and catalogue, From Modernism to Postmodernism – Rasheed Araeen: A Retrospective: 1959–1987, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1988.)

22  The Essential Black Art, Chisenhale Gallery, 5 February – 5 March 1988, Rasheed Araeen, Zarina Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Allan de Souza, Mona Hatoum, Gavin Jantjes and Keith Piper.

23  Rasheed Araeen, ‘The Emergence of Black Consciousness in Contemporary Art in Britain: Seventeen Years of Neglected History’, The Essential Black Art, exhibition catalogue, Kala Press, London 1988, p. 5.

CHAPTER FOUR

 1  Commonwealth Art Today, Commonwealth Institute, London, 7 November 1962 – 13 January 1963.

 2  Caribbean Artists in England, Commonwealth Art Gallery, Kensington High Street, London, 22 January – 14 February 1971. The exhibition featured some 17 practitioners, showing fabrics, paintings, sculpture and ceramics. The list of artists present in the exhibition gives an indication of the extent to which certain practitioners have been susceptible to the vagaries of obscurity. Names such as Althea Bastien, Owen R. Coombs, Daphne Dennison, and Llewellyn Xavier are, by and large, unfamiliar in the present age.

 3  Olu Oguibe, Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West, London, Kala Press, 1995.

 4  Rasheed Araeen, ‘Recovering Cultural Metaphors’, The Other Story catalogue, 1989, p. 86.

 5  Some sources give Enwonwu’s year of birth as 1917, others give 1921.

 6  Courtney J. Martin, ‘Surely, There Was a Flow: African-British Artists in the Twentieth Century’, Flow, exhibition catalogue, the Studio Museum in Harlem, 2 April – 29 June 2008, p. 65.

 7  Olu Oguibe, Uzo Egonu, p. 4.

 8  ‘1972 Prizewinners’, African Arts, Vol. VI, No. 2, Winter 1973, p. 12.

 9  Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, ‘London Bridge: Late Twentieth Century British Art and the Routes of “National Culture”’, in Transforming the Crown, exhibition catalogue, New York, Caribbean Cultural Center, 1998, p. 21.

10  ‘Biographies’, Contemporary African Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Camden Arts Centre, 10 August – 8 September 1969, p. 34.

11  Olu Oguibe, Uzo Egonu, p. 9.

12  Jacqueline Delange and Philip Fry, introduction to Contemporary African Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Camden Arts Centre, 10 August – 8 September 1969, p. 5.

13  Ibid.

14  Gerald Moore, ‘About this Exhibition’, Contemporary African Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Camden Arts Centre, 10 August – 8 September 1969, p. 13.

15  africa 95 was founded in 1992 to initiate and organise a nationwide season of the arts of Africa to be held in the UK in the last quarter of 1995. The wide-ranging events included the visual and performing arts, cinema, literature, music and public debate, and programmes on BBC television and radio. africa 95, a registered company with charitable status, was formed in 1993. It was granted patronage by HM the Queen, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal. The centrepiece of the season was the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, Africa: the Art of a Continent.

 

The policy and decision-making body of africa 95 was an Executive Committee chaired by Sir Michael Caine. The offices, with around ten permanent staff, were at Richard House, 30–32 Mortimer Street, London. Over twenty co-ordinators and consultants were engaged in the project. Funding was provided from over 150 sources, with major grants being made by the European Development Fund, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Council, and the Baring Foundation. Company sponsors included British Airways and Blue Circle Industries. Extensive archival material relating to africa 95 is held by the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. See http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/050527r1.html (accessed 27 February 2013).

16  Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa (Whitechapel Art Gallery, 27 September – 26 November 1995), described by one critic, Jean Fisher, as ‘part of a multimedia jamboree called “africa95”’, was the first exhibition to attempt to provide a historical context for African Modernism’. See Jean Fisher, ‘Seven stories about modern art in Africa,’ Artforum, January 1996, p. 94.

17  Catherine Lampert, foreword to Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, exhibition catalogue, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1995, p. 9.

18  Clémentine Deliss, ‘7+7=1: Seven stories, seven stages, one exhibition’, Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, exhibition catalogue, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1995, p. 913.

19  Ibid p. 27.

20  Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent, Hayward Gallery, London, 10 February – 17 April 2005.

21  Roger Malbert, preface to Africa Remix, exhibition catalogue, Germany, Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2005, p. 9.

22  Roger Malbert, introduction to Africa Remix, p. 11.

23  Ibid.

24  We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today, Manchester City Galleries, the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume, Manchester, 2 June – 16 September 2012.

25  Publicity, back cover, exhibition catalogue, We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today.

26  Maria Balshaw with Bryony Bond, Mary Griffiths and Natasha Howes, ‘Facing Forward: West Africa to Manchester’, in We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today, exhibition catalogue, p. 5.

27  Caribbean Art Now: Europe’s first exhibition of contemporary Caribbean art, Commonwealth Institute, London, 17 June – 4 August 1986.

28  Caribbean Focus ’86, press release, March 1986.

29  Catherine Lampert, foreword to Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, p. 10.

30  African Arts, Vol, VI, No. 2, pp. 8–13.

31  Ibid p. 4.

32  Ibid p. 11.

33  Adeyemo Adekeye, ‘Uzo Egonu of Nigeria’, African Arts Vol. VII, No. 1, Autumn 1973, p. 34.

34  Olu Oguibe, Egonu, p. 29.

35  Anne Walmsley, a distinguished scholar of Caribbean art and supporter and friend of Aubrey Williams, was responsible for a comprehensive appraisal of CAM, The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966–1972: A Literary and Cultural History, published by New Beacon Books, London, 1992. For the Transforming the Crown catalogue (1997), Walmsley supplied the essay ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966– 1972: A Space and a Voice for Visual Practice’.

 

Art in the Caribbean: An Introduction, (London, New Beacon Books, 2011) offered the following biographical summary on Anne Walmsley, who was one of the book’s authors:

[Anne Walmsey is] a British-born writer specializing in Caribbean art and literature. She studied English for a BA at Durham University, African Studies for an MA at Sussex, researched the Caribbean Artists Movement for a PhD at Kent, and was awarded an Honorary DLitt at the University of the West Indies, Mona (2009). She has taught English at a secondary school in Jamaica and an MA course, Aspects of Caribbean Art, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has worked for Longman, the publisher, in the Caribbean and in Africa. She contributed a detailed chronology of the life and work of Aubrey Williams to the catalogue of his retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1998). Her publications include two anthologies of Caribbean literature, The Sun’s Eye (1968, n/e 1986) and Facing the Sea, with Nick Caistor (1986), Guyana Dreaming: the Art of Aubrey Williams (1990), The Caribbean Artists Movement: A Literary and Cultural History 1966–1972 (1992) and Art of the Caribbean, a postcard pack for schools (2003).

 

36  Anne Walmsley, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966–1972: A Space and a Voice for Visual Practice’, Transforming the Crown, exhibition catalogue, New York, Caribbean Cultural Center, 1997, p. 46.

37  Anne Walmsley, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966–1972’, p. 46.

38  Edward Brathwaite, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement’, Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1/2, A Survey of the Arts (March – June 1968), p. 58.

