Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain [1 ed.] 9789401207300, 9789042034433

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Things Done Change

C

ROSS ULTURES

Readings in Post / Colonial Literatures and Cultures in English

144 SERIES EDITORS

Gordon Collier (Giessen)

Bénédicte Ledent (Liège) CO-FOUNDING EDITOR Hena

Maes–Jelinek

Geoffrey Davis (Aachen)

Things Done Change The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain

Eddie Chambers

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012

Rodopi gratefully acknowledges a University of Texas at Austin Subvention Grant awarded by President William C. Powers, Jr., which provided funds towards the production of this book Cover image: Chris Ofili, Union Black © Theophile Escargot Cover design: Inge Baeten The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3443-3 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0730-0 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2012 Printed in The Netherlands

To Jane and Emilia

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Table of Contents 

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Preliminary Note Introduction: You were the future once

ix xi xv xix

1

The only thing to look forward to… is the past

2

Service to Empire

51

3

Chris, Steve, and Yinka: We Run Tings

97

4

Coming in From the Cold: Some Black Artists Are Embraced

171

5

Everything Crash

219

Works Cited Index

1

261 277

Acknowledgements 

In researching and writing this book, I have incurred a number of debts of gratitude. I would, in the first instance, like to thank Professor Dr Geoffrey V. Davis and his co-editors of Rodopi’s Cross/ Cultures series for taking such a pronounced interest in my original proposal. I would similarly like to thank Professor John Yancey, who, as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, granted me academic leave, enabling me to research and write this study. My profound thanks and gratitude are extended to my Editor, Dr Gordon Collier, whose eye for detail, as well as his eye for nuance and interpretation, have done an immeasurable amount to strengthen and clarify this study. His assistance has been invaluable. In similar regard, I would like to thank Richard Hylton, whose comments and suggestions, resulting from an extraordinarily close reading of both my initial proposal and one of my final drafts, did much to improve my presentation. I'm particularly grateful to Janet Stanley, Chief librarian, National Museum of African Art Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, D C . Janet provided me with much-needed clarity – and the attendant documentation – about the debut of African artists’ at the Venice Biennale. A number of photographers must be thanked, for granting permission for me to reproduce their images for this study. Theophile Escargot and Pascal Saez both responded to my requests with speed and generosity. I am particularly grateful to Pogus Caesar, who allowed me unrestricted access to his extensive archive of photographs relating to many aspects of this study. The use of a number of his photographs has done much to visually enliven this study. My sincere thanks to the artists Yinka Shonibare and Tam Joseph, both of whom granted me permission to reproduce posters and artwork respectively. My thanks to the cartoonist Clive Goddard, who granted me permission to

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reproduce his witty Private Eye Tracey Emin cartoon, which was originally brought to my attention by Dominic Snyder, at the time of its publication, in 1999. I am grateful to Menelik Shabazz, for allowing me to reproduce the poster (designed by Shakka Dedi) for his Blood Ah Goh Run film. Louisa Briggs, of Museums Sheffield, is another person I must thank, for granting permission to use the poster for the Mappin Art Gallery’s exhibition Into the Open (1984). The photographer Jamie Woodley must be thanked for the speed and efficiency with which he photographed several of the posters that are reproduced in this study. I need also to thank Holly Callaghan, who, as Deputy Librarian of I N I V A ’s Stuart Hall Library, was of considerable assistance to me. Finally, my profound thanks to Dawn O’Driscoll, Syndication Account Manager of the Telegraph Media Group, who provided me with a number of the portraits of artists that appear in this study. She responded to my many enquiries with patience, diligence, and great professionalism. For this I am truly grateful.

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List of Illustrations 

Cover image: Chris Ofili, Union Black  Theophile Escargot F I G U R E 1: Tam Joseph (left) and Keith Piper (Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1986) photograph  Eddie Chambers

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F I G U R E 2: Shakka Dedi photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

5

F I G U R E 3: Capital B, hyphen, capital A The Black-Art Gallery, 1986 photograph  Eddie Chambers

7

F I G U R E 4: Heart in Exile poster, 1983, featuring untitled work by Tyrone Bravo The Black-Art Gallery

8

F I G U R E 5: Into the Open, opening view, 1984 photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

10

F I G U R E 6: Into the Open poster, 1984, based on a portrait photo of Houria Niati Mappin Art Gallery  Museums Sheffield

12

F I G U R E 7: Gavin Jantjes photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

36

F I G U R E 8: Benjamin Zephaniah, 2007 photograph  Pascal Saez

55

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F I G U R E 9: Sokari Douglas Camp photograph by Jonathan Lodge  Telegraph Media Group Limited

70

F I G U R E 10: Poster for Menelik Shabazz & Imruh Caesar, Blood Ah Goh Run (Kuumba Black Arts, U K 1982; 13/20 min.)  Menelik Shabazz

73

F I G U R E 11: John Akomfrah O B E photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

88

F I G U R E 12: Yinka Shonibare, Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth unveiling, May 2010 photograph by Geoff Pugh  Telegraph Media Group Limited

90

F I G U R E 13: Yinka Shonibare, Recent Paintings poster, 1989 Bedford Hill Gallery Photograph of Yinka Shonibare by Edward Woodman

108

F I G U R E 14: Black Art: New Directions poster, 1989 City Museum & Art Gallery Stoke on Trent

109

F I G U R E 15: Matt cartoon on Chris Ofili, Daily Telegraph (2 December 1998)  Telegraph Media Group Limited

128

F I G U R E 16: Chris Ofili photograph by Chris Laurens  Telegraph Media Group Limited

145

F I G U R E 17: Goddard cartoon on Tracey Emin, Private Eye (15–21 November 1999)  Clive Goddard

159

F I G U R E 18: Steve McQueen photograph by Martin Pope  Telegraph Media Group Limited

165

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List of Illustrations

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F I G U R E 19: Tam Joseph, “The Sky at Night” (1985, acrylic on canvas, 134 x 235 cm) Collection of the artist  Tam Joseph

175

F I G U R E 20: Donald Rodney photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

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F I G U R E 21: Chris Ofili, “Union Black”  Theophile Escargot

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F I G U R E 22: Anish Kapoor photograph by David Burges  Telegraph Media Group Limited

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Preliminary Note 

I

N THIS STUDY, THE TERM

‘B L A C K ’ I S U S E D I N W A Y S T H A T R E F L E C T its contested history and somewhat fluid usage. I avoid use of the term ‘Black and Asian’, although, as a signifier of people of African origin, as separate and distinct from people of Asian origin, the term ‘Black’ in the context of ‘Black and Asian’ arguably has much credibility, notwithstanding the ways in which the term conjoins the explicitly political with the explicitly geographical. Instead, the term ‘Black’, depending on its use and context, is sometimes used in this study to describe more than one racial or ethnic grouping. The term ‘Black’ is sometimes used to describe people of African or African-Caribbean origin and at other times ‘Black’ is used in ways that extend to embrace those of primarily South Asian background and origin. There is, though, a fiendish imprecision, as well as a number of formidable variables, in the language of identity – both assigned and declared – circulating around this terminology. To make mention of ‘Black’ as a signifier of those of African origin traditionally excludes those artists of South Asian origin such as Shaheen Merali and Zarina Bhimji, who were born in the east African countries of Tanzania and Uganda respectively. Historically, the term ‘Black’, when applied to artists in Britain, tended to relate specifically to those of ‘Afro-Caribbean’ (or, in the once common term, ‘West Indian’) background. Additionally, the term ‘Black’ underwent particularly disputed currency between the late 1970s and late 1980s, though, by the end of the 1980s, it had settled into a somewhat transracial, umbrella designation, as far as many people were concerned. The issue of upper-case B or lower-case b in the writing of the word ‘Black/ black’ is of huge importance. As Gen Doy has noted, “Black with upper case B has tended to be used to refer to Black as a proudly chosen identity, history and culture associated with African roots, distinguishing the term

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from a simple adjective ‘black’ describing colour.”1 To this end, she cites as examples “generalizing movements, concepts and organizations which assume a collective Black identity, such as Black history, Black liberation, Black community, or Black art movement….”2 In this regard, due emphasis should rightly be placed on capitalizing the attendant noun in question: i.e. Black History, Black Liberation, Black Community, or Black Art Movement, though this kind of valorization (often exceptionalist) is not always effective in practice. To a large extent, the British use of the term ‘Black’, as in ‘Black Art(s)’, takes its cue from an earlier, American usage. In the U S A , however, the term itself and related or evolving nomenclature has had no less charged a history than in the U K . Black, as a designation for Americans of African descent, became both widely used and accepted in the 1960s and 1970s, supplanting the somewhat discredited and archaic term ‘Negro’. As with ‘Negro’, spelled with a capital N, there were those who insisted on, or preferred to capitalize, the noun ‘Black’, regarding such an act as both a statement of empowerment and a demand for respect. During the course of the 1980s, the perhaps more formal and specific designation ‘African American’ replaced ‘Black’ in official and popular discourse, though in many ways both ‘Black’ and ‘African American’ (a term which is sometimes hyphenated) are now generally acceptable. ‘African American’ replaced ‘Afro-American’, in much the same way as ‘African Caribbean’ has tended to replace ‘Afro-Caribbean’ here in Britain. On both sides of the Atlantic, the term ‘Coloured’ (or ‘coloured’) was a common appellation in the middle part of the twentieth century, though it has now generally come to be regarded as not only archaic or over-genteel but also as offensive, although its inversion, ‘people of colour’, has gained some favour and popularity. Like the slippage in the use of the term ‘Black’ in Britain, ‘people of colour’ in the U S A is also now used in referring to other ethnic or racial groups beyond those of African origin. Further complicating these issues is the extent to which, in the U K , the term ‘Asian’ tends to refer to people of specifically South Asian (Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan) origin, though, in the U S A , the term ‘Asian’ tends to refer to Chinese people and other peoples significantly east of South Asia.

1

Gen Doy, “Introduction” to Doy, Black Visual Culture (London: I.B. Tauris,

2000): 9. 2

Doy, Black Visual Culture, 9.

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Preliminary Note

xvii

In deference to the right of individuals, groups, and peoples to embrace or indeed resist particular forms of identification, a limiter must inevitably be placed on all labels such as Black, Asian, and so on, as applied to said individuals, groups, and peoples. Time and again, we are reminded of the extent to which there is a fiendish imprecision in the language of identity – both assigned and declared – circulating around this terminology. We might not, for example, consider Anish Kapoor to be a ‘Black’ (or, indeed, a ‘black’) artist, but we might think it unremarkable to describe Rasheed Araeen as such, even though both of these artists were born, respectively, in post and pre-Partition India. Clearly, labels and identities – both assigned and assumed – are based on a constantly shifting assortment of factors, which vary from one person to another. Political positioning, personal preference, and life experiences all come into play. Furthermore, in a world in which travel, migration, and relocation have become such important signifiers of so many people’s existence and realities, labels and identities – again, both assigned and assumed – may have either a diminished or an enhanced value, when the individuals, groups, and peoples to whom the labels and identities are applied cross borders and continents. There may be an extent to which some of these considerations are moot. In considering the use of Black /black, in whatever context, there will be those individuals who will be disinclined to accept either spelling, or any use of the word, in relation to him- or herself. In this study, I make no claim to a definitive use of the word, noun and adjective, ‘Black/ black’ and willingly concede that, as it is both complex and contested, different writers, scholars, activists, curators and others have each sought to make their own particular peace with, and accommodation to, the word, and that, furthermore, it is unlikely that there will ever exist a settled and universally accepted definition of the term. In a footnote to her foreword to the catalogue accompanying the I C A exhibition Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire (1995), Gilane Tawadros signalled the editorial and curatorial struggles that had revolved around “the use of the word black and indeed its spelling.”3 We might not be surprised. Tawadros and her colleagues were faced with the task of collectively describing a disparate grouping of artists, some of whom were Caribbean-born, some of whom were Black British, and some of whom were African-American practitioners. As Tawadros wrote, 3

Gilane Tawadros, “Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire,” in Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire (exh. cat.; London: I C A / I N I V A , 1995): 13.

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One contentious issue raised many times within this publication is the use of the word black and indeed its spelling. Many terms or expressions could have been used throughout this publication. The general editorial position has been to use the term ‘black’ (with a lower case b) as referring to peoples of African, Asian, South East Asian, Latino (Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban) or Native American descent.4

The difficulties Tawadros and colleagues have in placing so many of the world’s peoples under the umbrella of a single word exist in similar measure when we are faced with the task of labelling a disparate grouping of British artists and the communities from which they have emerged. For her part, Gen Doy stated: “I am reluctant to refer to black artists as Black artists, since many would not accept a community of interests exists between all artists who are black, or see their work as being about Black issues.”5 Within this sentiment, and the issues referenced in these paragraphs, several issues become intertwined: namely: race, identity, skin colour, social and political positioning, and artistic content. Thus, whenever ‘Black’ or ‘black’ is written, the reader needs to be cognizant not only of competing definitions and language but also of which of the above factors, on its own or in mixed company, is being highlighted, evoked or referenced. Additional qualifiers, relating to the attendant terminology of ‘English’ and ‘British’, are referenced towards the end of the “Introduction” to the present study.6 In sum: in Things Done Change, I choose to write ‘Black’ with a capital B and this has been retained throughout, except in direct quotations in which the adjective ‘Black’ or ‘black’ has been left as it was originally written.

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4

Tawadros, “Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire,” 13. Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture, 9. 6 For discussion of the contested uses of the term ‘Black’, as reflected in initiatives involving British and British-based artists of the 1980s, 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 2, “Black Art: For and Against,” and the section “Who is Black? What is black?” and chapter 3, “‘Black Art’ in England: Arguments and Opinions.” 5

Introduction: You were the future once

1

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Despite black artists’ vehement charges of discrimination, a few of their number have quietly crept into considerable eminence – some at quite a young age… The ease of [Richard] Hunt’s climb to prominence suggests that prejudice is far from the only explanation for the obscurity of most black artists. Often themes that are most compelling to blacks seem simplistic and monotonous to whites, while the techniques that blacks find particularly expressive may strike whites as hopelessly old-fashioned.2

T

O W A R D S T H E E N D O F J U L Y 1986, From Two Worlds opened at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. The exhibition was a relatively large-scale affair, featuring a significant number of artists “who draw on their background to produce art which is a fusion of European and nonEuropean visions.”3 It set out to be more than just another Black artists’ sur1

“You were the future once” was a withering quip, aimed at Tony Blair, and delivered by David Cameron, then leader of the Conservative Party opposition, at their first Parliamentary encounter of Wednesday, 7 December 2005. The encounter was gleefully reported by journalists and parliamentary sketch writers, in a number of the following day’s newspapers. The Daily Telegraph had the words “You were the future once” as the front-page headline in its edition of 8 December 2005. 2 Robert F. Moss, feature on African-American arts, including the sculptor Richard Hunt, Saturday Review (New York; 15 November 1975): 16. To an almost uncanny extent, there exist several pronounced commonalities between the experiences of African-American artists and those of Black-British artists, albeit in slightly different timeframes. Moss’s sentiment could, without difficulty, be applied to Black-British artists coming out of the 1980s and going into the 1990s, a decade in which many of them fell by the historical wayside, and “a few of their number have quietly crept into considerable eminence – some at quite a young age.” 3 Nicholas Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds (exh. cat., 30 July–7 September 1986; London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1986): 5. Featured

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vey exhibition, a number of which had already taken place in galleries around the country over the course of the preceding two years or so. Not only was this the first time that an exhibition such as this was held in the main galleries of a major, high-visibility London venue; it was, simultaneously, the first time that something with the appearance of a developed curatorial thesis was formulated, with a view to giving audiences a theoretical lens through which to consider and appreciate the work of the various practitioners represented in the exhibition. Previous survey exhibitions of Black artists’ work had tended to take a broad but often seemingly random and haphazard approach to curating (or, as it was more commonly known in those days, ‘selecting’) in which an assortment of different ‘Black’ or ‘ethnic minority’ artists, often with perhaps little in common save their assorted perceived ethnicities or skin pigmentation, were brought together in large group shows that declared themselves to be ‘introductions’ to these artists’ work.4 As was perhaps to be expected, From Two Worlds showcased the work of a number of artists who were, at the time, among the best and the brightest of Britain’s Black artists. To this end, the exhibition featured the work of Zarina Bhimji, Sonia Boyce, Sokari Douglas Camp, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid, Gavin Jantjes, Tam Joseph, Keith Piper, and Veronica Ryan, among others. In 1986, these artists seemed destined for career longevity and further exposure. The 1980s was shaping up to be their decade, and there were few signs, if any, that future years and decades would not bestow further blessings of visibility and good fortune on artists such as these. Other Black artists before the From Two Worlds group of practitioners, going back to the mid-twentieth century, had done well, relatively speaking,

artists were 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. The exhibition toured to Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 8 November 1986–3 January 1987. For further discussion of this exhibition, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986,” esp. the chapters “The Making of From Two Worlds” and “From Two Worlds: The Press Responds.” See also John Roberts, “Sonia Boyce in Conversation with John Roberts,” Third Text 1.1 (Autumn 1987): esp. 56–59. 4 For further discussion of these exhibitions, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986.”

