M72 Eddie Chambers

Black Artists for Uhuru (1982)

In 1980 an association of young black artists came together for an exhibition to be held at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1981. All of the exhibitors – Keith Piper, Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Ian Palmer and Andrew Hazel – were children of Caribbean descent who had been raised in the industrial landscape of the West Midlands. As were two other artists who joined later: Claudette Johnson and Donald Rodney while Marlene Smith, who was from Manchester, was studying at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. Their first exhibition in June 1981 was called Black Art an’ Done, and questioned what black art was and what it could be, while also confronting endemic racism in British society.

Inspired by the wider Black Arts Movement that grew out of the Black Power movement in the United States (see M46), the group spent the next four years exhibiting under the title ‘The Pan-Afrikan Connection’, highlighting the difficulties black artists faced in being taken seriously by the global art world and actively seeking to exhibit in galleries which were normally the preserve of white artists. They exhibited in a wide range of media and were not tied to one aesthetic, although all the art confronted trauma with powerful vitality. They held conferences, most notably the First National Black Art Convention in Wolverhampton in October 1982, where they discussed the ‘form, function and future’ of black art. Guest speakers included the prominent black activist artist Rasheed Araeen (M59); the conference was also attended by members of the Black Audio Film Collective (M74) and the artist Sonia Boyce.

The association eventually became known as the Blk Art Group. One of the founding artists, Eddie Chambers (b. 1960) published the manifesto ‘Black Artists for Uhuru’ in the fifth issue of Moz-Art: The Arts Magazine of the West Midlands (March–July 1982). Published the year after race riots in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool had shocked the UK, its revolutionary rhetoric appeals for a socially and politically engaged black art (uhuru means ‘sounds of freedom’ in Swahili). The manifesto concludes with a quotation from the prominent African-American activist Ron Karenga’s essay ‘Black Cultural Nationalism’ (1968).

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Some of them, of course, are being heard and felt: in particular I salute Rastafarian orientated/influenced work which has helped to create within some of us a new vision of self. However, even Rastafarian art cannot completely avoid the risk of becoming stagnant and predictable; but the vast majority of our artists, where are they? Well I’m afraid that they are primarily where our tormentors (including the ruling classes and the so-called ‘liberals’) would have them to be: in their studios. Furthermore, they are doing what our oppressors can only regard as ‘safe’, producing lame ineffective work.

I don’t make this accusation lightly, but most of us (especially those outside art schools) are made to feel that our activities are positive, enhancing race relations and educating the ignorant as to the form and functioning of our Afro-Caribbean culture. We’re too busy being ‘ethnic’ and ‘cultural’ (cultural in the historic sense of the word) to realise that we are near enough completely politically ineffective.

At this particular period of time in the history of Black people in Britain, I find it necessary to make this appeal to the Black artists and art students of our communities here in the West Midlands. Though white artists/art students reading this article would do well to note, and strive to emulate our vocal, resolute, and articulate producers of ‘political’ art.

This appeal stems from my concern for the wellbeing of the better people of our race who constantly find themselves drawn towards positions of both attack and defence where the battle is hottest: on the streets of our communities.

It seems that most of our artists and their student counterparts desire no great role in the contemporary struggles of Black people: choosing rather to concern themselves with the vogues of art for art’s sake and with subjects which, at the very most, are secondary to the quest for liberation, in fact, our struggle for survival as Black people.

I myself shun the word ‘ethnic’ though I have no doubt that its users are mostly well intentioned. I choose rather to call our art what it should and must be: BLACK ART!

As for most of us in art schools, one would not for a minute consider us to be members of a race who have been systematically enslaved in the most brutal forms of slavery ever, if not merely for the colour of our skins. By this I mean the work we produce gives no indication of our experiences, past or present.

The Black art student, by the very colour of his/her skin, should find him/herself drawn towards the nerve points of social and political tension and unrest choosing to respond in this situation by producing work which voices their dissatisfaction with the offending bodies or people, offenders who may at one point in time or another include the police, the state, the educational system, the church, and so on. This work, in its clear, resolute, and eloquent terms cannot fail in the strength of its impact.

Black art students! You have a growing obligation to acknowledge our race and the fundamental elements which characterise our existence in and through your work.

Black art, at the very least, should indicate and/or document change. It should seek to effect such change by aiming to help create an alternative set of values necessary for better living, stronger communities, contemporary cultural identity, and so on, otherwise it fails miserably to be art befitting the black community. Black art, like everything else in the Black community, must respond positively to the reality of revolution: revolution seen in earnest on our streets last summer.

A Black American writer has written ‘let our art remind us of our distaste for the enemy, our love for each other and our commitment to the revolutionary struggle …’ So let it be.

EDDIE CHAMBERS