39  Ibid.

40  Ibid pp. 58/59.

41  John La Rose and Andrew Salkey, preface to Writing Away From Home, Savacou 9/10, 1974, p. 8.

42  Edward Brathwaite, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement’, p. 59.

43  Anne Walmsley, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966–1972’, p. 52.

CHAPTER FIVE

 1  Taiwo Ajai, ‘Drum Call for Black Britain’, Africa magazine, No. 44 April 1975, p. 43.

 2  ‘Mas’ is colloquial expression, meaning to actively participate in the carnival.

 3  So close is the association between Notting Hill Carnival and criminality that media coverage is frequently centred on either that criminality which has occurred, or that criminality which has been avoided. See for example the following extracts of coverage of the Notting Hill Carnival taken from the Guardian newspaper. ‘Meanwhile police in London said there was a total of 55 offences committed at the Notting Hill Carnival over the bank holiday and 46 arrests’ (Alex Bellos, News in Brief ‘Police reveal arrests of rock festival guards’ the Guardian, August 30, 1995, p. 7 ). In another edition of that day’s Guardian, the 55 offences were tallied as ‘eight robberies, 15 snatches, 15 pick-pocketing offences, one of grievous bodily harm and four of actual bodily harm.’ And ‘Despite the worst fears of the police, the Notting Hill Carnival passed off without the robberies and murders that blighted last year’s event. Police had launched pre-emptive raids against armed gangs in a bid to stop them disrupting the event, but one senior officer in the Metropolitan police still told the Radio 4 Today programme he would not take his children to Carnival’ (‘Wild West London’, The Week in Pictures No. 4, The [Guardian] Editor, September 1 2001, p. 13).

 

And ‘Concern over the rising cost of [policing] the carnival led the police to estimate last year’s event would cost £4m. The final bill was higher because of the Met’s determination to prevent the violence and murders that marred the 2000 event’ (Nick Hopkins, Crime Correspondent, ‘Policing of Notting Hill Carnival cost £5.6m’, the Guardian, June 1 2002, p. 9). This same report also claimed that ‘10,000 officers were deployed over the two days, 1,500 more than the year before.’ Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday 29 August 1995 reported that ‘Police made 51 arrests and violence marred the closing stages when a man was shot in the arm.’ (‘Carnival Time’, p. 2).

 4  First Light ‘For Polly’, (1979), acrylic on canvas, 87.5 x 364 cm.

 5  Caroline Popovic, ‘The Precarious Life of Art’, ART BEAT, 78–83, BWIA Caribbean Beat, No. 16, November/December 1995, p. 83.

 6  David Simolke, ‘Winston Branch: A Study in Contrast’, Black Art: an international quarterly, Volume 2 Number 2 Winter, 1978, pp. 4–8.

 7  David Simolke, ‘Winston Branch: A Study in Contrast’, p. 5.

 8  John Russell Taylor, ‘Denzil Forrester: World Painter’, catalogue essay in Denzil Forrester: Two Decades of Painting, 4 Victoria Street, Bristol, 4 June – 6 July 2002, Eddie Chambers, Bristol, 2002, unpaginated.

 9  Gallery guide, Denzil Forrester: Dub Transition, A Decade of Paintings 1980–1990 (the exhibition’s dates were 14 February – 14 April 1991).

10  John Lyons, ‘Denzil Forrester’s Art in Context’, catalogue essay in Denzil Forrester: Dub Transition, A Decade of Paintings 1980–1990, p. 20. The exhibition’s first dates, at Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, were 22 September – 3 November 1990.

11  Phillip C. Dunn and Thomas L Johnson, A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts: 1920–1936, Bruccoli Clark, Columbia, South Carolina and Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1986.

12  Richard Hylton, text for Eugene Palmer: Index, exhibition catalogue, Wolsey Art Gallery, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, 17 January – 28 March 2004, unpaginated.

13  See www.saleem-arif-quadri.co.uk/(accessed 3 March 2013).

14  Rasheed Araeen, ‘Recovering Cultural Metaphors’, The Other Story, exhibition catalogue, London, Hayward Gallery/South Bank Centre, 1989, p. 97.

15  Ibid.

16  Nicholas Serota and Gavin Jantjes, From Two Worlds, Whitechapel, 1986. From Two Worlds was a major undertaking and was at the time the most substantial exhibition of Black artists’ work at a major London gallery. Perhaps predictably, it featured the work of a number of relatively prominent Black artists. However, it also featured the work of a number of other artists, thereby representing an intriguing mix of practitioners. The exhibition generated a significant catalogue with an Introduction by Serota and Jantjes, and an essay Juggling Worlds by Adeola Solanke. The exhibition, which toured to Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, garnered a relatively large amount of press coverage.

17  For a discussion of the ways in which Black-British artists were drawn into the honours system, see Eddie Chambers, ‘Service to Empire’, in Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain, Rodopi Editions, 2012.

18  Solani Fernando, ‘Chila Kumari Burman’, in Beyond Frontiers: Contemporary British Art by Artists of South Asian Descent, edited by Amal Ghosh and Juginder Lamba, Saffron Books, London, 2001, p. 57.

19  See www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103485 (accessed 3 March 2013). Thatcher’s comments came during a 1978 television interview, in which she opined:

 

‘Well now, look, let us try and start with a few figures as far as we know them, and I am the first to admit it is not easy to get clear figures from the Home Office about immigration, but there was a committee which looked at it and said that if we went on as we are then by the end of the century there would be four million people of the new Commonwealth or Pakistan here. Now, that is an awful lot and I think it means that people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture and, you know, the British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in.’

 

  What were widely regarded, in certain quarters at least, as vociferously anti-immigrant sentiments did Thatcher and the fortunes of her Conservative Party no harm. ‘The effects of the interview, and particularly of that one word ‘swamped’, were instantaneous. Thatcher received five thousand letters in a week (way above her average of fifty a day), surveys showed increased support for the proposition that there were too many immigrants (in the UK), up from 9 to 21 per cent (of those polled), and the Tories enjoyed a surge in popularity. In Thatcher’s own words: ‘Before my interview, the opinion polls showed us level-pegging with Labour. Afterwards they showed the Conservatives with an eleven-point lead’ (Alwyn W. Turner, Sense of Doubt: 1976–1979, ‘Race: “I was born here just like you”’, chapter in Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s. London, Aurum Press, 2008, p. 224). Subsequently, Turner quoted a senior Labour Party figure, as saying, ‘The [Labour] party is depressed at the apparent success of Thatcher’s exploitation of the race issue,’ noted [Tony] Benn glumly.’

20  It was the Daily Mail newspaper which espoused Budd’s application for British citizenship, on the grounds that her grandfather was British. Such a strategy effectively circumvented the international sporting boycott of South Africa so that she could compete in the forthcoming 1984 Olympics, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles. To the disgust of some, and to the delight of others, Budd’s British citizenship was granted in short order, the preferential treatment she received being explicit and unabashed. For many Black people and others, this was a two-fold blow. Firstly, the granting of Budd’s British citizenship flagrantly disregarded attempts to isolate apartheid South Africa, and secondly, Budd’s preferential treatment further mocked and humiliated those darker-skinned peoples who found themselves at the mercy of an immigration and citizenship system that treated these people with prejudice and disrespect.