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from time to time. But Boyce, Piper, and a number of the others represented in From Two Worlds appeared on the verge of a different, perhaps more substantial and prolonged type of success than that sporadically enjoyed by their primarily immigrant predecessors. This, in contrast, was shaping up to be a

FIGURE 1 Tam Joseph (left) and Keith Piper (Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1986) photograph  Eddie Chambers

success reflecting the apparent status of Boyce, Piper et al. as new types of young British artists, their practice marked out by what was sometime an embrace of, and at other times a critiquing of, these artists’ art-school training.5

5

Both Boyce and Piper, at different times, offered compelling comments about their attitudes towards, and experiences at, the art school. Boyce wrote: As an art student in the early 1980s my response to late Modernism was a categorical refusal. As a language it seemed to deny me entry into its discourse as an active subject, and just as importantly, as a maker. In the presence of the discourse and the artwork itself, I felt mute. Luckily this was also a time when there were other sceptical voices coming from diverse quarters. The period from

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Piper’s work was dynamic, fresh, and particularly ‘relevant’ politically and socially, characterized by its distinctive use of image and text and its keen awareness of modern art trends such as Pop Art, mixed media, and assemblage. At art school – on both graduate and undergraduate levels6 – Piper utilized ways of working that directly questioned, and indeed often flatly rejected, what was then the dominant art-education ethos. Eventually, art schools across the land would in a great many instances come to embrace much of Piper’s modus operandi: his measured scepticism towards the prioritizing of process; his critical reading of the (cultural) politics of art education; his determination to embrace new ways of working, reflective of the particular identity concerns of his practice as well as the specificities of its maker’s history and political leanings. Furthermore, Piper’s work effortlessly chimed with everything that made the 1980s such a critically important decade for Black people, in Britain and elsewhere in the world. For her part, Boyce was the late 1960s through to the early 1980s marks an important break with the discussions there have been about Modernity and Modernism. — Sonia Boyce, “Reinventing Britain: A Forum,” Wasafiri 29 (Spring 1999): 48. During his time at art school as an undergraduate student, Piper wrote: To me, the black art student cannot afford the luxury of complacency as enjoyed by many of his white counterparts. These people, finding little worth responding to in their decadent lives of leisure and pleasure seek out ever more obscure playthings amongst the self indulgent vogue of art ‘for arts sake’ [sic]. The black art student, by his very blackness, finds himself drawn towards the epicentre of social tension. He is forced to respond to the urgency of the hour. The aspirations of the Black British are ripe, and our time is ‘N O W ’. — Keith Piper, Black Art an’ Done: An Exhibition of Work by Young Black Artists (exh. cat., 9–27 June 1981; Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 1981). Picking up on the significance of the art-school training of so many of a new generation of Black-British artists, Richard Hylton observed: “a new wave of self-motivated Black artists was emerging. Many of these would-be artists would invariably study in British art schools and seek opportunities much like their white peers to make the transition from art student to practising artist.” Hylton, The Nature of the Beast: Cultural Diversity and the Visual Arts Sector – A Study of Policies, Initiatives and Attitudes 1976–2006 (Bath: Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Bath, 2007): 74–75. 6 Piper studied at Coventry Lanchester Polytechnic (Foundation Course), 1979–80, Nottingham Trent Polytechnic BA (Hons) Fine Art), 1980–83, and the Royal College of Art (MA, Environmental Media) 1984–86.

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producing widely admired, engaging, large-scale pastel drawings; semi-autobiographical works that expressed her feminist and, indeed, ‘womanist’ impulses. In this regard, Boyce was one of the most important and influential Black artists to emerge during the 1980s. Manifestation of this took no end of forms, but perhaps the most substantial evidence of Boyce’s status was the way in which she came to act as something of a role model for a slightly younger generation of Black women artists. Like Boyce herself, artists such as Simone Alexander, Amanda Holiday, and Mowbray Odonkor created a range of compelling works that located, at the core of their practice, images and experiences of women who were Black like them. By the mid-1990s, however, these Black women artists had effectively slipped from wider public view, and were, in time, erased – so much so, that references to them and their practice were wholly absent from Shades of Black, a book that purported to set about the task of ‘assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain’.7 Somewhere along the way, as the 1980s turned into the 1990s and the 1990s turned into a new century, artists such as Piper and Boyce, M B E s and honorary doctorates notwithstanding, entered a sort of functioning obscurity, and artists such as Alexander, Holiday, and Odonkor melted away altogether. To be sure, while several of the From Two Worlds artists continued to practise and exhibit. But they largely lacked the sort of career and media attention that might have been expected to further accrue, in the years following what was, for a number of the artists, their significant London mainstream debut at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. As the 1980s moved into the 1990s, many Black-British artists whose practice had had relatively substantial exposure and critical acclaim during the previous decade fell into something of a moribund existence, notwithstanding occasional fillips to their careers such as Keith Piper’s considerable exhibition, Relocating the Remains, held at the Royal College of Art’s Gulbenkian Galleries in central London in 1997.8 What happened to Black-British artists

7

Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce (Durham N C : Duke U P & London: I N I V A /A A V A A , 2005). For a critique of the Shades of Black book, see Eddie Chambers, “Shades of Black,” Art Monthly 288 (July–August 2005): 46–47. For a review of the book, see Courtney J. Martin, “Brixton Calling,” Art Journal (Spring 2007): 119–20. 8 Keith Piper, Relocating the Remains, Upper and Lower Gulbenkian Galleries, Royal College of Art, London, 18 July–13 August 1997. The exhibition subsequently

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during the 1990s is the narrative around which this study is built. While mindful of the danger of characterizing the bulk of Black artists’ practice of the 1980s as being ‘issue-based’, there is still much credibility in Gen Doy’s reference to Kobena Mercer’s argument “that ‘What differentiates artists of the 1990s – such as Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, or Permindar Kaur – is that the shift away from the issue based gravitas of the 1980s is a response to art world changes that have institutionalised the demand for difference’.”9 Crucially, subtle – and, indeed, not so subtle – shifts in the politics of race and representation, along with institutional strategies for dealing with Black artists, intersected with and had an impact on the fortunes and misfortunes of Black artists during the 1990s. The 1990s also witnessed the strident ascendancy of an art market that effectively assigned little or no value to the practice of most Black artists – sidelined, vulnerable, and at the mercy of a gallery system largely indifferent to their welfare. The late 1990s saw the emergence of a handful of Britain’s most successful Black and Asian artists to date (Steve McQueen, Yinka Shonibare, Chris Ofili, Zarina Bhimji et al.) However, the majority of independent (but publicly funded) galleries continue to respond to the majority of Black artists by staging sporadic historical or contemporary shows which (given the relative dearth of solo exhibitions), as a form of engagement remains tokenistic and unconvincing.10

As Black artists of the 1980s effectively fell from grace and out of favour, the 1990s gave rise to an intriguing new type. Ambitious, media-savvy, successful artists such as Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare all made extensive use of the Black image (or at least, images of Black people) in their assorted practices but did so in ways that set them apart from the previous generation of Black artists. Not only did these artists occupy the curatorial and gallery spaces nominally reserved for a slightly older generation of Black artists but, with aplomb, audacity, and purpose, they also occupied previously unimaginable new spaces. In the summer of 1997, Keith Piper had his most substantial exhibition in London for a number of years (the early to mid-career retrospective organized

toured to venues in Birmingham, New York, and Ottawa between August 1998 and February 2000. 9 Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000): 2. 10 Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 118.

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by the Institute of International Visual Arts, generally known and referred to by its acronym, I N I V A ,11 the previously mentioned Relocating the Remains). The exhibition, albeit monumental, well-resourced, and compelling, was nevertheless not enough to get Piper noticed as a Turner Prize nominee.12 Furthermore, one of the most notable items of press attention the exhibition secured was a decidedly bad-tempered and dismissive review in, of all places, the Guardian newspaper.13 During the course of the 1980s, the paper’s art critics had reacted with various degrees of warmth to the emergence of BlackBritish artists,14 though by the time of From Two Worlds there were perhaps already signs that the then chief art critic of the paper, Waldemar Januszczak, who had distinguished himself as something of a cheerleader for Black artists, particularly Sonia Boyce, was wearying of these practitioners.15 The Guardian reviewer of Piper’s Relocating the Remains exhibition flatly refused to identify anything of significant merit in the exhibition, and was by no means bashful in declaring as much.16 By contrast, the press attention accorded the

11

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 I N I V A would remain, albeit in a constantly changing use of upper- and lower-case letters, such as I N I V A and I N I V A . Similarly, the words Institute of International Visual Arts appeared in a variety of upper- and lower-case words. Throughout this study, I use the acronym I N I V A in upper-case letters, as it first appeared in the organization’s publicity. 12 A discussion of Black artists’ involvement with the Turner Prize can be found in chapter 4 of this study. 13 Rachel Withers, “Slave to Dogma,” The Guardian (5 August 1997), review section: 11. 14 Typical in this regard is Irene McManus’ review “Black Art an’ Done: An Exhibition of Work by Young Black Artists, Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Andrew Hazel, Ian Palmer, Keith Piper, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 9–27 June 1981,” The Guardian (17 June 1981): 10. 15 See Waldemar Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere, review of From Two Worlds (Whitechapel) / Colin Self (I C A ),” The Guardian (16 August 1986): 8. 16 Gen Doy offered a cogent summary of the review: “Rachel Withers, however, castigates Piper in her review of his exhibition, wishes he would forget polemics and become more ‘complex’, condemning his ‘didacticism’, ‘insensitive’ use of objects, and the ‘disastrous effect’ of his show. She concludes: ‘It’s miserable to come away from a show feeling so negative. If there’s a consolation it is that a younger generation

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most successful of the new generation of Black artists was reverential, almost beyond measure. Ofili et al. received extensive and seemingly ever-increasing amounts of sympathetic and favourable media attention, from an astonishingly broad range of magazines and newspapers, in the U K and in other parts of the world.17 Not only were these artists the recipients of unbounded critical acclaim, they, along with a few of their white contemporaries, had a newly emerging celebrity status conferred on them. To this end, they were the subjects of many chatty and casual-life-style features, in which Shonibare fretted about his love life,18 McQueen declared that in Amsterdam he could “walk down the street in [his] flipflops without anybody caring,”19 and Ofili had photographs of his newly renovated London home prominently included in a feature on domestic architectural makeovers, in the Guardian magazine’s property section.20 For previous generations of Black artists, such media attention, at turns fawning and frothy, was quite unheard-of. of black artists are disdaining heavy posturing while making work of real political complexity. Piper should look sharp’ ” (Black Visual Culture, 245). 17 These artists were the subject of coverage in numerous U S magazines. But particularly astonishing and significant, in terms of the international press coverage these artists secured, were the continental European magazines, published in countries such as Germany and Italy, that produced substantial features on these practitioners. See, for example, Silke Müller, “Chris Ofili: Maler und Mythenspieler” (Chris Ofili: Painter and Player with Myths), Art: Das Kunstmagazin 2 (February 2000): 10–21; Mariuccia Casadio, “Yinka Shonibare Dandy Diverse,” Vogue Italia (December 2001): 178–83; and Barbara Casavecchia, “L’Altro McQueen” (The Other [Steve] McQueen), La Repubblica delle Donne 14/638 (21 March 2009): 72–74, and “Kunst und Spiel: Yinka Shonibare, Ich Spiele mit Vorstellungen von Repräsentation, Ein Gespräch von Dieter Buchhart und Mathias Fuchs” (Yinka Shonibare, I play with ideas of representation: A Conversation by Dieter Buchhart and Mathias Fuchs), Kunstforum International 178 (November 2005–January 2006): 114–23. 18 “My week, Yinka Shonibare Artist,” Daily Telegraph Review (12 July 2008): 5. 19 The Sabine Durrant Interview, “Steve McQueen: Driven to Abstraction,” The Guardian (22 November 1999): 4. 20 Jane Withers, “Within These Walls,” Guardian Weekend (25 November 2000): 59–66. Throughout the piece and, indeed, on the cover of the magazine, Ofili’s name was consistently misspelt as Offili, an error for which the magazine apologized, in a subsequent issue of Guardian Weekend. From the feature itself: The conversion of a terrace in the east end of London for artist Chris Offili [sic] preserves the austere working character of the original while radically re-

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What do these changes and developments tell us about the status of Black artists in late-twentieth-/early-twenty-first-century Britain? Given the unmistakable changing of the guard, where do – or where should – seemingly oldfashioned references to ‘Black artists’ as a definable and wider body of individual practitioners end, and discussions of black-skinned art-world ‘celebrities’ and ‘personalities’ such as Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare begin? How have certain Black artists come to be reminiscent of yesteryear, while others – a blessed few – are perceived and rewarded for being wholly in step with the present and changing times? Perhaps Things Done Changed is ultimately an evolving tale of swings and roundabouts, or artists playing musical chairs. After all, according to the mores of the art world, it appears inevitable, even axiomatic, that only a handful of (Black) artists at a time can command both success and profile. The others, the vast majority, must, unfortunately for them, languish in degrees of relative obscurity, or bask in the curatorial limelight only partially and fleetingly. Or perhaps this study is more explicitly an evolutionary tale; an older generation of (Black) artists simply making way – or having to make way – for a younger, livelier generation of artists, raised to be as opportunistic and thrusting as they were apparently media-savvy, having caught the mood of the nation, the attention of the critics, and the political sensibility of the times. To an extent, this book is a tale of how those within the orbit of the so-called ‘Brit Pack’, or yBa/ Y B A (young British artists/ Young British Artists) coterie – including McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare – mesmerized and charmed the art world, exposing previous generations of (Black) artists as being less than relevant and less than interesting, in comparison to these new, attractive, accessible practitioners.21 ordering its contents. Like many of its neighbours, the back garden had long since been swallowed up by workshops. In the new version, the ground floor and basement are an office and substantial studio that extends almost the length of the garden. Above this, the living quarters on the first floor progress from the living room at the front of the house, through a galley kitchen, to a glazed eating area that acts as a dissolve between indoors and outdoors, and finally on to the terrace over the studio. 21 The term ‘yBa’ is used throughout this study 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 Y B A , originated in the early 1990s, centred on the work of Damien Hirst and a number of other artists. Louisa Buck has offered a useful summary of the term’s origins:

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Here, the issue of timing is arguably of critical importance. The rise of artists such as McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare took place on the back of a fundamental shift in the perception and popularity of visual art in Britain. As Michael Bracewell has noted, The Freeze exhibition curated in 1988 by Damien Hirst pretty much reconfigured the public image of the British art world. Above all, it made art fashionable in a way that it hadn’t really been since the mid-1960s, and on a much wider, more populist scale.

Bracewell then mentions how this “new generation of Young British Artists,” by 1995, was “well on their way to becoming the new establishment of British art.”22 Very few Black artists were lucky enough, farsighted enough or otherwise able to jump on board when the yBa bandwagon passed through, picking up its favoured passengers. There is room here for several other considerations. Might the eclipsing of the 1980s generation of Black artists be in some way reflective of the art world’s apparent lack of appetite for what it sees as burdensome racial imagery and equally burdensome racial narratives? While the work of BlackBritish artists has always been marked by its broad approach to style, form, and content, the art world has never needed much prompting to see such an astonishingly wide range of practices in the most reductive and arguably prejudiced of terms. Perhaps today, with the ‘race war’ deemed to be over, and inclusivity apparently being the new order, there is simply little or no room or appetite for those artists perceived – for whatever reason – to be too [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 Y B A . — Buck, “The Tate, the Turner Prize and the Art World,” in The Turner Prize and British Art (London: Tate Gallery, 2007): 12–25 (here 19). The present study uses the rendering ‘yBa’, though, when quoted, the term appears as it was originally written. 22 Michael Bracewell, “Growing Up in Public: The Turner Prize and the Media 1984–2006,” in The Turner Prize and British Art (London: Tate Gallery, 2007): 80.

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Black for their own, or anyone else’s, good. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, a great many Black artists – primarily as a consequence of what were perceived by the art world to be overly assertive or accusatory racial or social narratives within their practice – found themselves being curatorially coldshouldered. In assessing the fortunes of the 1980s generation of Black-British artists, one repeatedly realizes that the Black image, even though it took an astonishingly wide variety of forms, was frequently perceived as being ‘confrontational’ or otherwise overly ‘politically serious’ or, even worse, ‘politically correct’. In this wearying and debilitating context, the work of Ofili et al. appeared to many in the art world as a breath of fresh air and was accordingly embraced for its perceived lightness of touch. As Gen Doy observed, “references to black culture in the work of Chris Ofili, for example, are playful, sacrilegious and flirtatious,” rather than what Doy described as “politically serious or confrontational.”23 Niru Ratnam expressed the view that certain commentators regarded Ofili’s work as marking “a break with the era of multiculturalism and instead approaches ethnicity in a much more ambivalent mode.”24 This palpable sigh of art-world relief consigned a great many artists to obscurity, even as it elevated the work of Ofili and company. Rachel Withers, in her somewhat scathing review of Piper’s Relocating the Remains exhibition, gave the clearest indication that a new generation of Black artists were animating issues of race in ways that were much more acceptable to her (or more ‘complex’) than Piper’s. In this regard, Withers declared a new day to be dawning, in which “cultural politics have moved on.”25 There was in Withers’ review the unmistakable sense (and, indeed, relief) that ‘cultural politics’, as far as Black artists and narratives of race were concerned, had not only shifted but had progressed, leaving behind those ‘political artists’ perceived, or regarded, as polemicists and racial malcontents. As Withers commented, “Piper is of a generation of political artists whose uncompromising polemics on race first attracted attention in the early 1980s.” Her review concluded with something of a warning to ‘political artists’ such as Piper:

23

Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture, 242. Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” New Left Review 235 (May–June 1999): 154. 25 Rachel Withers, “Slave to Dogma,” 11. 24

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It’s miserable to come away from a show feeling so negative. If there’s a consolation it is that a younger generation of black artists are disdaining heavy posturing while making work of real political complexity. Piper should look sharp.26

Chapter 3 of this study argues that, in effect, the reasons posited for the success and popularity of Ofili et al. seek to reduce their respective practices to not much more than ‘Black art for white people’.27 Apparently, some Black artists, perhaps bewildered, perhaps disgruntled, furtively expressed the view that “Ofili was attracting attention just because he gave whites the kind of nasty, depraved image of Blacks they loved to see.”28 Not surprisingly perhaps, curators, gallerists, and art critics viewed Ofili’s attractiveness from a different angle and in different terms. As indicated in this Introduction and elsewhere in this study, a commonly expressed view, in some cases worded particularly clumsily, was that these artists made work that animated issues in a way that “fully engages the imagination without resorting to obvious political dogma.”29 Given that the age of ‘political dogma’ had long since passed, and given that political dogma was in any event markedly absent from Black artists’ practice across several generations, it was telling that so many white curators and reviewers were breathing multiple sighs of relief at not (or no longer) having imaginary fingers – by way of Black artists’ practice of previous years – pointed at them. Fatally for the bulk of Black-British artists, notions of ‘political dogma’, ‘polemics’, and, possibly worse, ‘political correctness’ seemed to have become irreversibly attached to their work, thereby rendering it, in simple terms, not as good as that of Ofili et al. Adrian Searle offered the view that, “unlike an earlier generation of black artists in Britain, [Ofili] is not interested in the polemics of political correctness, preferring

26

Rachel Withers, “Slave to Dogma,” 11. As mentioned in chapter 3, this is a reframing of Screaming Jay Hawkins’ Black Music for White People (Demon Records, under licence from Bizarre Records, 1991). 28 Coco Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom: The Work of Chris Ofili,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 10 (Spring–Summer 1999): 41. 29 “The work of Yinka Shonibare, M B E addresses highly loaded issues of history, colonialism, and globalism in a vivid, seemingly whimsical language that fully engages the imagination without resorting to obvious political dogma”; Art ltd (May 2009): 10. 27

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beguilement and a self-conscious over-the-top exoticism to outright political statement.”30 As Richard Dyer noted, about Ofili, The press coverage of both his Serpentine exhibition and the Turner Prize award was wide, and for the most part adulatory. The predominantly white, male, middle-class art establishment had at last found a black artist who appeared to fit in with its construction of the ‘exotic’, the ‘ethnic’, and the colourfully entertaining ‘Other’ – without being too dangerous. London had found its Jean–Michel Basquiat.31

Elsewhere, Julian Stallabrass expressed the view that “Ofili tries to give white audiences what they expect from a black artist, and then a little bit more.”32 In his acute review of Chris Ofili’s 1998 touring exhibition, Dyer concluded: Perhaps if [Ofili] had not – and it has to be said, rather cleverly – grafted the whole shaky edifice of ‘racial identity’ onto his fundamentally formalist paintings we may never have seen his work in a major public gallery, and he certainly would not have won the Turner Prize; not because of the lack of any intrinsic quality in the paintings, but because at present the art establishment is only willing to recognise the work of black and Asian artists in Britain if it fulfils the dual and surprisingly non-contradictory demands of what can only be described as the cultural neo-colonialism of a post-socialist, New Labour Britain and the ‘ethnically authentic’ and identity-centred agenda of multicultural arts funding and patronage.33

Caution should perhaps be exercised when considering the impact of New Labour on the fortunes of Black artists in Britain.34 From the early 1990s onwards, there has perhaps been a pronounced coalescing, or converging, of

30

Adrian Searle, The Guardian (2 December 1998): 3, quoted in Virginia Button, The Turner Prize (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999): 142. 31 Richard Dyer, “Chris Ofili,” Wasafiri 29 (Spring 1999): 79. 32 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art (1999; London: Verso, rev. ed. 2006): 109. 33 Richard Dyer, “Chris Ofili,” Wasafiri 29 (Spring 1999): 80. 34 One should be equally careful when considering the impact of the Greater London Council (G L C ) on the fortunes of Black artists in London during the 1980s. Much of the eulogizing of the 1980s as having been a particularly significant decade for BlackBritish artists included the notion that these artists did well under the G L C and its leader Ken Livingstone. For an appraisal of the G L C ’s engagement with Black artists, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986,” chapter 6: “Black Artists and the Greater London Council.”

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political ideologies as reflected in the governing or opposition political parties. John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and now David Cameron are in some respects indistinguishable from each other in their pursuit of what might be referred to as varying degrees of free-market liberalism. The convergence of curatorial agendas discussed towards the end of this study could be said to mirror a corresponding convergence of political ideologies, among Britain’s ‘mainstream’ parties. As indicated by Dyer, the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government of 1997 is granted great significance in the present study, despite the aforementioned converging of political ideologies. New Labour ushered in a period in which difference was no longer a signifier of disaffection, prejudice or opposition. Instead, difference was to be cast in decidedly ‘unconfrontational’ terms, as a decorative motif of diversity. Although the practice of the From Two Worlds generation of Black artists was, in reality, markedly broad in its social or aesthetic impulses (and the artists themselves covered a range of age groups), it nevertheless had the general and largely unspecific appearance of representing a type of Blackness that was to become, within a decade or so, out of step, and out of fashion, with the changing times. One of the most substantial survivors of From Two Worlds was Zarina Bhimji, who, along with artists such as Hew Locke, McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare, was perceived as making work that fell comfortably in step with New Labour’s vision of an equitable society in which Black artists were friendly and diversity was cherished. The great success of these artists is that, concurrent with their being feted by an ever-obliging press and media, and embraced at home, they charmed and convinced a coterie of international curators, who duly included their work in all manner of international shows, biennales, and other exhibitions, both group and solo. Upon assuming office, the Blair government conspicuously embraced certain British artists deemed to be in step with its own sensibilities. The Government Art Collection acquired new works that rapidly adorned the walls of government offices. The interlinking of New Labour and the yBa grouping was pointed out in a newspaper feature that was trailed as “A [Damien] Hirst in Number 10, an Ofili in the foreign office – daring choices or predictable New Labour?” In the article, Lucy Powell wrote: Plundering the Government Art Collection, the Blair cabinet has drawn on the anti-conservative forces of the Young British Artists: Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Chris Ofili.

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Robin Cook (the Foreign Secretary) was said to have “chosen an Ofili print to hang in the foreign office,” Elsewhere in the article, the significance of the “plundering” was put into something of a wider context: The department of culture claims that the recent expansion of the [Government Art] collection is necessary to reflect the diversity and dynamism of Britain’s artists. A spokesperson said that the prime minister’s action “demonstrates the importance the government attaches to supporting successful young British artists.35

For a while, following the arrival of Tony Blair as Prime Minister, and the New Labour project, there was much talk, and some celebration, of what was known, in certain media circles and elsewhere, as ‘Cool Britannia’. This term was, by degrees, both imprecise and specific, in its description of contemporary culture in the U K . An obvious pun on the British patriotic song “Rule, Britannia!,” ‘Cool Britannia’ signalled to the nation, and to the world, that Britain could rightly be proud of itself, for the quality, breadth, and freshness of its cultural talent, which was regarded as reflecting Blairite ideas. Furthermore, this cultural talent acted as a supposedly attractive motif for Britain in the international arena. Certain writers, musicians, bands, artists, etc. were, for a time, closely associated with ‘Cool Britannia’, though there were also those who were not associated with the term, and those who treated the notion with scorn and ridicule. As discussed in chapter 2 below, the late 1990s onwards gave rise to a strategy in which Black writers (and others, including Black artists) were increasingly drawn into the honours system, and as such were packaged, promoted, and, above all, used, as colourful motifs of New Labour’s era of fairness, justice, and creativity. This was, however, a trend that began under John Major and may well continue under David Cameron, notwithstanding Cameron’s declared scepticism about what he termed ‘state multiculturalism’.36 Impressed by neither New Labour nor Cool Britannia, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah observed: I’ve never heard of a holder of the O B E openly criticizing the monarchy. They are officially friends, and that’s what this cool Britannia project is about. It gives O B E s to cool rock stars, successful businesswomen and

35

All quotations here are from Lucy Powell, “I don’t know much about politics…,” The Guardian (4 November 1999), G2: 12. 36 See fn 41, p. 68 below.

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blacks who would be militant in order to give the impression that it is inclusive.37

For those Black-British artists who rose to prominence in the Cool Britannia moment, association with it arguably did their career no harm, and possibly a great deal of good. We can, in this regard, see Chris Ofili as being emblematic of a Black artist drawn into the Cool Britannia embrace.38 Ofili et al. were constructed (or allowed themselves to be construed) as ‘new’ artists, in a ‘new’ Britain, under New Labour. Adrian Searle, though a staunch admirer of Ofili’s practice, suggested, in 2010, that the latter’s association with Cool Britannia had not necessarily been all for the good: “More than a decade on, some of [Ofili’s] earlier work looks temporarily dated or at least stalled by the Cool Britannia euphoria for new British art.”39 With a brevity that perhaps befitted it, Cool Britannia came and went, though the consequences and implications of its moment arguably linger on, and posthumous references to Cool Britannia are uniformly scornful or sceptical. Chin-tao Wu, for example, subtitled a few paragraphs of the conclusion to her study Privatising Culture, “Cool Britannia.” Conflating New Labour, the Lottery, and Cool Britannia, Wu commented: the Lottery has endowed Britain with numerous new ‘visitor attractions’ and cultural amenities. Their opening was timed to coincide with the new millen37 Benjamin Zephaniah, “ ‘ Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought’: An invitation to the palace to accept a New Year honour… you must be joking. Benjamin Zephaniah won’t be going. Here he explains why,” The Guardian (27 November 2003), G2: 3. 38 The “Great British Issue” of GQ Magazine (December 1996) was a celebration of ‘Cool Britannia’. The issue included a feature on art, trailed on the contents page as “Britain’s young masters” and written by Louisa Buck. The first of the five artists featured, deemed to be most reflective of ‘Cool Britannia’, was Chris Ofili, and, to this end, a full-page portrait of the artist opened the piece. The other artists featured were Simon Bill, Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor–Wood, and Gary Hume. “Works in Progress: Put yourself in the picture with Louisa Buck’s portraits of five British artists with the talent to take on the modern world,” GQ Magazine (December 1996): 86–90. Elsewhere, in 1998, Channel 4 screened Sampled, described as “Three hours on British talents who are said to personify nineties cool, starting with artist Chris Ofili” (The Guardian Guide [19–25 September 1998]: 86). 39 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 (26 January 2010), G2: 20.