21  During the 1980s in particular, efforts were made to turn the Roundhouse into a leading Black arts centre. Ultimately, these efforts came to naught.

22  Chila Kumari Burman, ‘There Have Always Been Great Black Women Artists’, in Charting the Journey: Writings by Black and Third World Writers, edited by Shabnam Grewal, Jackie Kay, Liliane Landor, Gail Lewis and Pratibha Parmar, London, Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1988, p. 292.

23  The Combahee River Collective, ‘A Black Feminist Statement,’ in All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. Old Westbury, New York, Feminist Press, 1982, pp. 13–22.

24  Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, in Art and Sexual Politics, edited by Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Barker. New York: Macmillan, 1973, pp. 1–39.

25  Chila Kumari Burman, ‘There Have Always Been Great Black Women Artists’, p. 292.

26  Ibid p. 293.

CHAPTER SIX

 1  In his introduction for a catalogue accompanying an exhibition by Zarina Bhimji, Mark Haworth-Booth referenced one of the most humiliating, dehumanising and brutal experiences to which Asian women seeking to immigrate to Britain were subject. ‘The infamous ‘virginity tests’ were reported by The Guardian frequently in 1979: ‘The government has admitted a charge that 34 Indian women who wanted to settle in Britain were given virginity tests’. (Mark Haworth-Booth, ‘Introduction’, Zarina Bhimji: I will always be here, Ikon Gallery, 4 April – 9 May 1992, exhibition catalogue, unpaginated.)

 2  Six Indian Painters, Gajanan D. Bhagwat, Balraj K. Khanna, Yashwant Mali, S. V. Rama Rao, Lancelot Ribeiro, and Ibrahim Wagh, Tagore India Centre, London, 9–28 November 1964.

 3  India: Myth and Reality – Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1982.

 4  Next We Change Earth exhibition catalogue, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2008, p. 64.

 5  Quoted in Eddie Chambers, Next We Change Earth, Nottingham, 2008, p. 64.

 6  Press release, Archive Season: Zarina Bhimji, INIVA, London, 28 January – 6 March 2004.

 7  Mark Haworth-Booth, ‘Introduction’, Zarina Bhimji: I will always be here, Ikon Gallery, 4 April – 9 May 1992, unpaginated.

 8  See www.zarinabhimji.com/dspseries/4/1BW.htm (Accessed 15 August 2013).

 9  ‘Documenta’ happens every five years, whereas ‘Documenta II’ (eleven) specifically took place in 2002.

10  See www.artic.edu/exhibition/zarina-bhimji-out-blue (Accessed 19 March 2013).

11  Juginder Lamba, Festival Director, ‘Introduction’, South Asian Contemporary Visual Arts Festival, September–December 1993, Programme Guide, p. 1.

12  Amal Ghosh and Juginder Lamba, (eds), Beyond Frontiers: Contemporary British Artists of South Asian Descent, London, Saffron Books, 2001.

13  Nilofar Akmut, Zarina Bhimji, John Brady, Sutapa Biswas, Chila Kumari Burman, Mohini Chandra, Jagjit Chuhan, Nina Edge, Elizabeth Edwards, Solani Fernando, Amal Ghosh, Tania V Guha, Keith Khan, Pervais Khan, Balraj Khanna, Juginder Lamba, Manjeet Lamba, Shaheen Merali, Partha Mitter, Prafulla Mohanti, Usha Parmar, Anu Patel, Symrath Patti, Jacques Rangasamy, Ian Iqbal Rashid, Sajid Rizvi, Gurminder Sikand, Veena Stephenson, Shanti Thomas, Ibrahim Wagh, and Ali Zaidi.

CHAPTER SEVEN

 1  Caribbean Artists in England, Commonwealth Art Gallery, Kensington High Street, London, 22 January – 14 February 1971. The exhibition featured some 17 practitioners, showing fabrics, paintings, sculpture and ceramics.

 2  John Lyons, ‘Denzil Forrester’s Art in Context’, essay in Denzil Forrester: Dub Transition, A Decade of Paintings 1980–1990 (the exhibition first shown at Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, 22 September – 3 November 1990, exhibition catalogue p. 17.

 3  Keith Piper, ‘Artist’s Statement’, Black Art an’ done, exhibition catalogue, 1981, unpaginated.

 4  Press release, Black Art an’ done, 1981.

 5  Rasheed Araeen, ‘Chronology’, The Essential Black Art, exhibition catalogue. Published by Chisenhale Gallery, London in conjunction with Black Umbrella, London, 1988, p. 20.

 6  Ron Karenga, ‘Black Cultural Nationalism’, in The Black Aesthetic, edited by Addison Gayle Jr., Doubleday & Company Inc. New York, 1971, pp. 32–8. It was reprinted as ‘Black Art: Mute Matter Given Form and Function’, in Black Poets and Prophets: The Theory, Practice and Esthetics of the Pan-Africanist Revolution. The book, which described itself as ‘a bold, uncompromisingly clear blueprint for black liberation’, was edited by Woodie King and Earl Anthony, a Mentor Book, 1972.

 7  Ron Karenga, ‘Black Cultural Nationalism’, pp. 32, 33/4.

 8  Ibid p. 38.

 9  For references to the West Indian Front Room, see Chapter Ten, the paragraphs relating to Sonia Boyce.

10  Keith Piper, (You are now entering) Mau Mau Country (1983), acrylic on hessian & canvas, 246.5 x 192 cm, Arts Council Collection, South-bank Centre.

11  For information and material on Donald Rodney, see Doublethink (essays by Eddie Chambers and Virginia Nimarkoh), edited by Richard Hylton, Autograph, London, 2003 and Eddie Chambers, ‘His Catechism: The Art of Donald Rodney’, London, Third Text 44, Autumn 1998, pp. 43–54.

12  PIPER & RODNEY ON THEORY, two pages of typewritten text to accompany ADVENTURES CLOSE TO HOME: An Exhibition by Piper & Rodney, the Pentonville Gallery, London, 6 August – 5 September 1987.

13  Both of these young artists had exhibitions at The Black-Art Gallery in London in the mid 1980s.

14  The First White Christmas and Other Empire Stories, Saltley Print & Media, Birmingham. The exhibition opened on 9 December 1985.

15  Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Andrew Hazel, Claudette Johnson, Wenda Leslie, Ian Palmer, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, Marlene Smith, Janet Vernon. Whilst most of these artists produced work that was reflective of their Black Art manifesto, Wenda Leslie was a ceramicist whose work was not necessarily reflective of the ideas asserted by the likes of Piper and Rodney. Following Black Art an’ done, there were several exhibitions with The Pan-African Connection (or The Pan-Afrikan Connection) in the title, each with a slightly differing line-up of contributing artists. These exhibitions took place at venues such as Africa Centre, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; 35 King Street Gallery, Bristol; Midland Group Nottingham; Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry; and Battersea Arts Centre, London. The group itself was known by different names, at different times; Wolverhampton Young Black Artists, The Pan-African Connection (in which African sometimes appeared as Afrikan), and, towards the end of their existence, perhaps their most distinctive and recognised name of all, the Blk. Art Group).