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nium and their aim is to cater for the palate and pockets of both Middle England and overseas tourists. In the brave new Britain of the twenty-first century, a cultural landscape dotted with an assortment of attractions will be a great, glittering world of fun and excitement.40

Wu continued: If Britain under the previous Tory government was promoted as a jigsaw of countless heritage sites, New Labour’s Lottery Britain seems determined to provide endless fun and good times for all. Whereas Heritage Britain turned each and every ‘authentic’ relic into a nostalgic story, harking back to the days of lost empire, Lottery Britain turns every imaginable theme it embraces, be it science, industry or popular music, into a simulacrum entertainment in a high-tech world of digitalised fanfare.41

According to Gary Younge, [Ofili] emerged on to the national scene with the help of two propitious tailwinds, thanks to the desire to rebrand Britain as cool and modern following New Labour’s election in 1997. The first was artistic. Throughout the late 90s, the arts became far more popular and some young artists, such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, started to act like rock stars, suggesting the dawning of a rowdy, vibrant new creative generation.42

The other “propitious tailwind,” claimed Younge, was “racial”: The publication in 1999 of the Macpherson Report into the death of Stephen Lawrence helped pave the way for a brief moment when racial and ethnic difference was openly celebrated…43

Although McQueen declared himself indifferent to it, and Shonibare – at times at least – declared himself a willing recipient, this decidedly unsubtle governmental embrace of certain Black artists troubled Kobena Mercer: A week after Documenta 11 opened, Steve McQueen was honoured with an O B E . While his nomination has everything to do with the “politics of representation“ practised by New Labour, which, like other institutions, frequently parades a multicultural exhibitionism that strives to “show” how inclusive and diverse it wants to be, the artist’s acceptance of the award is indicative of 40 Chin-tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention Since the 1980s (London: Verso, 2002): 280. 41 Chin-tao Wu, Privatising Culture, 281. 42 Gary Younge, “Chris Ofili: A bright new wave,” Guardian Weekend (16 January 2010): 27. 43 Younge, “Chris Ofili: A bright new wave,” 27.

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the new dilemmas that arise when inclusivity becomes the rule rather than the exception.44

Another important, and not unconnected, point concerns governmental or institutional approaches to Black artists’ work. For a variety of reasons, during the course of the 1980s and 1990s many of the From Two Worlds generation of artists, perhaps having nowhere else to go, came within, or put themselves within, the orbit of ‘ethnic’ arts, ’cultural diverse’ arts, ‘multicultural’ arts, and, latterly, ‘(new) international’ arts. The trajectory of the official Arts Council initiatives relating to this terminology has, arguably, tended to be a self-referencing and isolationist one, pointing away from, rather than towards, the centre of art-world gravity.45 Conceivably, the wider body of Black artists, unwittingly perhaps, might well have navigated themselves, or been navigated, up what might be regarded as the cul-de-sac of Arts Council-sponsored separate development. After all, ‘ethnic minority’ arts and its numerous incarnations, leading up to and including I N I V A , have yielded decidedly mixed results for Britain’s Black artists. Intriguingly, even while maintaining a distance from other Black visual artists, Ofili cast himself as a supporter of Rivington Place, the new Arts Council-sponsored combined home of I N I V A and Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers.46 Ofili had also been responsible for designing the logo for Africa 05, a festival described as a series of major cultural events taking place in London and the rest of the U K that celebrates contemporary and past cultures from across the continent and the diaspora. It has been developed by programme director Dr Augustus Casely–Hayford with the aim of raising the profile of the huge diversity of African arts and culture by bringing them into the mainstream and encouraging Britain’s arts institutions to make links with artists from across the African continent and to reach out to African communities here in the U K .47

44

Kobena Mercer, the second of three reviews of Documenta 11, published in Frieze

69 (September 2002): 89. 45

For a substantial discussion of this, see Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast. Chris Ofili was one of six artists who produced prints for Rivington Place Print Portfolio, a fund-raising venture by I N I V A , launched in the spring of 2007. The other artists were Sonia Boyce, Glenn Ligon, Hew Locke, Carrie Mae Weems, and Isaac Julien. 47 http://www.tate.org.uk/africa05 (accessed 2 April 2011). See also “A F R I C A 05 Partner Activity, issued November 2004 and Plans unveiled for Africa 05 – the U K ’s biggest ever celebration of African cultures” (press release issued 18 November 46

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For the most part, though, the likes of Ofili and Shonibare have, with rare exceptions, studiously avoided being drawn into the maelstrom of such ‘separate development’ initiatives, even as they delighted in their use, or exploration, of the Black image. Traditionally, albeit to varying degrees, Black artists in Britain have been characterized by their general exclusion from the art world. (This exclusion being briefly punctuated by sporadic and ultimately fleeting acknowledgement.) The 1980s saw various attempts to undermine this orthodoxy and this familiar pattern. In some ways, exhibitions such as From Two Worlds signalled, however tentatively, the turning-over of a new art-world leaf and the ushering-in of a period of more sustained engagement with the country’s Black artists. But before the passing of too many years, the art world, for the most part, seemed to have grown weary of artists such as those represented in the Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition. While many of these artists continued to practise, to exhibit, to work, they arguably did so in ways that often hardly seemed to register. In that sense, the likes of Boyce and Piper have arguably (again, M B E s and honorary doctorates notwithstanding) fared little or no better than many of their predecessors and contemporaries who have fallen from view. The years following From Two Worlds and, several years later, Rasheed Araeen’s The Other Story48 saw the vast majority of Black artists return to an almost moribund level of existence, failing to make significant and sustained impact on the art world. This reversal of fortunes was both dramatic and emphatic. Richard Hylton summarized the reversal as follows: Buoyed by what was initially a positive response from publicly funded galleries to their energy and capacity to organise exhibitions, the future ap-

2004). For a critique of Africa 05, see Eddie Chambers, “Africa 05 [Polemic],” Art Monthly 284 (March 2005): 44. 48

The Other Story was a landmark exhibition, which sought to outline a history of ‘Afro-Asian artists in post-war Britain’. The exhibition was curated by Rasheed Araeen and organized by the Hayward Gallery and the South Bank Centre, London, 1989. It 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. Hayward Gallery, 29 November 1989–2 February 1990. It then toured to venues in Manchester and Wolverhampton between March and June of 1990.

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peared bright for many of these talented and self-motivated students and young artists. However, this climate of optimism and opportunity would soon change as publicly funded galleries (particularly those in London) met the ambitions of Black artists with a certain indifference and tokenism. Publicly funded galleries in England were, in the main, uninterested in what Black artists had to offer individually.49

Hylton went on: What concessions publicly funded galleries made to the demands of Black artists (and possibly of the Arts Council) came to be typified in the production of Black ‘survey’ exhibitions. This would arguably come to characterise how galleries would accommodate, stifle and marginalise the majority of Black British artists.50

Simultaneously, however, artists such as McQueen and Ofili signified a new, different type of Black artist. These were Black-British artists whose success was substantial, far-reaching and hitherto unheard-of. The recipients of major exhibition opportunities and commissions, the focus of collectors, curators and art critics across the globe, these artists had become, in a number of ways, not just British artists, but Britain’s artists. In this regard, for McQueen at least, even his name took on a particular relevance. Several of the major press pieces on McQueen, around the time of, and following, his critically acclaimed film Hunger, were titled “McQueen and country.”51 The wordplay and word association was again employed in one of McQueen’s most celebrated projects, Queen and Country. This was presen-

49

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 12–13. The Nature of the Beast, 13. 51 One feature, in the Independent for 15 July 2008, was titled “Steve McQueen: Queen and Country.” Several months later, the Observer Review supplement for Sunday 12 October 2008 was introduced with a full-page portrait of McQueen on the front page. The headline, “McQueen and country,” was subtitled “Artist and director Steve McQueen explores patriotism and violence in his stunning new film on the I R A hunger strikes.” And several months after that, ‘McQueen and country’ was again used to trail a feature on McQueen, this time in the New Review supplement, issued with The Independent on Sunday, of 24 May 2009. Again, a full-page portrait of McQueen appeared on the cover of the supplement, with “McQueen and country: From I R A hunger strikers to the Iraq war dead – our artist at the Venice Biennale on what Britishness means to him.” 50

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ted by the artist at the National Portrait Gallery, 20 March – 18 July 2010.52 As mentioned in this introduction and elsewhere in this study, the media couldn’t get enough of artists such as McQueen and Ofili. Nearly a decade into the twenty-first century, Kobena Mercer adjudged that “It may well be the case that the black British arts scene is flourishing and floundering in equal measure”53 The verdict is a convincing one, as the current situation can in some ways be summarized as celebrity status and all sorts of official recognition for the chosen few, alongside seemingly ever more entrenched marginalization for the hapless majority. Things Done Changed seeks to understand, to make sense of, what happened to Black artists in Britain between the 1980s and the present time. It’s a book that, again, seeks to understand the ways in which both the construction and the perception of Black artists, Black images, and Black artists’ practice all changed markedly over a period of time. There has been a pronounced and ongoing tendency for Black-British artists’ practice to be read, discussed, and curated in isolation from the wider practice of artists. But while there is, in the practice of Black artists, much that makes it distinct; there is simultaneously, within this same work, much commonality with other practitioners. The tendency towards a sort of presupposed isolation has been to varying extents both imposed and voluntary. Mindful of this, Things Done Changed sets out to locate itself in the wider recent history of visual-arts activity in the U K . To this end, it encompasses such things as the rise of the celebrity artist, as typified by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Sam Taylor–Wood. Likewise, the narrative necessarily acknowledges changes in arts funding and the gallery system, the rise of the international mega-exhibition, the ascendancy of the all-powerful star curator, etc. Given

52

Queen and Country, a project by Steve McQueen, was a work that sought to acknowledge the military losses suffered by the British army in Iraq, between March 2003 and February 2009. The artist used photographs of each of the soldiers to make commemorative postage stamps, one stamp for each soldier. A poignant, sensitive work, Queen and Country successfully reflected something of not only the country’s widespread ambivalence about the Iraq war but also the corresponding desire to respectfully acknowledge the loss of British military personnel. Significantly, the publication relating to the project was “dedicated to all victims of the Iraq War.” 53 Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’: Reflections on Aesthetics and Time,” in “Black” British Aesthetics Today, ed. R. Victoria Arana (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009): 69.

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the relative dearth of widely available substantial and credible published material (be it documentary, investigative or critical) on the subject of the modern or contemporary presence of Black artists in the U K , trying to make sense of this history is in some ways a difficult task. Furthermore, the task involves interrogating the art world’s apparent chronic ambivalence about the wider body of Black artists, as well as its institutional attempts to interact with some of these artists. The current crop of Black art-world celebrities and contributors to mega-exhibitions simultaneously complicates, questions, and throws into sharp relief the existence of art-world racism and exclusionary practices. At the present time, a handful of Black artists can be held aloft as examples of fabulous success and evidence of a liberal art world characterized by its impulse towards inclusivity. The successes and profiles of artists such as Ofili fly in the face of certain Black artists’ suspicions of indelible artworld prejudice and discrimination, in much the same ways as the profile of Ofili et al. disturbs a longstanding ambivalence on the part of the mainstream media to accord sustained and substantial attention to (individual) Black artists and their work. If the art world is such an inhospitable environment for so many Black artists, how might we continue to give this view credibility, even as Shonibare et al. are waxing lyrical about their ever-escalating levels of success and the complications this success brings? In appraising the careers of Ofili et al., there might perhaps be a need to rid ourselves of ingrained suspicions of discriminatory pathologies within the art world and accept that, quite simply, only the best and the brightest artists can ever attain substantial success and that the vast majority, Black or otherwise, must by definition be little more than also-rans. This book is divided into five chapters, each seeking to deal with the multiple strands that together comprise developments that can be said to characterize the recent history of Black artists in Britain. Chapter 1, “The only thing to look forward to… is the past,”54 looks at the ways in which the decade of 54

“The only thing to look forward to… is the past” was one of the poignant lines in the theme tune for The Likely Lads, the long-running B B C sitcom that first aired in the 1960s. Both the song and the sitcom itself alluded to the seismic social and economic upheaval of the time, when the former industrial and ship-building giant that was the north-east of England fell victim to widespread industrial decline, closure of its steel plants and shipbuilding facilities, and so on. In both song and sitcom, earlier decades, though marked by the Great Depression, years of Britain at war, and postwar austerity, were nevertheless nostalgically regarded as the region’s glory days. In the face of un-

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the 1980s has been fetishized as the moment of cultural renaissance for Black-British artists. Within this somewhat hyperbolic adulation, comparatively little critical attention has been devoted to whatever Black artists’ activity preceded the 1980s, nor, indeed, to whatever Black-British artists’ activity came thereafter. The singling-out of the 1980s as a decade important, above all others, for Black artists has, I argue, contributed to the circumstances whereby Black artists of the decade, particularly some of the most relatively high-profile ones, were not able to substantially carry over that success into the 1990s and beyond. Instead, as Kobena Mercer, perhaps mindful of the bad-tempered and bitter contributions that featured in the Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain conference and book, argued: There is a sense in which the “1980s” are in danger of becoming our “1960s” – a key moment of historical transformation that is constantly battled over by competing and antagonistic interpretations.55

And yet, gripes and contestations apart, the 1980s were indeed an important decade for Black artists, albeit one not yet subjected to sustained critical analysis. The early ‘survey’ shows of the decade, cumbersome as they were, did at least have some semblance of wider representation. Setting the trend, Into the Open (Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1984) featured no fewer than twenty-two artists. Double Vision (Cartwright Hall, Bradford, 1986/87) featured eleven. Caribbean Expressions in Britain (Leicestershire Museum, 1986) exhibited work by fifteen artists. The other major survey shows of the 1984–87 period, The Thin Black Line, From Two Worlds, and The Image Employed, featured significant numbers of visual artists (eleven, fifteen, and seventeen respectively). A number of the key exhibitions of Black artists’ work that took place during the 1980s were organized by the practitioners themselves, who variously took on roles as curators, selectors, and exhibition organizers. These artists included Lubaina Himid, Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Pogus Caesar, Aubrey Williams, and Rasheed Araeen.56 nerving and debilitating social change, the song asked, “What became of the people we used to be?” 55 Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 73. 56 Into the Open: New Paintings Prints and Sculptures by Contemporary Black Artists, selected by Pogus Caesar and Lubaina Himid, and featuring 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, Jugin-

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Such a relatively equitable approach to curating, as reflected in these exhibitions, stands in marked contrast to the present time, in which many of the artists represented in those exhibitions have either dropped out of sight or now practice in what I described earlier as a sort of functioning obscurity. Two other important considerations relating to the 1980s are discussed in chapter der Lamba, Bill Ming, Tony Moo Young, Ossie Murray, Houria Niati, Ben Nsusha, Pitika Ntuli, Keith Piper, Richie 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. Double Vision: An Exhibition of Contemporary Afro-Caribbean Art; Franklyn Beckford, Margaret Cooper, Uzo Egonu, Amanda Hawthorne, Lee Hudson Simba, Debbie Hursefield, Tam Joseph, Johney Ohene, Keith Piper, Madge Spencer, and Gregory Whyte. Cartwright Hall, Bradford, 8 November 1986–4 January 1987. Caribbean Expressions in Britain: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art, selected by Pogus Caesar, Bill Ming, and Aubrey Williams in celebration of Caribbean Focus Year, and featuring Simone Alexander, Frank Bowling, Sonia Boyce, Pogus Caesar, Denzil Forrester, Anthony Jadunath, Errol Lloyd, John Lyons, Bill Ming, Ronald Moody, Colin Nichols, Eugene Palmer, Veronica Ryan, Gregory Whyte, and Aubrey Williams. Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, 16 August–28 September 1986. A selection from the exhibition was subsequently shown at galleries in Northampton and Bradford. 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 (I C A ), London, 15 November 1985–26 January 1986. From Two Worlds. 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. Whitechapel Art Gallery, 30 July–7 September 1986. The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art, an exhibition of work selected by Marlene Smith and Keith Piper, and featuring Simone Alexander, Zarina Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman, Eddie Chambers, Jennifer Comrie, Amanda Holiday, Claudette Johnson, Tam Joseph, Trevor Mathison and Eddie George, Mowbray Odonkor, Keith Piper, Donald G. Rodney, Marlene Smith, and Allan de Souza. Cornerhouse, Manchester, 13 June–19 July 1987. For further discussion of a number of these exhibitions, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986.”