16  Araeen advanced his own definition of Black Art in an exhibition he assembled, titled The Essential Black Art. Held at Chisenhale Gallery, London, 5 February – 5 March 1988 (and touring), it featured Rasheed Araeen, Zarina Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Allan deSouza, Mona Hatoum, Gavin Jantjes and Keith Piper. For the specifics of his arguments, see the accompanying catalogue. Chapter Eight discusses the notion of Black Art advanced by Shakka Dedi and The Black-Art Gallery.

17  Keith Piper, ‘Beating the boy’, a short text contained in the exhibition catalogue Distinguishing Marks: work by Sonia Boyce, Allan deSouza, Shaheen Merali, Pitika Ntuli and Keith Piper, p. 15. This was a mixed media exhibition by five Black artists, who recently had represented Britain at the 3rd Havana Biennale, Cuba. Bloomsbury Galleries, Institute of Education, University of London, London, 22 May – 9 June 1990.

18  Creation for Liberation, First Open Exhibition of Contemporary Black Art in Britain, St Matthew’s Meeting Place, Brixton, London, 20–30 July 1983; Second Creation for Liberation Open Exhibition, Brixton Art Gallery, Brixton, London, 17 July – 8 August 1984; 3rd Creation for Liberation Open Exhibition of Contemporary Art by Black Artists, GLC Brixton Recreation Centre, Brixton, London, 12 July – 3 August 1985; Creation for Liberation Open Exhibition: Art by Black Artists, Brixton Village, Brixton, London, 7 October – 17 November 1987. These exhibitions were large-scale affairs, featuring many artists, some of whom showed just one or two pieces. The 1987 exhibition, for example, included contributions by 46 artists.

19  This is discussed in Chapter Eight.

20  Into the Open: New Paintings Prints and Sculptures by Contemporary Black Artists, Clement Bedeau, Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Pogus Caesar, Shakka Dedi, Uzo Egonu, Lubaina Himid, Gavin Jantjes, Claudette Johnson, Tom (as he was then known) Joseph, Juginder Lamba, Bill Ming, Tony Moo Young, Ossie Murray, Houria Niati, Ben Nsusha, Pitika Ntuli, Keith Piper, Ritchie Riley, Veronica Ryan and Jorge Santos. Mappin Art Gallery, 4 August – 9 September 1984. The exhibition toured to two other venues: Castle Museum, Nottingham, 16 September – 21 October 1984 and Newcastle Media Workshops, 2–30 November 1984.

21  Nicholas Serota and Gavin Jantjes, From Two Worlds, Whitechapel, 1986.

22  For a discussion of the GLC’s involvement with Black artists, see Eddie Chambers, ‘Black Visual Arts activity in England, 1981–1986: Press and Public Responses’ (doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 1998), in particular Chapter 6, ‘Black Artists and the Greater London Council’.

23  Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story, 1989. The 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 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. 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 1980s.

CHAPTER EIGHT

 1  For more on the riots in Bristol in 1980, see Harris Joshua, Tina Wallace, Heather Booth, To Ride the Storm: The 1980 Bristol Riot and the State, Heinemann, 1983.

 2  Andy McSmith, ‘Inglan is a Bitch’, No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s, London: Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2011, p. 91.

 3  The community centre is now known as the Malcolm X Centre.

 4  The Black-Art Gallery – It’s [sic] Development, gallery publicity, circa late 1983.

 5  Ibid.

 6  Heart in Exile, 4 September – 2 October 1983. It featured work by Tyrone Bravo, Vanley Burke, Pogus Caesar, Dee Casco, Eddie Chambers, Adrian Compton, Shakka Dedi, Olive Desnoes, Terry Dyer, Carl Gabriel, Funsani Gentiles, Anum Iyapo, George Kelly, Cherry Lawrence, Ossie Murray, Pitika Ntuli, Joseph Olubu, Keith Piper, Barry Simpson, Marlene Smith, Wayne Tenyue and someone going under the name ‘Woodpecker’.

 7  A Statement on Black Art and the Gallery, gallery publicity, circa late 1983.

 8  Allan deSouza, ‘An Imperial Legacy’, in Crossing Black Waters, exhibition catalogue, Working Press, London, 1992, p.6.

 9  Conversations: An Exhibition of work by Sonia Boyce, an announcement about Boyce’s then forthcoming exhibition at The Black-Art Gallery, OBAALA Newsletter July/August 1986, Issue No. 2, p. 4. The exhibition’s dates were given as 3 September – 4 October 1986.

10  ‘Ask me no Question…. I tell you no lie’, An exhibition of Painting & Sculpture Dedicated to the memory of Jo Olubo, The Black-Art Gallery, London, 6 September – 20 October 1990.

11  Sight•Seers: Visions of Afrika and the diaspora. Part Two of Eye-Sis • Afrikan Women’s Photography, Afia Yekwai, Elizabeth Hughes, Ifeoma Onyefulu, Jheni Arboine, and June Reid, The Black-Art Gallery, London, 3–19 December 1987. Exhibition brochure (unpaginated).

12  The Potter’s Art: Ceramics by Chris Bramble, Jon Churchill, Tony Ogogo, and Madge Spencer, The Black-Art Gallery, London, 7 February – 24 March 1990.

13  ‘So Anything Goes?’ flyer, 1986.

14  Colours of Asia, The Black-Art Gallery, London, 1 February – 7 March 1992. Khulood Da’ami, Bhajan Hunjan, Ka Che Kwok, Keith Khan, Farzana Khatri, Walid Mustafa, Julie Potratz, Samena Rana, Tehmina Shah, Veena Stephenson and Ali Medhi Zaidi.

15  Zarina Bhimji, I Will Always Be Here, The Black-Art Gallery, London, 27 January – 13 March 1993.

16  Lorraine Griffiths, ‘Black arts put on the shelf’, the Weekly Journal, Thursday October 28, 1992, p. 1.

17  The more common spelling of the artist’s name was Shafique Uddin.

18  The dates of the four exhibitions were 24 January – 9 February 1990; 14 February – 2 March 1990; 7–23 March 1990; and 28 March – 13 April 1990. The Other Story itself ran from 29 November 1989 – 4 February 1990, before touring to galleries in Wolverhampton and Manchester.

19  In Focus press release. In the press release, Jagjit Chuhan’s name erroneously appeared as Jagjit Thomas.

20  Veena Stephenson, ‘In Focus’, Bazaar South Asian Arts Magazine, Issue No. 12, p. 12 (feature on pp. 12/13).

CHAPTER NINE

 1  Sonia Boyce: Recent Work, New Gallery, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 13 May – 26 June 26 1988.

 2  Errol Lloyd, ‘An Historical Perspective’, introduction to Caribbean Expressions in Britain, exhibition catalogue, Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, 16 August – 28 September 1986, pp. 5–6.