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1. First, the ways in which groups of activists – O B A A L A (the Organisation for Black Arts Advancement and Leisure/Learning Activities in North London,57 and C F L (Creation for Liberation) in South London58 – whose primary motivation was to ‘get things done’, launched significant and consequential initiatives which, though in some ways problematical and uneven, nevertheless gave credible platforms to Black artists, in both solo and group exhibitions. Secondly, the 1980s was the decade in which arguments and opinions about Black artists’ practice were advanced, moulded, and contested, not only via the written and spoken word but also through curatorial initiatives. Black artists of the 1980s may at the time have wearied of such arguments, but they reflected a passion, among an engaged community of artists, that has not been seen since. For the most part, chapter 1 assesses key press responses to two of the most important large-scale group exhibitions of Black artists of the decade: namely, Into the Open and From Two Worlds. A close reading of media responses clearly indicates the ways in which, and the extent to which, they were already, unbeknownst to many Black-British artists, in no end of bother, even by the middle of what has been characterized as a particularly successful decade for them. Chapter 2, “Service to Empire,”59 looks at the ways in which many Black artists were, over a period of time, embraced and acknowledged by the honours system, in so doing becoming assorted Commanders of, Officers of the Order of, and Members of, the British Empire. I argue that this reflects hugely 57

O B A A L A (Organisation for Black Arts Advancement and Leisure Activities) was formed in 1983 by the U S -born Shakka Dedi, and a close group of associates, and was responsible for the running of the Black-Art Gallery. The word “Leisure” was subsequently changed to “Learning.” 58 Between 1983 and 1987, Creation for Liberation, a group of cultural activists aligned to the Race Today Collective, organized four open-submission exhibitions of work by Black artists. The exhibitions were all held at venues in Brixton, where Creation for Liberation were based. Creation for Liberation exhibitions: 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, The Brixton Art Gallery, 17 July–8 August 1984; 3rd Creation for Liberation, Open Exhibition of Contemporary Art by Black Artists, G L C Brixton Recreation Centre, 12 July–3 August 1985; Creation for Liberation Open Exhibition: Art by Black Artists, Brixton Village, contributions by 46 artists, 7 October–17 November 1987. 59 Maud Sulter, Service to Empire (Edinburgh: A19, 2002).

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significant changes in the political arena, whereby Blackness among artists, whether through skin colour or through art practice, ceased to exist primarily as a motif of political difference or artistic assertion, and became instead a decorative signifier of inclusion for the architects of Tony Blair’s New Labour Britain. Larger numbers of Black artists might well have fallen from view, but those who survived, and the new ones who joined them, became, through an institutional embrace, symbolic of a supposedly new, meritocratic, more equitable Britain. The ‘new’ artists mentioned above are discussed in chapter 3, which looks at the fabulous careers of Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare, artists whose achievements in all directions towered above those of previous generations of Black-British artists. For different reasons, the label ‘Black-British artists’ did not necessarily sit well with these practitioners, particularly in comparison to the artists whose reign they usurped. Ofili et al. might have utilized the Black image in their practice, but, aided by their proximity to the yBa generation, they simultaneously existed as a new and different type of Black artist. Turner Prize victories, triumphant Fourth-Plinth60 commissions, sympathetic features in no end of magazines – such things were meat and drink to McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare. These artists quickly settled into the celebrity status they found themselves enjoying. Within a year of Ofili’s Turner Prize success, the fashion and life-style magazine Dazed & Confused ran a major feature on him.61 In this new epoch, such were the rewards for those few artists judged to be politically commited. As indicated earlier, Rachel Withers’ review of Piper’s exhibition emitted a palpable sense of approval and relief when she claimed: “If 60

For many years, the fourth plinth at the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square stood empty. In 1999, the Royal Society of Arts conceived the Fourth Plinth Project, which temporarily occupied the plinth with a succession of works commissioned from the contemporary artists Mark Wallinger, Bill Woodrow, and Rachel Whiteread. Succeeding the R S A ’s temporary custody of the Fourth Plinth, as a site for contemporary art, that appeared to be popular with both the public and the media, the Greater London Authority assumed responsibility for the fourth plinth and began its own series of changing exhibitions. These included works by Marc Quinn, Antony Gormley, and Yinka Shonibare, whose “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle” was unveiled on 24 May 2010. Shonibare, whose “Ship” garnered significant press coverage, was the first Black artist to receive a Fourth Plinth commission. 61 “Chris Ofili Meets Mary J. Blige: The first lady of hip hop soul and the afrodiziac artist contemplate life as a painting,” Dazed & Confused 58 (September 1999): 80–86.

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there’s a consolation it is that a younger generation of black artists are disdaining heavy posturing while making work of real political complexity.”62 Although Shonibare was only a year or two younger than Piper, the younger generation to which she referred centred on the grouping of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare. Elsewhere, in a different manner, Robert Storr concurred with Withers’ assessment: The fact that McQueen does not make an obvious issue of his race – or that of his predominantly white art world public – is a mark of confident take-itor-leave-it self-acceptance and of an explicitly political sophistication, which assumes that assertion rather than protest, intelligently structured poetics rather than structuralist ‘critique’ may be, at this moment, the best means for impairing new or difference-defining information.63

In this regard, Ofili’s comment of 1998 that “ he is not on some P C mission to save the world”64 existed as both a point of reassurance to imagined audiences and anticipated collectors and a simple clarification or assertion. The arrival on the scene of Ofili et al. is of great and critical importance in the narratives of this study – not only because of the significant ways in which these artists’ work was received, but also because these artists represented a sort of Year Zero for Black artists and Black people, as far as a number of commentators were concerned. Although literally hundreds of Black artists had had their work seen in innumerable exhibitions from the late 1970s through the 1980s and on into the 1990s, and although much of this activity had taken place within and among communities of Black people, or had otherwise been seen by a range of audiences, this extensive and ongoing period of activity counted for nothing among certain commentators, who preferred to look at Ofili in terms of his supposed ability to engage new Black audiences, something which earlier generations of Black artists had apparently been unable or unwilling to do. As Raekha Prasad (in comments judged to be “thoughtful” by Virginia Button, in her history of the Turner Prize) claimed,

62

Rachel Withers, “Slave to Dogma,” 11. Robert Storr, Going Places: Steve McQueen (exh. cat.; London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1999): 12. 64 Louisa Buck, “Living Colour: Chris Ofili’s vivid paintings reveal the psychedelic city experience,” Vogue (January 1999): 125. 63

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Although art can touch people irrespective of race, the excitement at seeing someone who looks like you making art, and featured in it is still a novelty for black people in Britain.”65

It was this pre-Ofili/post-Ofili view of history that led Adrian Searle to claim that “until the 90s, there were hardly any black students at British art colleges. Ofili’s success showed that, if you have the intelligence, savvy and ambition, being an artist is a career option. Someone has to pave the way.”66 Chapter 4, “Coming in From the Cold: Some Black Artists Are Embraced,”67 looks at the ways in which major arts institutions have in recent years responded to Black-British artists, and the ways in which latter-day responses differed markedly from the sorts of curatorial project that emanated from some quarters, and the studious indifference that emanated from other quarters, during earlier decades. The New-Labour period had a profound impact on the ways in which galleries such as the Tate dealt with Black artists.68 Historically coalescing around the practices of well-established white male artists and a limited number of others, the Tate and other institutions in effect found themselves obliged to respond to both the work of a new generation of Black artists and New-Labour demands for evidence of inclusivity. Black artists went from an environment in which their exclusion from such things as the Turner Prize, or the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,69 was, by and large, a given, to a new environment in which they occasionally figured prominently in such things and, indeed, came to spearhead the attempts of certain institutions to declare their progressive values. Through its mannered and conspicuous embrace and promotion of certain Black artists – those whose work was judged to be of sufficient quality and perceived to be in step with the reigning political and 65

Raekha Prasad, The Guardian (5 December 1998), Saturday Review: 4, quoted in Virginia Button, The Turner Prize, 142. (In Button’s book, the Guardian journalist’s name had been misspelt as Raeka Prasad.) It was this comment, from an article headlined “Ofili’s Turner prize is a small victory for all black people, argues Raekha Prasad,” that Button had judged to be “thoughtful.” 66 Adrian Searle, “Chris Ofili heads into the shadows,” G2: 21. 67 Bob Marley & The Wailers, “Coming in From the Cold” (Uprising, Island Records, 1980). 68 The Tate’s engagement with Black artists is discussed in chapter 4 below. 69 Black artists’ involvement with the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is discussed in chapter 4.

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social sensibilities – the Tate was declaring these artists to be the future, and the future was now.70 The final chapter, “Everything Crash,” looks at the ways in which Black artists’ practice has been historicized, and in turn, the ways in which this historicization has adversely influenced the fortunes of Black artists. Similarly, the chapter goes on to discuss such factors as internationalism, the effects of the Arts Council’s attitudes towards Black artists, and the institutionalization of Black artists’ endeavours, reflected in the creation of what are in effect spaces ostensibly provided for the separate development of Black artists. In reality, virtually all of the book’s discussions centre on artists most of whom are based in England (and, more specifically than that, based 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 developments in Black visual arts activity in England. The main difficulty with this is that the strong suspicion exists that few Black-British artists /people, if any, would signify or designate themselves as primarily ‘English’, or would choose ‘England’ as their primary point of geographical 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 identify or signify ‘Britain’ as their primary point of geographical or national identity and location. Although the reasons for resistance to the label ‘Englishness’ as opposed to Britishness (or a preference for ‘Britain’ rather than ‘England’) might be imprecise and, indeed, ultimately ambiguous, the differences between ‘English’ and ‘British’ and between ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ matter enormously. 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 a moot point.71 Nevertheless, in

70

Reflecting this use of Black artists was the Tate’s strategizing around Chris Ofili’s “The Upper Room.” It was this work, as much as the agendas of Sir Nicholas Serota, that was regarded by the Guardian as “Taking the Tate into the future”; Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian (12 September 2005): 9. 71 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) and Black People and the British Flag (a touring exhibition which opened at Cornerhouse, Manchester, 1993). In A British Product, Brown critiqued and challenged the absence from the traditional notion of the ‘English Rose’ of women who

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this study, ‘Britain’, as a national and a geographical 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 this reason that this study is subtitled ‘Recent Black Artists and Cultural Politics in Britain’ – rather than ‘in England’. Similarly, although there is – again, arguably – widespread ambivalence among Black people about identifying 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 awareness that many of those to whom the term is applied might well, to varying degrees, find the term to be somewhat lacking. Another word of caution about the limits of labelling. The study makes mention, on occasion, of non-British-born artists, with reference to Black artists, or artists of African and/or Asian origin, etc. Strictly speaking, however, a term such as ‘non-British-born’ disregards the existence of white British artists such as Carey Young, who was born in Lusaka, Zambia in 1970. Young exhibited in The British Art Show 6,72 an exhibition that also included Zarina Bhimji. Bhimji was born in Uganda and, though resident in Britain from a relatively young age, came to highlight her Ugandan birth, upbringing, and experiences in her practice. For Young, however, being born in Zambia may well be little more than a biographical statement of fact, rather than a signifier of greater import. Another artist included in The British Art Show 6 was Hew Locke, who was born in Edinburgh but spent much of his childhood in the country of his father’s birth, Guyana.73 Locke was on occasion characterized as a Caribbean artist, even as he delighted in using and exploring enduring (rather than simply historical) Crown symbolism of the British state, and, being London-based, functioned as a

looked like her. In Black People and the British Flag, a number of artists critically engaged with multiple notions of Britishness. 72 The British Art Show 6 toured to venues in Gateshead, Manchester, Nottingham, and Bristol between September 2005 and September 2006. The British Art Show 6 (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2005). 73 Hew Locke’s father, Donald Locke, was also a sculptor. Born in British Guiana in 1930, he studied in the U K and, after returning to Guyana for a number of years, came back to London, where he lived and worked for a time, after which he moved to the U S A . His work featured in The Other Story exhibition. He died in 2010.

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British artist alongside others so regarded.74 Such considerations should lead us to ponder the possible limitations, contradictions, and, on occasion, difficulties of seemingly emphatic labels of identity, whether presumed, imposed or declared. Change is largely a given, an inevitable part of the human condition. But this book’s title implies that things for Black artists might indeed have changed, but not necessarily for the better. This book sets out to explore what happened to Black artists over the course of the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, and why, for them, in the words of The Notorious B.I.G., “things done changed.”75

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Alongside the work of artists such as Charles Campbell, Satch Hoyt, Steve Ouditt, and Veronica Ryan, Hew Locke’s work was included in Infinite Island, an exhibition of contemporary Caribbean artists’ practice held at Brooklyn Museum, 31 August 2007–27 January 2008. It presented “work by forty-five emerging and established artists. Selected from hundreds around the world, the artists are mostly Caribbean-born and live in the region as well as abroad. Their work explores Caribbean history, identity, sociopolitical changes in terms of cultural encounters and convergences, which often extend beyond the Caribbean into diasporic communities throughout the world.” Arnold L. Lehman, “Director’s Foreword” to Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (exh. cat., 31 August 2007–27 January 2008; New York: Brooklyn Museum, 2007): 9. The exhibition was curated by Tumelo Mosaka, Associate Curator of Exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum. 75 In his song “Things Done Changed,” the American rapper The Notorious B.I.G. bemoaned what he saw as societal breakdown in African-American communities, which, in particular, took the form of what he perceived to be an accelerated propensity to homicidal violence on the part of a younger generation, and a decreasing sense of neighbourliness. To these concerns were added family worries such as his mother’s diagnosis of breast cancer. The track was included on Ready to Die, the rapper’s debut album, released in 1994. It should be added, apropos of my allusion to the track-title, that it sits grammatically across the boundary between African-American English and Standard American, whereas “Things Done Change” is ‘properly’ creole / patwa.

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1980 S WERE IN SOME WAYS THE DECADE OF THE B LACK ARTIST . From the exhibitions involving the likes of Claudette Johnson, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, Marlene Smith and others that took place between 1981 and 1984, through to the unprecedented crop of survey exhibitions in the middle part of the decade, to Rasheed Araeen’s substantial Hayward Gallery curatorial undertaking at the end of the decade, The Other Story; there was perhaps a credible sense that significant new chapters in the history of Black artists in Britain were being written, by galleries, institutions, and curators, and by the artists themselves. From the opening of the Black-Art Gallery in 1983, through to the publication, at the end of the decade, of the only British-produced book dedicated to examining and celebrating the work of Black women artists,1 the amount of activity was epoch-making, and quite out of the ordinary. What happened to all this energy and activity? What became of the many artists whose practice emerged or developed during the course of the decade? What is it that prevented so much of that energy and activity from rolling into the 1990s and on into the new century? There are ways in which the 1980s are remembered, or perceived, as being as good as it gets (or as good as it got) for Black-British artists; a sense that the decade represented a sort of high point that somehow could not be sustained or replicated and, regretfully perhaps, could not be returned to. A few years ago, David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom, and Sonia Boyce edited a publication called Shades of Black.2 Part nostalgic reminiscence, part exercise in revisionism, part settling of old scores, the book was a curious mixture, which 1

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Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity, ed. Maud Sulter (Hebden Bridge: Urban Fox, 1990). 2 Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce (Durham N C : Duke U P & London: I N I V A / A A V A A , 2005).