 3  Five Black Women Artists, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Houria Niati, and Veronica Ryan. Africa Centre, London, 6 September – 14 October 1983.

 4  The Combahee River Collective, ‘A Black Feminist Statement,’ in All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. Old Westbury, New York, Feminist Press, 1982, pp. 13–22. The distinctive title of this particular publication was celebrated, some years later, by the Black women artists who were assembled for Some of Us Are Brave All of Us Are Strong, Jo Addo, Brenda Agard, Simone Alexander, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Amanda Holiday, Clare Joseph, Eve-I Kadeena, Mowbray Odonkor, Marlene Smith, Maud Sulter and Audrey West, The Black-Art Gallery, London, 13 February – 15 March 1986.

 5  The Combahee River Collective, ‘A Black Feminist Statement’, p. 13.

 6  The Image Employed: The use of narrative in Black art. An exhibition of work selected by Marlene Smith and Keith Piper. Simone Alexander, Zarina Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman, Eddie Chambers, Jennifer Comrie, Amanda Holiday, Claudette Johnson, Tam Joseph, Trevor Matthison and Eddie George, Mowbray Odonkor, Keith Piper, Donald G Rodney, Marlene Smith, Allan deSouza. Corner-house, Manchester, 13 June – 19 July 1987.

 7  Claudette Johnson, Image Employed, exhibition catalogue, unpaginated.

 8  Ibid.

 9  Black Woman Time Now, Battersea Arts Centre, London, 30 November – 31 December 1983.

10  The Thin Black Line, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, Brenda Agard, Chila Kumari Burman, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith, Jennifer Comrie, and Maud Sulter. 15 November 1985 – 26 January 1986.

11  Lubaina Himid, foreword to The Thin Black Line, exhibition catalogue, ICA, London, 1985, unpaginated.

12  This description is taken from the title of book by Wenda Parkinson, This Gilded African: Toussaint L’Ouverture, Quartet Books, London, 1978.

13  Toussaint L’Ouverture was in fact 59 when he died. Scenes from the Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture was acquired for the Arts Council Collection in 1988.

14  Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity, Urban Fox Press, 1990, edited by Maud Sulter.

15  The Elbow Room, ‘Freedom and Change: a statement from the Elbow Room’ in The Other Story, exhibition catalogue, South Bank Centre 1989, pp. 122–4.

16  Unrecorded Truths. An exhibition selected by Lubaina Himid. Brenda Agard, Simone Alexander, David A. Bailey, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney and Marlene Smith and Allan deSouza. The Elbow Room, London, 16 April – 16 May 1986.

17  Chila Kumari Burman, ‘There Have Always Been Great Black Women Artists’, in Charting the Journey: Writings by Black and Third World Writers, edited by Shabnam Grewal, Jackie Kay, Liliane Landor, Gail Lewis and Pratibha Parmar, London, Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1988, pp. 292–9.

18  Gilane Tawadros, ‘Black Women [artists] in Britain: A Personal & Intellectual Journey’, Third Text, 15, Summer 1991, pp. 71–6.

19  Lubaina Himid, ‘Mapping: A Decade of Black Women Artists 1980– 1990’, Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity. Urban Fox Press, 1990, pp. 63–72.

20  Gilane Tawadros, Sonia Boyce: Speaking in Tongues, Kala Press, London, 1997, and Lynda Nead, Chila Kumari Burman: Beyond Two Cultures, Kala Press, London, 1995.

21  Kelly Burton, ‘Hemmed In’, review of The Thin Black Line, Race Today magazine, January 1986, p. 26.

22  Sutapa Biswas and Marlene Smith, ‘Black Women Artists’, Spare Rib, No. 188, March 1988, pp. 8–12.

23  In The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, Marsha Meskimmon, Columbia University Press, 1996, a limited number of Black women artists are dealt with in a few pages at the end of the book (‘Black Women Artists: The Politics of Gender and Race’). Meskimmon refers to these pages as ‘this final section’.

24  Kwesi Owusu, ‘Notting Hill Carnival: “De road is de stage, de stage is de road”’, The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain, Comedia Publishing Group, London, 1986, pp. 1–26.

25  Ibid p. 21.

26  Sutapa Biswas and Marlene Smith, ‘Black Women Artists’, pp. 8–12.

27  Lubaina Himid, ‘Afterword’, a postscript on p.12 of the reprinted The Thin Black Line catalogue, Urban Fox Press, November 1989.

28  Merdelle Irving participated in exhibitions from the late 1960s onwards. See her CV in the catalogue for Third World Within: An exhibition of the work of AfroAsian Artists in Britain organised by Rasheed Araeen. Apart from Araeen himself, the exhibition featured Saleem Arif, David A Bailey, Sutapa Biswas, Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Uzo Egonu, Mona Hatoum, Merdelle Irving, Gavin Jantjes, Houria Niati, Keith Piper, and Kumiko Shimizu. Brixton Art Gallery, London, 31 March – 22 April 1986. Sue Smock (also known as Sue M. Smock, Sue Jane M. Smock, Sue Jane Mitchell Smock, and Sue Jane Smock) was an African-American artist (born New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1937) who in the 1970s was living and working in London. She received a BA degree from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University, New York. Smock was a fascinating artist who is yet to be the subject of substantial art historical and critical attention. She was described in one press article as ‘a beautiful girl talented enough to share an art show with two of the most famous names in the world of art – Picasso and Giacometti – and to have her work on exhibit in many museums.’ This same feature concluded with: ‘For the foreseeable future London will be [her] base.’ (See Robert Musel, ‘Race prejudice disturbs Smock’, the Baltimore Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland), 20 June 1970, p. 15 (reprinted as ‘Sue Jane Smock Professes Art is White Controlled’, Palm Beach Post, (Thursday, 6 August 1970, page D4). A particularly substantial feature on Sue Jane Smock was Timeri Murari, ‘Young, Black, Talented and Successful: Timeri Murari talks to Sue Jane Smock, a very rare American and an artist, whose work will be exhibited next month in Geneva side by side with new works by Picasso and Giacometti’, The Guardian, (Thursday 16 April 1970, p9.)

29  Festac ’77 was the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos, Nigeria. An exhibition of British-based Black artists travelled to the festival. The significance of Festac ’77 is discussed in Chapter Three.

30  Rasheed Areen, The Other Story, 1989.

31  Sutapa Biswas, review of The Other Story, New Statesman and Society, 15 December 1989, pp. 40–2.

32  Ibid.

33  A term used by Keith Piper in an essay in his Step into the Arena exhibition catalogue, Rochdale Art Gallery, 1991, unpaginated.

34  Isaac Julien’s films included Territories (1984), Looking for Langston (1989) and Young Soul Rebels (1991). All these films dealt with issues of homosexuality as concerns that were central to the narratives of the films. Likewise, the photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Ajamu and Sunil Gupta often depict and employ images of Black bodies/the Black body, located firmly within the arena of Black male homosexual identity, experience and relationships.

35  For a discussion of this, see Keith Piper’s essay in his Step into the Arena exhibition catalogue, Rochdale Art Gallery, 1991.

36  Disrupted Borders: An intervention in definitions of boundaries was a book edited by Sunil Gupta and also an exhibition curated by him. The book was published by Rivers Oram Press, London, 1993. The exhibition contained work by Shahidul Alam, Emily Anderson, Monika Baker, Karl Beveridge, Sutapa Biswas, Kaucyita Brooke, Sheba Chhachhi, Carol Conde, Darrel Ellis, Jamelie Hassan, Doug Ischar, Jorma Puranen, Samena Rana, Renee Tobe and Millie Watson. It was first shown at Arnolfini, Bristol 18 September – 7 November 1993.

37  Sunil Gupta, (ed.), introduction to Disrupted Borders: An intervention in definitions of boundaries, Rivers Oram Press, London 1993, unpaginated.

CHAPTER TEN

 1  Room at the Top, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, 9 Cork Street, 6 February – 9 March 1985.

 2  Sonia Boyce: Recent Work, New Gallery, 13 May – 26 June 1988.

 3  Sonia Boyce, Air Gallery, London, 11 December, 1986 – 25 January, 1987.

 4  Gilane Tawadros, Sonia Boyce: Speaking in Tongues, Kala Press, London, 1997

 5  For a substantial look at the West Indian Front Room, see Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home, Michael McMillan, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2009.

 6  Boyce’s distinctive approach to rendering her own wallpaper was picked up and admiringly regarded by a number of writers. For example, in Whitney Chadwick’s Women, Art and Society, (Thames and Hudson, 1990): ‘Here [in Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain So Great] the image of the woman is displaced to the margin as the artist inserts an iconography of colonialism into the foliate forms of a decorative surface that recalls the cheerful domesticity of wallpaper.’ (pp. 387/388). Within this book, however, Boyce’s Missionary Position II was illustrated as being ‘from Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain So Great’, when in fact they are two distinct and separate pieces of work.

 7  The word womanism was coined by American writer Alice Walker in her book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (London, the Women’s Press, 1987) as a means of discussing and addressing the specificities of Black women to which Johnson’s statements alluded.

 8  Claudette Johnson, ‘Issues Surrounding the Representation of the Naked Body of a Woman’, Feminist Arts News, vol. 3, no. 8, pp. 12–4. Quoted in ‘Black Women Artists: The Politics of Gender and Race’, part of a chapter, ‘The Body Politic’, in The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, by Marsha Meskimmon, Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 188–94.

 9  In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson, The Black-Art Gallery, 27 May – 11 July 1992.

10  Steven McQueen, ‘In This Skin: featuring Claudette Johnson,’ African Peoples Review (August 1992), p 5.

11  Ibid.

12  History and Identity: Seven Painters, Said Adrus, Medina Hammad, Godfrey Lee, Mowbray Odonkor, Eugene Palmer, Tony Phillips and Lesley Sanderson, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, 16 March – 11 May 1991.

13  Mowbray Odonkor, statement in History and Identity: Seven Painters, exhibition catalogue, 1991, unpaginated.

14  Simone Alexander, ‘Marlene Smith’, Artrage No. 14, 1986, p. 30.

15  The Times, 16 January 1987, quoted in Policing Against Black People, London, Institute of Race Relations, 1987, p. 26

16  Kimathi Donkor memorably recreated the scene of Cynthia Jarrett’stragic death in his painting Madonna Metropolitan (2005, oil on linen, 152 x 152cm). Madonna Metropolitan depicts a collapsed and dying Cynthia Jarrett, being attended to by one of her distressed daughters, whilst all around them police officers continue to turn the domestic room upside down in their search for whatever incriminating items they hope to find. For good measure, one of the officers is aggressively remonstrating with the daughter, jabbing his finger menacingly in her direction, even while life drains from the heart attack victim.

17  For a discussion of these ‘riots’ see A Climate of Fear, David Rose, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1992. For more on the Broadwater Farm riots, see the entry ‘Broadwater Farm riots’, in The Oxford Companion to Black British Culture, edited by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 71–2.

18  Housewives with Steak-Knives, 1985, acrylic, pastel and Xerox collage on paper mounted on canvas, 274 x 244 cm. Collection: Bradford Museums and Galleries.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 1  ‘Sokari Douglas Camp in conversation with Lucinda Bredin’, brochure for Alali: sculpture by Sokari Douglas Camp, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, 28 May – 2 July 1988 and City of Plymouth Museums & Art Gallery, Plymouth, 23 July – 3 September 1988, unpaginated.

 2  Bryan Biggs and Sarah Shalgosky, introduction to the brochure for Alali: sculpture by Sokari Douglas Camp, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, 28 May – 2 July 1988 and City of Plymouth Museums & Art Gallery, Plymouth, 23 July – 3 September 1988, unpaginated.

 3  Ibid.

 4  Michael Crowder, Sekiapu: Nigerian Masquerade With Sculpture by Sokari Douglas Camp, catalogue text, unpaginated. The Africa Centre, Covent Garden London, 12 June – 2 July 1987.

 5  Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, ‘London Bridge: Late twentieth Century British Art and the Routes of ‘National Culture’, in Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996, exhibition catalogue, The Caribbean Cultural Center, New York, 1997, p. 26.

 6  See for example, Waldemar Januszczak, ‘Anger at Hand: Waldemar Januszczak on the barely controlled fury of The Thin Black Line’, the Guardian, Arts Section, 27 November 1985, p. 23.

 7  Ibid.

 8  Adeola Solanke, ‘Juggling Worlds’, essay in From Two Worlds, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1986, p. 12.

 9  Stella Santacatterina, ‘Veronica Ryan: Compartments/Apart-ments’, essay in Veronica Ryan: Compartments/Apart-ments, exhibition catalogue, Camden Arts Centre, London, February 1995.

10  Four X 4 was described in its catalogue as ‘an innovative exhibition project that brings together sixteen artists creating installations in four different gallery spaces’. Venues and dates as follows: Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, 8 September – 17 October 1991, Shaheen Merali, Houria Niati, Sher Rajah, and Lesley Sanderson; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 21 September – 2 November 1991, Oso Audu, Val Brown, Stephen Forde, and Rita Keegan; The City Gallery, Leicester, 9 October – 16 November 1991, Medina Hammad, Richard Hylton, Tony Phillips, and Folake Shoga; Arnolfini, 12 October – 24 November 1991, Permindar Kaur, Virginia Nimarkoh, Alistair Raphael, and Vincent Stokes. A fifth exhibition, featuring several installations presented at the Preston, Wolverhampton, Leicester and Bristol venues, titled The Four X Retrospective was shown at the Castle Museum, Nottingham, 18 January – 1 March 1992.

11  Let the Canvas Come to Life With Dark Faces. Organised by Eddie Chambers in collaboration with Herbert Art Gallery, April 14 – May 29 1990 and touring.

12  Cold Comfort was first shown, in two parts, at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and Mead Gallery, Coventry, before touring to several galleries, including Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, 27 July – 31 August 1996.

13  Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, ‘London Bridge: Late twentieth Century British Art’, p. 26.