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reflected and grew out of a conference of the same title a few years earlier, held at Duke University, in the U S A . There was, within Shades of Black, much in the way of gripes and carping. Furthermore, notwithstanding conference sessions such as “Curatorial Debates since the 1980s” and “Historical Perspectives on International Curatorial Debates of the 1980s and 1990s,” Shades of Black took no particularly serious interest in what came after the 1980s, and its consequences and implications for Britain’s Black artists. Inadvertently perhaps, the book offered substantial clues to and possible reasons why the decades following the 1980s, despite much curatorial activity, were such a brick wall for so many Black artists. Shades of Black, re-presented many partial, nostalgic, and revisionist readings of the 1980s, the sum total of which proved to be more hindrance than help, in constructing a compelling historical narrative of the trajectory of Black artists. Gripes and carping aside, the mind-set that the 1980s were the be-all and end-all of Black artists’ activity left the way clear for a new generation of younger Black artists who regarded the moment of their emergence as a sort of Year Zero, taking no respectful account of whatever had gone before the mid- to late 1990s. In this pathology, critics such as Adrian Searle adopted a similar Year Zero framework to that of artists such as Chris Ofili, who seemed to believe that nothing of any great substance, by way of Black artists’ activity, took place before the likes of Ofili emerged onto the scene. Few, if any, of the most successful Black artists of the present moment were minded to place their work in the historical context of the 1980s or decades before that. (Quite possibly, this is the task of art historians, rather than the duty of artists themselves. After all, the reacting against, or the ignoring of, what went before is in some ways what most characterizes each new generation of artists.) Regardless, for better or for worse, in multiple ways and for conflicting reasons, the 1980s has, for Black-British artists, proven to be an important, but somewhat ‘quarantined’ decade. Attempts to historicize or meaningfully assess Black-British artists’ practice of the 1980s have tended to fall flat for a number of reasons, though perhaps one of the most compelling has been a reluctance or inability to locate this practice in the context of what came before it, and what came after. Added to this is the hugely problematical way in which recollections of the 1980s are piecemeal, partial, incomplete. In part, the isolateness and fragmentary remembering are wilful acts, but in other ways they also reflect a profound not knowing – not knowing the full extent of what happened in the 1980s and not knowing about what preceded the 1980s, even though the mid-

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1970s to the early 1980s were in so many ways a blink of an eye. Black artists have been particularly susceptible to being excised from all manner of narratives, even, ludicrously, their own. We tend to know little or nothing about the London-based Black artists’ contribution to Festac ’77, the international festival of African and pan-African arts and culture held in Nigeria in 1977, simply because the exhibition has not been adequately recorded, catalogued, archived, or documented. This exhibition took place just a few years before a new generation of Black-British artists such as Denzil Forrester, Claudette Johnson, Mowbray Odonkor, and Eugene Palmer made such a dramatic contribution to art practice of the 1980s, yet the full significance of Festac’77 has yet to be fully appreciated, and committed to print. Bluntly put, with so much of their history consigned to obscurity, there is still much work to be done in chronicling that history, notwithstanding some substantial curatorial or research projects undertaken in recent years. There is still much of Black Britain’s ‘art history’ yet to be excavated and created, and brought into public view.3 There is a wearying and dangerous pathology in which what is created by Black people and Black artists is deemed to be of less worth than what is created by others. The bookshelves of this country’s university libraries contain no end of sloppy, partial, racially biased ‘white’ scholarship that masquerades as objective and canonical knowledge. In large part, this too often spurious gravitas and certitude derives from the implication that these books contain ‘precious’, ‘valuable’, ‘worthwhile’ ‘knowledge’. Pronouncing such ‘knowledge’ to be “lies”, Rasheed Araeen has suggested that These lies are not the lies of ordinary, ignorant or bigoted people but of a respectable liberal intelligentsia, which claims to possess knowledge and academic competence as a qualification to perform the job of both historical and critical evaluations of art.4 3

It is perhaps a measure of the absence of Black artists from accessible art history that Angeline Morrison could claim that “evidence of any relationship at all between black people and visual art has been thin on the ground.” “Strength of Vision: As Steve McQueen wins the coveted Turner Prize, Angeline Morrison looks at the sidelining of black art,” The Guardian (7 December 1999), Higher Education: 7H. 4 Rasheed Araeen, “Gravity & [Dis] Grace”, exhibition review, Third Text 22 (Spring 1993): 97, quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 85. At the time of Gravity & Grace: The Changing Condition of Sculpture 1965–1975 (Hayward Gallery, London, 21 January–14 March 1993), a ‘Statement and Appeal’ was issued by

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By implication, that which does not exist, that which is not referenced in these books, has no value. Or, value is only assigned when that which does not exist is brought into existence. This, in large measure, is the challenge facing historians of visual culture, whose areas of interest lie in the practice of Black artists. In seeking to chronicle a history of Black artists in Britain, there can be no more salutary a tale, representing the formidable challenges facing the wouldbe researcher, than what happened to the Black-Art Gallery in North London. The gallery figured prominently in the development of Black visual arts activity in 1980s Britain, but is seldom remembered by researchers and art historians. Surprisingly perhaps, Shades of Black included nothing about the gallery or its legacies. It was established in 1983 by Shakka Dedi and associates (who went by the acronym O B A A L A , for Organisation for Black Arts Advancement and Leisure Activities). Under Dedi’s directorship, a significant number of Black artists had their first London solo exhibitions, which often came with catalogues, posters, opening view cards, press releases and so on. In that regard, the gallery did much to present the work of a wide range of artists of African background and origin in a professional environment. Its early solo exhibitions included Keith Piper, followed, in time, by Sonia Boyce, Donald Rodney, and others. A passionate believer in the potential of ‘Black Art’ to be a driving, guiding, and illuminating force in the lives and destiny of Black (African, or Afrikan) peoples, Shakka Dedi and his colleagues created one of the first British manifestos of Black Art, which appeared in the catalogues accompanying several early shows at the Black-Art Gallery, beginning with Heart in Exile, the gallery’s opening exhibition in the autumn of 1983.

a body calling itself C A R A (Campaign Against Racism in Art). Titled “WHITES ONLY : Ethnic Cleansing in British Art World,” the statement condemned what it saw as the “ethnic cleansing” of Gravity & Grace and another exhibition, “The Sixties Art Scene in London,” at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, 11 March–13 June 1993. The charge was that neither of these exhibitions acknowledged or included Black artists who were active, and pursuing successful careers, during the timelines of both exhibitions. The statement concluded with an appeal to artists: “IF YOU ARE INCLUDED IN THE BARBICAN SHOW, WE APPEAL TO YOU IN THE NAME OF HUMAN EQUALITY TO WITHDRAW FROM WHAT IS A RACIST MANIFESTATION .”

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FIGURE 2 Shakka Dedi photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

From this point onwards, for a number of years, the Black-Art Gallery was in a position to have an impact on the ongoing debate about the nature, relevance and validity of ‘Black Art’ in Britain. O B A A L A ’s view of Black art was to some extent a reworking of the Black art manifestos offered ten to fifteen years earlier by the American ‘poets and prophets’ of the Black Arts Movement.5 We believe that Black art is born of a consciousness based upon experience of what it means to be an Afrikan descendant wherever in the world we are. ‘Black’ in our context means all those of Afrikan descent. ‘Art’; the creative expression of the Black person or group based on historical or contemporary

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See Black Poets and Prophets: A Bold Uncompromising Clear Blueprint for Black Liberation, ed. Woodie King & Earl Anthony (New York: New American Library / Mentor, 1972). The book proclaimed the “Theory, Practice, and Esthetics of the PanAfricanist Revolution” and included writings by Eldridge Cleaver, Sekou Touré, Stokely Carmichael, Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Frantz Fanon, James Forman, Ron Milner, and Ron Karenga.

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experiences. Black-Art should provide an historical document of local and international Black experience. It should educate by perpetuating traditional art forms to suit new experiences and environments. It is essential that Black artists aim to make their art ‘popular’ – that is an expression that the whole community can recognise and understand.6

The gallery manifesto continued: we also believe that artistic creativity should extend itself to functional and common usage artefacts (e.g. Household furniture and artefacts). Overall honesty should be the mark of Black-Art. Therefore it cannot afford to be elitist or pretentious. We believe that Black-Art can, should and will play a very important role in community education and positive development, and that it is by having their work recognized by the general community that Black artists draw their strength. O B A A L A exists therefore, to stimulate and implement discussion and activity which will bring about the desired close relationship between consciousness, art and positive community development.7

One way in which Dedi and his colleagues strove to maintain what they considered to be a clear position was in the naming of the gallery. While some artists and activists were starting to shy away from the term ‘Black Art’, Dedi mounted a spirited defence of the term by calling his gallery space “The Black-Art Gallery.” This was not meant to be just a “Black” gallery. It was meant to be a unique exhibition space, dedicated to the promotion of “Black-Art.” Capital B, hyphen, capital A. The gallery – under the directorship of Shakka Dedi – refused to use or recognize any variant of this. The first exhibition held at the Black-Art Gallery was Heart in Exile, which featured the work of twenty-two artists, every one of them of African or AfricanCaribbean origin. For almost a decade, the gallery maintained its “AfrikanCaribbean” position and no other artists – beyond those perceived to fall within the gallery’s remit – were exhibited there. Non-figurative or abstract

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O B A A L A Committee, “A Statement on Black Art and the Gallery,” in Heart in Exile (exh. cat., 4 September–2 October 1983; the Black-Art Gallery, 1983): 4. Heart in Exile 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 by the name of “Woodpecker.” 7 O B A A L A Committee, “A Statement on Black Art and the Gallery,” 4.

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painting was conspicuously absent, because such work could be seen as being “elitist or pretentious.”

FIGURE 3 Capital B, hyphen, capital A The Black-Art Gallery, 1986 photograph  Eddie Chambers

Although the gallery had its detractors, for a decade or so it made enormous contributions to Black-British visual-arts activity. The Black-Art Gallery received most of its core funding from Islington Borough Council. When the gallery closed, its entire contents – archive material included – was simply junked or got rid of, to make way for the building’s new tenants. Over a decade of documentation relating to Black visual culture was metaphorically and literally thrown into a skip, or otherwise vanished without a trace. Islington Local History Centre, Finsbury Library has no information relating to the Black-Art Gallery in any of its catalogues and indexes, thereby depriving local people, researchers, and others of information about a crucial initiative. Whatever ‘local history’ is being documented in the borough of Islington is compromised by its partiality. Catalogues, posters, press cuttings, and other documentation pertaining to the Black-Art Gallery have simply and irreversibly disappeared. This is in so many ways an allegorical tale. Time and again, Black artists’ practice has found itself subjected, sometimes in a very short space of time, to brutal consignment to a no-man’s-land between activity and obscurity. This lack of respect for the value of what Black people

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create is a formidable problem with grave consequences, for the artists and for those interested in their practice. Perhaps this is what Kobena Mercer meant when, in another context, he wrote: without museums, collections, and institutions to preserve the materials of shared cultural history, the past is vulnerable to selective erasure – a symbolic threat that the cultures of the Black Atlantic diaspora have had to contend with from their inception.”8

FIGURE 4 Heart in Exile poster, 1983, featuring untitled work by Tyrone Bravo The Black-Art Gallery

The artists themselves organized the Black artists’ exhibitions of the early 1980s, with little or no official assistance or support. The first time public funding was made available for a dedicated, long-term Black visual arts venture was when Islington Borough Council provided a property on 8

Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 69.

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Seven Sisters Road and revenue funding for the Black-Art Gallery.9 As mentioned, it presented itself as a ‘community’ venture and made no attempt to embrace the art establishment or wider, non-Black, art practice. This new Black visual arts activity, such as the opening of the Black-Art Gallery, the Creation for Liberation exhibitions, and exhibitions organized by artists such as Lubaina Himid, attracted the interest of the art establishment, though it would be several years before larger London galleries and major London-based critics took any notice of Black artists. By late 1983, the emergence of Black-British visual artists was well under way. Nigel Pollitt commented: “This year has seen remarkable growth in the visibility of black artists.”10 The first significant instance of the art establishment’s coming to terms with Black artists was the arrival in 1984 of what became known, in certain quarters, as ‘the survey show’. The one such exhibition that most signified the 1980s ‘emergence’ of Black artists into greater, officially sanctioned and funded visibility was Into the Open. It was important for a number of reasons. First, although Creation for Liberation had, a year earlier, mounted a large exhibition including work by many artists, and Lubaina Himid’s Black Woman Time Now featured fourteen artists, Into the Open was the first exhibition mounted by a municipal art gallery that featured relatively substantial contributions from a significant number – twenty-one – of Black artists. In order to understand the significance of the institutional embrace of Black-British artists that took place in the mid-1980s, it is necessary to look at the reasoning behind, and the organizing of, Into the Open and the other major exhibition of the period, From Two Worlds. Looking closely at such exhibitions affords an opportunity to understand the reasons why, and the

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It would, however, be a mistake to categorically discount the politics of public funding in setting up initiatives such as this. The ‘riots’ of 1980 and 1981 created a sense that, along with other grievances, young Black Britons were perceived to be living in environments and communities that were deficient in social and recreational amenities. It was in this context that money was made available for capital projects and other ventures centred on social and recreational activities. 10 He continued: “two shows devoted to black women artists, the first open exhibition of black art, year two of the Westbourne Gallery, a second showing of the PanAfrikan Connection and a season of African artists at the Commonwealth [Institute]. Now comes the Black-Art Gallery – the first to commit itself to work by black artists alone, and get public funding”; City Limits (7–13 October 1983), Visual Arts: 64.

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ways in which, a whole generation of Black artists ran into difficulties even before the 1980s had drawn to a close. Similarly, in order to grasp fully the significance of the types of curatorial and press attention received by Ofili et al., from the mid- to late 1990s onwards, we need to examine the sorts of mainstream press coverage that exhibitions such as Into the Open received.

FIGURE 5 Into the Open, opening view, 1984 photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery11

In seeking to understand these things, we can begin to appreciate the scale of the disappointments and difficulties that were the lot of so many Black artists who found their stock, such as it was, falling, even as smaller number of new Black artists found their stock rising and rising still further. Reflecting on the dramatically declining fortunes of so many artists, Niru Ratnam noted: “Yet, despite the number of exhibitions, conferences and theoretical tracts written, ‘Black Art’ increasingly found itself labelled as worthy but uninteresting.”12 11

The photo shows the private view of Into the Open, held on Friday, 3 August 1984 at Sheffield’s Mappin Art Gallery. Pictured in the foreground are Nhlanhla Benjamin ‘Ben’ Nsusha, Lubaina Himid, and Veronica Ryan. 12 Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” New Left Review 235 (May–June 1999): 155.