14  Roger Palmer, ‘Permindar Kaur’, a short essay on the artist contained in Four x 4 (exhibition catalogue, unpaginated). Four x 4 was ‘an innovative exhibition project that brings together sixteen artists creating installations in four different gallery spaces.’ Eddie Chambers, Bristol, 1991.

15  Sue Clive and Sarah Derrick, ‘Eye openers’, Permindar Kaur Cold Comfort, exhibition guide, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick, 1996.

16  Richard Cork, ‘Injury Time’ British Art Show 4, exhibition catalogue, Hayward National touring exhibitions, London, England, 1995, pp. 12–32.

17  ‘Permindar Kaur and Claire Doherty, ‘Permindar Kaur Cold Comfort Interview: Claire Doherty’, Transcript: Journal of Visual Culture, School of Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 1996, p. 23.

CHAPTER TWELVE

 1  The Arts Council-sponsored Institute of New International Visual Arts, as it was first known, was launched in the early 1990s. The word New would in time be dropped, though the acronym INIVA would remain, albeit in a constantly changing use of upper and lower case letters, such as Iniva and inIVA. Similarly, the words Institute of International Visual Arts appeared in a variety of upper and lower case letters. This book uses the acronym INIVA (upper case letters), as it first appeared in the organisation’s publicity.

 2  Susanne Everett, History of Slavery, London, Bison Books, 1978, p.46.

 3  Everlyn Nicodemus, ‘Routes to Independence’, Routes, exhibition catalogue, Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1999, unpaginated.

 4  Ibid.

 5  For example, page 15 of the Observer of Sunday 2 February 1992 carried a full-page feature on Tyson (who at the time had been accused of, and was on trial for, raping a beauty queen contestant) under the headline ‘Sad tale of the beauty and the “beast”. Hugh Mcllvanney in Indianapolis reports on the trial of former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson (16 stone), accused of raping Desiree Lynn Washington (7 st 10 lb)’. One week later, a similar feature in the same newspaper on Sunday 9 February 1992, page 22, was titled ‘The Raging Bull in the bedroom. ‘Hugh Mcllvanney in Indianapolis watches Mike Tyson launch his fightback against a rape charge by detailing his foul-mouthed way of wooing.’ Elsewhere, The Sunday Times of 16 February 1992 captioned a photograph of Tyson with, ‘No emotion: Tyson was the mean machine of Brownsville’ (James Dalrymple, HARD TIME, The Sunday Times, Focus, page 11). Like other Black boxers before him, Tyson had to endure relentless vilification within the white media, which seemed intent on portraying the boxer as a sub-human delinquent beast.

 6  Keith Piper, The Nation’s Finest, video, 7 minutes, 1990. This video work seeks to explore issues of race and citizenship in sport. Available at http://vimeo.com/85809559 (accessed 20 March 2014).

 7  Everlyn Nicodemus, ‘Routes to Independence’.

 8  Undated handwritten note to this author.

 9  The Ministry of Truth was where Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, worked. In the book, it is described as an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete rising some 300 metres into the air, containing in excess of 3,000 rooms above ground level. To emphasise the sinister and terror-laden function of the Ministry of Truth, on the outside wall of the building there appear three slogans of the Party: ‘WAR IS PEACE,’ ‘FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,’ and ‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.’

10  Barbara Walker: Louder Than Words, Unit 2 Gallery, London Metropolitan University, 18 November – 16 December 2006.

11  The exhibition ran from 10 June – 10 July 1993 at 198 Gallery and was described on its poster as ‘Barber Shop Installation with Screen Prints on Steel’.

12  His father was Donald Locke, a highly accomplished and distinguished sculptor whose work was introduced to new audiences when it was included in Rasheed Araeen’s 1989 Hayward Gallery exhibition, The Other Story. Donald Locke had for number of years practiced in Britain, before relocating to the US.

13  The British Art Show is a major survey exhibition organised every five years to showcase contemporary British Art. The first one took place in 1979. For more on Black artists and the British Art Show, see ‘Coming in From the Cold: Some Black Artists are Embraced’, Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain, by Eddie Chambers, Rodopi Editions, Amsterdam and New York, 2012, in particular pages 211, 215.

14  Hew Locke, New Art Gallery, Walsall, 29 April – 26 June 2005.

15  Kris Kuramitsu, ‘King Creole–Hew Locke’s New Vision of Empire’, Hew Locke, exhibition catalogue, the New Art Gallery, Walsall, 2005, pp. 3–7.

16  ‘A Sargasso Sea-Hoard of Deciduous Things… Hew Locke and Sarat Maharaj in conversation’, 2005, p. 8.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 1  For a discussion of the successes and significance of Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare, see Eddie Chambers, Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain, Rodopi Editions, 2012, in particular Chapter Three, ‘Chris, Steve and Yinka: We Run Tings’, from which this chapter draws.

 2  The term ‘yBa’ is used in this book to refer to certain types of practitioners who collectively, and in some instances, rather loosely, came to be known as young British artists. The term, which appears as either yBa or YBA, originated in the early 1990s, centred on the work of Damien Hirst and a number of other artists. This book uses the letters yBa, though the term, when quoted, appears as it was originally written. Louisa Buck has offered a useful summary of its origins:

 

[Charles] Saatchi had attended [Damien] Hirst’s famous Freeze exhibition in 1988, and soon began to bulk-buy this new batch of home-grown talent. He also set about applying his marketing skills to the promotion of these artists and their work, initially in a series of widely publicised exhibitions at Boundary Road [the original home of the Saatchi Gallery, in St John’s Wood, London] during 1992–95 under the collective title of Young British Artists. The acronym stuck, and soon any artist of that generation, whether or not they had been to Goldsmiths [College], was branded YBA. (Louisa Buck, ‘The Tate, the Turner Prize and the Art World,’ in The Turner Prize and British Art, London, Tate Gallery, 2007, p. 19).

 

 3  Shonibare’s education was at Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 1984–9 and Goldsmiths College, London, 1989–91.

 4  Elsbeth Court, ‘Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award’, African Arts, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 79–81.

 5  Interrogating Identity, Gray Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, 1991, exhibition catalogue, p. 132. The exhibition’s dates were 12 March – 18 May 1991. It then toured to venues in Boston, Massachusetts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Madison, Wisconsin, and Oberlin, Ohio, between August 1991 and November 1992. Work by Rasheed Araeen, Rebecca Belmore, Nadine Chan, Albert Chong, Allan deSouza, Jamelie Hassan, Mona Hatoum, Roshini Kempadoo, Glenn Ligon, Whitfield Lovell, Lani Maestro, Lillian Mulero, Ming Mur-Ray, Keith Piper, Ingrid Pollard, Donald Rodney, Yinka Shonibare and Gary Simmons. The artists were drawn from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

 6  See the catalogues Tam Joseph: This is History (touring exhibition, including Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 7 March – 19 April 1998); Eugene Palmer (touring exhibition, originating at Norwich Gallery, 15 November – 17 December 1993); Denzil Forrester: Two Decades of Painting (4 Victoria Street, Bristol, June 4 – July 6, 2002).