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Ratnam, however, was keen to place the ‘worthy but uninteresting’ tag in a wider context: As the serious 1980s art world, with its themes of A I D S , sexism and racism and its self-important movements such as German neo-expressionism, gave way to more lightweight, ironic 1990s art world, most clearly manifested in the phenomenon of young British art, ‘Black Art’ was quietly shelved by the critics and curators.13

Some years later, Keith Piper reiterated this judgment: “In many ways, part of the dominant text of the 1990s was an expression of happy release from the dreary preoccupations of the 1980s.”14 From the moment mainstream institutions took an interest in Black artists, problems (for the latter) multiplied. With so many Black artists of the 1980s being British-born and art-school-trained, there was unlimited potential for their work to be embraced and incorporated into the ongoing programming of art galleries across the country, which had traditionally excluded or tended to otherwise ignore Black artists. But instead of integrating their work, mainstream galleries embarked on a piecemeal programme of ‘separate’ exhibitions, initially for Black artists in general, but then narrowing selection to artists deemed better than the rest. The process by which certain Black artists were preferred over others was perhaps an inevitable consequence of their engagement with the mainstream. After all (as mentioned in the introduction to this study), according to the mores of the art world, it appears inevitable, even axiomatic, that only a handful of (Black) artists at a time can command both success and profile. The vast majority must unfortunately languish in degrees of relative obscurity, or bask in the curatorial limelight only fleetingly. For most Black artists, art-world hierarchies worked against them – so much so, that practically all Black artists of the 1980s eventually found themselves falling foul of changing hierarchies in which the likes of Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare were judged to be the country’s

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Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 155. Keith Piper, “Wait, Did I Miss Something? Some Personal Musings on the 1980s and Beyond,” in Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce (Durham N C : Duke U P & London: I N I V A / A A V A A , 2005): 35. 14

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best Black artists, much as artists such as Sonia Boyce and Keith Piper were judged to be the country’s best Black artists in the mid-1980s.15

FIGURE 6 Into the Open poster, 1984, based on a portrait photo of Houria Niati Mappin Art Gallery  Museums Sheffield

Into the Open took place at the Mappin, an important gallery in Sheffield. The Mappin had hosted the first British Art Show, in 1979, and was a highly significant regional venue.16 Up to this point, Black artists had been absent from its exhibition programme, as was the case with a great number of other municipal art galleries. This absence was addressed by the introduction of a 15

Both Boyce and Piper exhibited widely throughout the decade and were regularly singled out for praise within press coverage of group exhibitions in which their work was included. The Arts Council Collection made acquisitions from both artists during the course of the 1980s. 16 The British Art Show is discussed in chapter 4 of this study.

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lumpish ‘Black’ exhibition. Quite why a ‘separate’ exhibition was deemed preferable to an ongoing, integrated programme of Black artists’ work was not clear. After all, fully integrated exhibition programming was an obvious way to introduce the work of Black artists. Regular ‘Black’ exhibitions, whether solo, thematic, or group, were also an obvious way to introduce the work of Black artists into an otherwise ‘white’ exhibition programme. Seemingly, integrated programming was never considered a credible option by any of the country’s major gallery spaces during the 1980s. They chose instead to mount what were single and isolated ‘survey’ exhibitions in the vein of Into the Open. The art establishment’s consistent use of a ‘separatist’ model and the consistent rejection of an ‘integrationist’ model frustrated and hemmed in the exhibiting ambitions of the wider body of Black artists themselves. The choice of Sheffield’s Mappin Art Gallery for Into the Open was a significant one. The show came about as an initiative of the city council’s arts committee, and the opening of the exhibition marked the start of Afro-Caribbean Week in the city. Sheffield’s reputation at the time was reflected in its status, in some quarters, as the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire or the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire, a somewhat satirical reference to Sheffield and its left-leaning Labour administration of Sheffield City Council during the 1980s, under the leadership of a politician then regarded as a Labour firebrand, David Blunkett. It was perhaps in deference to Sheffield’s Labour Party credentials that Into the Open was scheduled to be opened by Norman Buchan M.P., Shadow Spokesman on the Arts, rather than by Minister for the Arts, The Earl of Gowrie, then serving under the ruling Conservative administration of the time, headed by Margaret Thatcher. In the event, the exhibition was opened by Richard Caborn, M.P. for Sheffield Central and chairman of the city’s particularly active anti-apartheid group. Into the Open was important because it marked the beginning of the artestablishment strategy of presenting ‘stripped and stranded’ Black artists’ exhibitions over the next several years. Had these exhibitions been one-, two- or three-person shows, perhaps their separatist nature would not have been so troublesome. But the limitations and difficulties of placing a large number of black-skinned artists in one singular, largely decontextualized exhibition slot, in an otherwise all-white gallery programme, became increasingly apparent as the decade progressed. In effect, this created a situation in which, by the end of the 1980s, many Black artists found themselves with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

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With Into the Open and subsequent large-scale exhibitions, gallery-going audiences hardly ever had the opportunity to view the work of Black artists in wider artistic contexts, thereby being able to compare and contrast the work of these artists with groups of their white colleagues. The cumulative effect of this relentless quarantining was to reinforce the perception that Black artists’ work was different, self-referencing, and ultimately marginal. What was happening with exhibitions such as Into the Open was that, unilaterally, galleries thought they had found a way to ‘deal’ with Black artists. Large numbers of artists, taken to ‘represent’ various types of art practice, were thrown in one pot, often with little or no curatorial thesis to hold them together. (Except the frequently superficial one – that all the artists were black, or non-white.) Where a curatorial thesis was applied, it often proved to be inadequate, such as the 1986 Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition, From Two Worlds. Taking their cue from the Into the Open staging, other large art galleries would approach two or more Black artists and commission them to select a number of other practitioners, plus themselves, for a ‘Black’ exhibition. These exhibitions, though often declaring otherwise, amounted to broad, generalized, and isolated surveys of what assorted groupings of ‘Black artists’ were producing in that period. The curatorial thrust or, more accurately perhaps, the group of artists selected, differed from exhibition to exhibition, but the fleeting, decontextualized presence of a numerically large number of black-skinned artists was the consistent factor in the exhibitions that would, in time, take place at galleries in London and across the country. By 1985 (within two years of Black artists’ self-assured emergence), the ‘survey’ show had become the standard means by which exhibition officers of publicly funded galleries dealt with Black artists.17 This strategy had a serious effect on the course of Black visual arts activity: collectively, these ‘survey’ exhibitions contributed to the creation of a recognizable pool of Black practitioners whom the media and the gallerygoing public came to identify as the finite and absolute representation of the country’s ‘Black’ artists. It scarcely mattered that many artists appeared in no 17

For arguments and opinions on the perceived problematical nature of mainstream engagement with Black artists during the 1980s, see Eddie Chambers, “Mainstream Capers,” Artrage 14 (Autumn 1986): 31–34, and “The Marginalisation of Black Art,” Race Today Review (1986): 32–33. See also Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, particularly chapter 5, “Publicly funded galleries, ‘survey’ exhibitions and Black artists during the 1980s.”

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more than one or two of these ‘survey’ exhibitions. What did matter was that there gradually emerged from these exhibitions a core of artists whose inclusion in these exhibitions seemed to be obligatory or inevitable. This process of identifying the country’s ‘best’ Black artists was aided by critics and reviewers who liked to identify those who they considered to be ‘real’ or ‘good’ artists – those whose work set them aside from the generic mass. Exhibitions such as Into the Open guaranteed that the work of Black artists was relentlessly quarantined from the general and mainstreamed body of exhibition activity. Such shows also meant that, individually, Black artists were being denied the scale of resources that more favoured white artists were relatively used to. Well-resourced solo exhibitions and showings of work by numerically small groups of artists were common with white artists. Black artists frequently had to share often cramped and crowded exhibition spaces with many other Black artists. Such large-scale exhibitions need not have been a major problem, had they been followed by consistent, integrated (or non-integrated) programming of Black artists. The reality, however, was that these exhibitions were rarely followed up with substantial efforts. They by and large remained ‘one-off’ exhibitions, thereby ensuring that significant numbers of artists, having been represented by a very limited selection of their work, were kept out of subsequent exhibitions at these galleries for years on end. Perhaps the biggest single difficulty with the large-scale all-inclusive Black exhibition was that such undertakings were ‘problems’, which at the time masqueraded as ‘solutions’, albeit short-term ones, to the protracted indifference of certain galleries towards Black artists. Exhibitions such as Into the Open and From Two Worlds are remembered or constructed as representing the Biblical “seven years of great plenty” (Genesis 41:30) for BlackBritish artists. Such a view tends to overlook the extent to which some galleries appeared to engage with Black artists with great reluctance and hesitancy, and, it seemed, only after the needs of all other artists had been generously attended to. Keith Piper explicitly alluded to this in his foreword to the catalogue for the group exhibition The Image Employed: So Black art reaches Cornerhouse, and none could say before time. There can be little excuse for Manchester’s premier contemporary arts space to have taken almost two years to even begin to acknowledge the existence of a vibrant and innovative Black arts movement in this country. Until such an acknowledgement is consolidated within a coherent policy and programme

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of future events, Cornerhouse’s boast of being a ‘nationally orientated and broadly-based arts centre’ will unfortunately remain hollow rhetoric.18

There were other problems associated with Into the Open and other such subsequent exhibitions – so much so, that press responses to these exhibitions, discussed later in this chapter, cannot be divorced from the difficult ways in which the exhibitions themselves were mounted. These problematical exhibitions tended to produce problematical reviews. Furthermore, the ways in which these exhibitions were responded to had a marked influence on the ways in which mainstream galleries exhibited Black artists. In assessing aspects of Into the Open and its press coverage, we can begin to see how such media treatment influenced the ensuing reception of Black artists. The exhibition spawned a number of imitations, the accumulative effect of which was to hem (the progress of) Black artists. Into the Open was the exhibition that heralded the beginning of a brief flirtation between the then art critic of the Guardian, Waldemar Januszczak, and those he would come to describe as his ‘favourite’ Black artists. His review of the exhibition touched on many attitudes and assumptions that would in time be held in various quarters of the art establishment and come to blight the collective progress of Black artists. The exhibition was clearly titled Into the Open. Yet Januszczak or his sub-editor chose to call his review “Black Art.” Thus he reflected and contributed to the arrival of a troublesome association that Black artists were not entirely able to shake themselves free of – the tendency to have their collective practices, irrespective of difference, irrespective of curatorial thesis, labelled by others ‘Black art’. One would not ordinarily expect an exhibition by a given number of white artists to be labelled ‘White art’, especially if a bona fide exhibition title was available and in use. The list of artists represented in the exhibition was noticeably diverse, in terms of their artistic practice, national origin, and racial backgrounds. Yet Januszczak or his sub-editor collapsed these diverse, almost eclectic identities into an inappropriately and misleadingly mono-ethnic headline. This labelling

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Keith Piper, “Foreword” to The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art, sel. Keith Piper & Marlene Smith (exh. cat., 13 June–19 July 1987; Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1987): np. Exhibiting: Allan de Souza, Amanda Holiday, Chila Kumari Burman, Claudette Johnson, Donald G. Rodney, Eddie Chambers, Jennifer Comrie, Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, [Trevor] Mathison / [Edward] George, Mowbray Odonkor, Simone Alexander, Sonia Boyce, Sutapa Biswas, Tam Joseph, and Zarina Bhimji.

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of all work by all non-European artists as ‘Black art’ has contributed greatly to the ongoing marginalization and pigeonholing of Black artists.19 Into the Open symbolized a recurring difficulty in the way Black artists’ exhibitions were received in the mid- to late part of the decade. At the root of this was the question of why these exhibitions had been brought into existence. Frequently, their stated intention was to introduce gallery audiences to the work of a hitherto unrecognized or neglected body of artists. But such an intention was only plausible if the galleries involved faced up to the historical and ongoing presence of racism in their gallery programmes. But art galleries refused to admit to the extent to which ‘race’ and racial discrimination informed their exhibition policies. Yet a gallery such as the Mappin was happy to programme an exhibition such as Into the Open based solely on the criteria of race or racial difference. The confusion of this strategy could and did prevent critics such as Januszczak (and, in time, others) from gaining an adequate understanding of why exhibitions such as Into the Open existed. Januszczak reviewed Into the Open for the Guardian and three-fifths of the review was given over to celebrating the work of Sonia Boyce. Out of the twenty-one artists in the exhibition, it was Boyce alone who managed to have her name mentioned in full, twice. The only other mention of an artist (though 19

Rather than specifically signifying the ideas that originated among African-American writers, poets, playwrights, and artists, such as Larry Neal and Ron Karenga, from the late 1960 through to the early 1970s in the U S A (and adopted and adapted by small numbers of practitioners and activists here in the U K ), ‘Black art’, as a term used by sections of the press and the art world itself, came to have a general application that betrayed a lack of respect for individual Black artists. As Richard Hylton noted, “Although Rasheed Araeen, Shakka Dedi et al. had provided some cogent (though conflicting) interpretations of ‘Black Art’, by the mid-1980s their accounts had increasingly become sidelined and irrelevant to the arts sector. ‘Black Art’ was a term that would frequently, if unsatisfactorily, be applied to mean art produced by Black people.” Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 95. Hylton went on to reiterate the point, by quoting Rasheed Araeen: “as ‘Black art’ entered the common parlance within the broader (visual) arts terrain in Britain, its meaning became ever more generalised, signifying ‘anything that cannot be attributed to white or European people’.” Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 97, quoting Rasheed Araeen, “The Emergence of Black Consciousness in Contemporary Art in Britain: Seventeen Years of Neglected History,” in The Essential Black Art, sel. Rasheed Araeen, essays by Araeen & Gavin Jantjes, statement by Keith Piper (exh. cat.; London: Chisenhale Gallery / Kala / Black Umbrella, 1988): 7.

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this was slightly abstract) came when Januszczak wrote about “the Boyces, the Pipers” – a reference to Keith Piper. The process of singling out those deemed to be ‘the best’ was an inevitable aspect of art criticism, though it was a strategy that had a devastating impact on the fortunes of most Black artists when it was first adopted, then refined, by the gallery system. In his review, Januszczak revealed a number of troubling attitudes towards Black people and Black artists. He suggested that the title of the exhibition “clearly implies that black art is coming out of the ghetto”20 – art that previously existed beyond the gallery must inevitably have been sequestered. He chose to link the heavily socially constructed and frequently stigmatized notion of the ‘ghetto’ to the collective work of Black artists, irrespective of who those artists were, where they lived, and where they had been exhibiting. There existed those artists for whom the ‘ghetto’ association was in no way problematical – they would have been happy with the construct of the artist as ‘rude boy’, ‘ghetto yout’, ‘ghetto defender’. But Januszczak made no effort to further locate or contextualize his use of such a loaded term. His “black art is coming out of the ghetto” prompted (but left unanswered) questions as to how and by whom “black art” had been ‘ghettoized’. In his view “what the exhibition underlines over and over again is that it is not enough to be noticed finally. You must also have something worthwhile to say.”21 The implication was that either the work of white artists “had something worthwhile to say,” or that it was irrelevant and of no consequence if the work of white artists had nothing “worthwhile to say.” Not all work by white artists exhibited in galleries had “something worthwhile to say.” Having “something worthwhile to say” had rarely been a criterion of good art (except, for example, when such a position was championed by advocates of social Realism, or Socialist Realism, at different times during the twentieth century, or by Black Power/ Black Art proponents in the U S A of the late 1960s and early 1970s). To Januszczak, much of the work presented in Into the Open was signally mediocre. But he was also, through vague and unspecific language, making impossible demands on Black artists, by failing to indicate by what criteria he could regard their individual and collective practice as “having something worthwhile to say.” In the tradition of the art critic, he had

20

Waldemar Januszczak, “Black Art,” review of Into the Open, The Guardian (13 August 1984): 9. 21 Januszczak, “Black Art,” 9.