 7  Barclays Young Artist Award 1992, Serpentine Gallery, London, 5 February – 8 March, 1992. Richard Ducker, Janice Howard, Andrew Kearney, Gabriel Klasmer, Joanna Lawrance, Lisa Richardson, Stefan Shankland, Yinka Shonibare and Mari Tachikawa.

 8  Elsbeth Court, ‘Yinka Shonibare: Finalist’, pp. 79–81.

 9  ‘Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist’. Interview by Laura Barnett, the Guardian G2, Tuesday 27 January 2009, p. 25.

10  Shonibare was included in the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale of 1997, Trade Routes: History and Geography, Artistic Director Okwui Enwezor, 12 October 1997 – 18 January 1998. As well as being included in Documenta X, exhibition of contemporary art, Kassel 21 June – 28 September 1997, curated by Catherine David, Steve McQueen’s work was also included in Documenta XI, curated by Okwui Enwezor, 8 June – 15 September 2002.

11  Michael Bracewell, ‘Growing Up in Public: The Turner Prize and the Media 1984–2006’, in The Turner Prize and British Art, Tate, 2007, p.80.

12  Elsbeth Court, ‘Yinka Shonibare: Finalist’, pp. 79–81.

13  Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch, Centre 181 Gallery, London 2–25 February 1994.

14  Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art, Verso, 1999 (fourth edition, 2006), p. 108.

15  Ibid.

16  Ibid pp. 118–9.

17  Rachel Newsome, ‘Afro Daze’, Dazed & Confused, No 48, November 1998, p. 76.

18  Richard Dyer, ‘Chris Ofili’, Wasafiri, No. 29 Spring 1999, pp. 79–80.

19  For a substantial account of the Stephen Lawrence affair, see Brian Cathcart, The Case of Stephen Lawrence, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, 2000.

20  It was not until 2012 that two of Lawrence’s killers, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were found guilty of his murder.

21  For more on the Macpherson Report, see the entry Macpherson Report, in The Oxford Companion to Black British Culture, edited by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 281–2.

22  For an account of the tragedy, see Cecily Jones, ‘New Cross fire’, The Oxford Companion to Black British History, edited by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 341–2. See also The New Cross Massacre Story: Interviews With John La Rose, published by Alliance of the Black Parents Movement, Black Youth Movement And The Race Today Collective, London, 1984 and Peter Fryer, ‘The New Generation’, from Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, Pluto Press, London, 1985 pp. 387–99. See also Chapter Seven.

23  See The Turner Prize 1998, catalogue published by Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 1998.

24  The Turner Prize 1998.

25  Virginia Button, The Turner Prize, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999, p. 142.

26  Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, p. 109.

27  Chris Ofili, Painting With Shit on It (1993), acrylic paint, oil paint, polyester resin, elephant dung on canvas, 183 x 122 cm, British Council Collection.

28  Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, p. 108.

29  Chris Ofili, 1998, director, Sarah Wason, co-producer Augustus Casely-Hayford, an LWT Programme.

30  Jane Withers, ‘Within These Walls’, Guardian Weekend, November 25 2000, pp. 59–66. The Guardian Weekend magazine went on to produce substantial features on Ofili in two further issues. The first featured a detail of a work by Ofili on its cover, together with the cover text Chris Ofili Paints His Way to Paradise. The feature, written by Jonathan Jones, was titled ‘Paradise Reclaimed’ (Guardian Weekend, Saturday 15 June 2002, pp. 18–23, 95). The second was a feature by Gary Younge – Been There Dung That – Why did Chris Ofili turn his back on art? And why make a comeback now? – titled ‘A bright new wave’ (Guardian Weekend, Saturday 16 January 2010, pp. 24–7). Beyond this, another substantial piece of Guardian coverage on Ofili was a full-page feature, in the main newspaper, on his 2010 mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain. Written by Charlotte Higgins, it was titled ‘In retrospect, Turner prize winner Ofili has gone from urban jungle to Caribbean vision’ (the Guardian, 26 January 2010, p. 7). For good measure, the Guardian G2 supplement of the same issue included a comment piece on Ofili, written by longtime Ofili admirer, Adrian Searle: ‘Chris Ofili heads into the shadows. Hip, cool and wildly inventive, Chris Ofili burst onto the scene in the early 90s. Now he’s ditching the dung and the glitter, and going some place darker’ (the Guardian G2, 26 January 2010, pp. 19–21).

31  Goldsmiths B.A. Fine Art Nineteen 93 catalogue.

32  Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, ICA, London, curated by David A. Bailey and Catherine Ugwu. An ICA/INIVA season, 12 May – 16 July 1995. Lyle Ashton Harris, Sonia Boyce, Nina Edge, Ronald Fraser-Munro, Mario Gardner, Edward George and Trevor Mathieson, Renée Green, Isaac Julien, Keith Khan, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Marc Latamie, Susan Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Sarbjit Samra and Carmelita Tropicana.

33  Michael Rush, ‘Deadpan Appropriation’, Review, New York, December 15, 1997, p. 1.

34  Ibid. As well as having been included in Documenta X, exhibition of contemporary art, Kassel, 21 June – 28 September 1997 (curated by Catherine David), Steve McQueen’s work was also later included in Documenta XI (curated by Okwui Enwezor) 8 June – 15 September 2002.

35  David Frankel, ‘Openings, Steve McQueen’, Artforum 36, No. 3, November 1997, p. 102.

36  Art Review, Summer 2009.

37  Chris Townsend, New Art From London, Thames & Hudson, 2006, p. 18

38  Michael Rush, ‘Deadpan Appropriation’, Review, New York, December 15, 1997, p. 1.

39  Ibid p. 5.

40  Steve McQueen, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 30 January – 21 March 1999. The exhibition also showed at Kunsthalle, Zürich, 12 June – 15 August 1999. It was for this exhibition that McQueen was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999.

41  The Thin Black Line, Brenda Agard, Chila Kumari Burman, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith, Jennifer Comrie and Maud Sulter. Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, November 15 1985 – 26 January 1986.

42  Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, ICA, London, 12 May – 16 July 1995.

43  The Turner Prize 1999: An Exhibition of Work by the Shortlisted Artists, catalogue published by Tate Publishing, 1999.

EPILOGUE

 1  This attention included an adulatory review in the Guardian, and a substantial feature in Frieze magazine, the cover of which featured a work by Yiadom-Boakye. (Jennifer Higgie, ‘The Fictitious Portraits of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’, Frieze, Issue 146, April 2012, pp. 86–91)

 2  Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations, Studio Museum in Harlem, 11 November 2010 – 13 March 2011.

 3  www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/grace_ndiritu/the_nightingale.html (accessed 4 October 2013).

 4  Migrations: Journeys into British Art, Tate Britain, 31 January – 12 August 2012. Amongst the seventy or so artists in Migrations, the exhibition included work by Rasheed Araeen, Black Audio Film Collective, Frank Bowling OBE, RA, Sonia Boyce MBE, Avinash Chandra, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid MBE, Kim Lim, Yuan-chia Li, Steve McQueen OBE, CBE, David Medalla, Ronald Moody, Rosalind Nashashibi, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, Zineb Sedira, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Francis Newton Souza and Aubrey Williams.