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perhaps positioned himself as the arbiter of which art practice was ‘worthwhile’ and which was not. In Januszczak’s view, it was “not enough” to be a black-skinned artist in a white gallery. In his judgment, Into the Open failed to indicate “the best black art.” The review continued, “With so many styles and approaches on display this is clearly meant to be a general survey rather than a sample of the best black art.” He considered the comprehensive scope of Into the Open to be “a shame.” He did, however, identify the “Boyces” and “Pipers” as being good enough for “any” company. (For “any” read ‘white’). Januszczak dismissed most of the Into the Open artists as not being good enough for “any” company by referring to them as “only” being “here because of the colour of their skin.” In actuality, that last statement was not untrue. The Into the Open artists had been gathered together using skin colour as at least a partial criterion. But it was not the only one. Pogus Caesar and Lubaina Himid had each selected half of the artists, plus themselves. Although they chose not to elaborate on the reasoning behind their choices (in the exhibition catalogue), it was clear from the little that they wrote that they had made what they thought were considered choices.22 But wide-ranging individual differences among this group of artists were not apparent or convincing to Januszczak. Unable to perceive or acknowledge the contributors’ identities as visual artists, he could think and see only in terms of their collective black skins. The ‘racial’ strategizing that Januszczak was criticizing had come about only in response to the wider racial strategy of generally excluding Black artists from white galleries. Of the innumerable all-white exhibitions that had been the collective catalyst for Into the Open, Januszczak said nothing. This failure to notice the arguably racist and exclusionist workings of the art establishment, coupled with an eagerness to condemn what is perceived as Black separatist strategies, became a recurring feature of press responses to a number of Black artists’ group exhibitions. Januszczak dismissed the bulk of Into the Open by concluding his review “all black art is no more worthy of our undivided attention than all white art.”23 Himid had stressed in her introduction that the selection was not definitive. Julian Spalding, the Director of Arts in Sheffield, had let it be known in his foreword to the catalogue that this “was necessarily only a sample.” Yet, to Januszczak, Into the Open, a solitary exhi22 23

The selectors both offered brief introductions to the Into the Open catalogue (np). Januszczak, “Black Art,” 9.

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bition though it was, represented “all black art.” Such a statement prompted the necessary, albeit rhetorical, questions of where and how Januszczak made known a corresponding dismissal of “all white art.” The Guardian review betrayed the assumption, central to the dominant pathology, that what was the product of ‘white’ people was ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’, and could not be read in terms of ‘race’; and what ‘Black’ people did was inherently ‘different’, ‘specific’, ‘racial’ (and, by implication, inferior).24 This had been the most important review of Into the Open. Januszczak was an influential critic and he made it clear that, in his view, Sonia Boyce and Keith Piper were the only two artists in the exhibition worth bothering with. That much was clear from his review, as were its dismissive attitudes towards the wider community of Black artists. Much of the other press coverage secured by Into the Open was, by turns, aggressive or defensive in tone, echoing the tendency to see the coming-together, or bringing-together, of Black people/artists as some sort of threat, or denial of Britain’s self-image as a benevolent and tolerant country. Into the Open was a deliberately inoffensive title for an exhibition, which nevertheless managed to transport the symbolism of visibility, new life, and bright beginnings. Yet Art & Artists magazine could claim that the exhibition title was “rather defensive.”25 When Black artists came ‘into the open’, so, too, did a range of opinions about them and their practice that reflected particular pathologies. There was a correlation between the ways in which Black artists were exhibited and the ways in which their practice was written about. In years to come, a select few Black artists who emerged in the mid-1990s were able to break free of, or distance themselves from, these pathologies, even as the reception these artists secured seemed to confirm or underline the ways in which the previous generation of Black artists had largely been framed. Maggie Lett wrote a review of the exhibition for the Morning Telegraph, a Sheffield newspaper.26 In her review, Lett wrote of the “rich rhythms and grotesque features of traditional 24

Richard Hylton framed the pathology as follows: “ ‘ Ethnic minority’ and ‘culturally diverse’ are terms that privilege a limited notion of difference based on ‘race’. Such notions are unhelpful because they presuppose or imply normality to be white and everything else to be ‘diverse’ ” (The Nature of the Beast, 23). 25 Like Januszczak’s Guardian review, this insert was titled “Black Art”; Art & Artists (August 1984): 5. 26 Maggie Lett, “Lessons still to be learned,” review of Into the Open, Morning Telegraph (Sheffield; 21 August 1984): 6.

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Afro art.” She considered much of the work in Into the Open to be bound up with ‘politics’. She began: P O L I T I C S and art are inextricably linked in an exhibition at the Mappin

gallery, Sheffield, following in a long tradition of artists using their work to promote national celebration, or to comment on social injustice and man’s inhumanity to man.

Her use of the expression “national celebration” was curious and her reference to “man’s inhumanity to man” was arguably racially evasive. Lett’s generalized statement about “politics and art” being “inextricably linked” in this exhibition was not unreasonable, although, while in the exhibition there was an amount of work with a distinct socio-political narrative and content, there was also work that could be read as being devoid of the same – Sylbert Bolton’s and Veronica Ryan’s, for instance. While Januszczak had dismissed much of the work in Into the Open for having nothing “worthwhile to say,” Lett contended that “the message itself is not enough”: Painting a picture to express anger is not the same as creating a coherent work of art, which embraces an aesthetic independence that leaves the mere political image on a par with grafting.27

Although she could only have been referring to the work of a very few of the artists in the exhibition, Lett caricatured the show as the incoherent efforts of angry and disgruntled people. The notion that Black artists painted pictures or made art to express ‘anger’ was characteristic of much of the general response to their work. ‘Anger’ became the stock reading that white reviewers such as Lett could attach to the collective body of work in Into the Open, thereby disregarding entirely work such as the abstract canvases of Sylbert Bolton and the non-figurative sculpture of Veronica Ryan. Work that employed images of Black people was dismissed, or caricatured, as ‘angry’. So, too, was work that explored social themes, and ideas of history and identity. Universally and liberally applied, the word ‘angry’ was used to describe art that attempted to challenge racism or explore identity and culture. Applicable or not, ‘anger’ became, in the view of Lett and other reviewers, synonymous with Black visual expression.

27

Lett, “Lessons still to be learned,” 6.

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Lett was, in her review, expressing the art-establishment pathology that what were taken to be overt expressions of political /racial opinions had no place in the polite context of an art gallery such as the Mappin, as ‘art’ was, or should be, more correctly a pleasant and benign form of universal expression; of transcendent spiritual or aesthetic values. Lett ignored much of the work in the exhibition that may well have satisfied such criteria. It seemed as if Lett’s biggest problem with Into the Open was that all of the artists were Black, and that as such, they were somehow, in coming together or being brought together, constituting an antagonistic crowd, ganging up against her and other white people, or accentuating ‘race’ in ways which made Lett uncomfortable. Much of the language used by Lett in her review was questionable, and arguably patronizing in its tone, particularly when she claimed that the exhibition was “endowed with a curiosity value” that “would have been absent had it been left to the gallery-goer to discover the colour of the artist’s skin.”28 But perhaps this attitude was to be expected, given that Lett’s review had been titled “Lessons still to be learned” (the sentiment being directed at the Black artists, rather than at the white institution). In assessments of the exhibition, perhaps the most positive view of Into the Open was that it was a bungled though well-intentioned attempt to decisively introduce Black artists of the moment into the gallery. But the large number of artists exhibited (and the consequent slenderness of their individual representation) would be a model which, when replicated as faithfully as it was, created no end of problems for the wider body of artists. Conceivably, such problems need not have been created, had such exhibitions been immediately followed up with more exhibitions of work by fewer or individual artists. This was rarely to be the case, though Richard Hylton suggested that the Mappin “arguably fulfilled its promise”29 to “follow up Into the Open with a number of new, small and large scale projects.”30 Although the genealogy of Black survey exhibitions could arguably be traced back to Into the Open, the Mappin Art Gallery distinguished itself from other publicly funded galleries by quickly moving away from this form of engagement, [by] staging solo exhibitions, commissioning new work and purchasing art by Black artists […]. The exhibition Depicting History for Today

28

Lett, “Lessons still to be learned,” 6. Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 86. 30 Julian Spalding, “Foreword” to Into the Open catalogue (np). 29

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(1987) reflected some interest in presenting Black artists’ work outside of the ‘Black survey’ exhibition format.31

Mention should be made of one decidedly positive outcome of the exhibition. At its close, the Mappin secured, for its permanent collection, a number of pieces of work from Into the Open. These included one of Tam Joseph’s signature pieces from the mid-1980s, “U K School Report”.32 Given the often debilitating extent to which work by Black artists was, when in the custody of its makers, vulnerable to loss, damage, and oftentimes poor storage conditions, the acquisition of a number of works by the Mappin was a hugely important gesture that safeguarded the works. There was at least one other respect in which Into the Open and a few of the subsequent survey shows were positive exercises. Into the Open had included work by a wide range of artists, some better known than others. Among the lesser-known artists were Clement Bedeau, Tony Moo–Young, Richie Riley, and Jorge Santos. Similarly, in The Thin Black Line Himid had included lesser-known artists such as Jennifer Comrie, Brenda Agard, and (at the time) Maud Sulter. A range of Black artists who were different from each other in many ways were sharing the same exhibition spaces – relating to each other, learning from each other, being with each other. From Two Worlds, the other major survey show of the decade, changed all that. What this exhibition did was to present a number of artists whom the art establishment in general (and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in particular) considered to be key players. This was an ominous strategy because it signalled an emphatic abandonment of the wider community of Black artists. Instead, since that time, the art establishment has chosen to engage with literally no more than a handful of artists – initially, the Boyces, the Pipers, and a few others. In time, these artists would themselves be set aside, and new favourites would take centre stage, albeit as the beneficiaries of bigger opportunities and more substantial media attention. The most important ‘survey’ show of the decade was From Two Worlds, held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Turning its attention to Black artists was something of a latter-day conversion by the Whitechapel Art Gallery, a conversion which might not have been entirely voluntary. The gallery – funded in part by the Arts Council – was one of several judged to have offered “inade-

31

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 86. Tam Joseph, “U K School Report” (1983, acrylic and crayon on canvas, 76 x 141 cm), Collection of Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield. 32

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quate” and “disappointing” responses to the Arts Council’s document “The Arts and Ethnic Minorities – Action Plan,” published in February of 1986.33 The Whitechapel Art Gallery was one of several galleries named in Arts Council documents as needing to be “encouraged to respond to the Action Plan.”34 It may well have been what the Whitechapel Art Gallery perceived as ‘pressure’ from the Arts Council (for greater acknowledgment of those it termed “ethnic minorities”) that led to what was in effect a hasty, though nevertheless important, undertaking. Notwithstanding the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s apparent tardiness in responding to prompts from the Arts Council, From Two Worlds was important because it signalled the triumph of those Black-British artists whom the art establishment had selected for greatness. Simultaneously, this triumph also signalled the emphatic abandonment of the wider, less favoured community of Black artists. In terms of the art establishment’s interest in Black artists, From Two Worlds represented a pinnacle. Never before or since, with the exception of The Other Story, had a major London gallery taken such an interest in Black-British artists as a definable group of practitioners. From Two Worlds marked a sudden and dramatic shift in the way Black artists were written about in the press. Since Into the Open two years earlier, a limited number of artists had enjoyed evidently positive and glowing, though sporadic, press references. But From Two Worlds betrayed clearly discernible boredom and irritation on the part of several art critics; the ‘novelty’, the ‘newness’, of Black-British artists had worn off. This was faithfully reflected by the art galleries, who initiated little or nothing in the way of Black artists’ exhibitions for the last two or three years of the decade. From Two Worlds followed the mould of the survey show established by Into the Open two years previously. But some artists thought that things in the long run would be different this time and that this really was a foot in the door. This was Sonia Boyce’s thinking. She was one of the artists closely involved in the exhibition, and, within a year of its taking place, she was still according the exhibition ‘revolutionary’ status when she suggested that the exhibition “represented a kind of ‘breakthrough’ for black arts within the mainstream.”35 But From Two Worlds had turned out to be no such thing, 33

See “A C E and the 4% Target,” in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 59. Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 59. 35 “Sonia Boyce in Conversation with John Roberts,” Third Text 1.1 (Autumn 1987): 56. 34

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though the exhibition represented the first time in the history of the Whitechapel Art Gallery that Black-British artists had been represented in a greater part of the gallery. From Two Worlds was, arguably, ultimately an exercise in marginalization. But this was not a perhaps predictable ‘them and us’ configuration that pitched hapless Black artists against the scheming and exploitative white institution, parsimonious in its attention to these practitioners. The exhibition was a product of some of the most capable thinkers in the U K and London’s community of Black artists. One of the most important aspects of From Two Worlds was the way in which it attempted to construct some sort of narrative or dialogue around which to hang a largely miscellaneous assortment of artists’ work. This was a unique and important departure, as From Two Worlds set itself up as a more credible version of the sorts of exhibition that had previously involved large numbers of Black artists. Two of the biggest survey shows of the period had, to differing degrees, been superficial, cursory, or otherwise unsatisfactory in their construction. The first, Into the Open (1984), brought together the work of about two dozen artists from a wide range of practices and backgrounds. The premise of this assembly was that the exhibition was bringing the work of these artists out of the shadows, out of darkness and obscurity ‘into the open’. The second show, The Thin Black Line (1985/86), had the potential to be an exhibition of great importance, were it not for the way in which the work of thirteen Black women artists was crammed into not much more than the corridor space and an upper-level room of the I C A in London. The I C A had never previously exhibited the work of Black-British artists to any degree, so the fact that the exhibition was taking place at such an important central London gallery had the potential to be highly significant. However, the marginalizing act of positioning the work outside of the main downstairs gallery areas served to devalue and undermine the exhibition and its importance. In direct contrast to The Thin Black Line, From Two Worlds (which took place within six months of the former exhibition’s closing) occupied the whole two floors of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Because this gallery was dedicated exclusively to showing temporary exhibitions (i.e. it had no permanent museum collection that it showed simultaneously or alternately), the giving-over of the entire space assumed a great deal of significance. By contrast, Into the Open occupied the temporary exhibition rooms within a wider museum environment, and The Thin Black Line had occupied marginalized spaces outside of the main gallery space at the I C A .

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The senior staff of the Whitechapel Art Gallery were anxious to mount a credible exhibition that had the approval and involvement of a number of artists who were becoming key players in the wider community of Black artists. It had not taken long for grumbles about the problematical nature of the survey-show format to find muted vocal expression among Black artists, and the Whitechapel Art Gallery appeared eager to do the right thing. By this time, the art establishment had identified those it deemed to be the most important Black artists in the U K . A number of these artists were approached directly by the gallery, and were duly involved in developing the exhibition. These artists included Gavin Jantjes and Sonia Boyce. Boyce was one of the artists who had an involvement in the exhibition from its initial stages through to its execution. She gave a summary of her involvement in organizing the exhibition, and some of the key issues that characterized the construction of From Two Worlds as an idea and as a working exhibition. This was included in a transcript of a conversation between the artist and John Roberts.36 From Two Worlds was in its own way no less problematical than exhibitions such as Into the Open. Furthermore, the way in which the exhibition was constructed and the subsequent curatorial strategies of the Whitechapel Art Gallery itself point ultimately to a replication of long-standing difficulties in mainstream attitudes to the framing of Black artists’ work. Like the Mappin before it, the Whitechapel denied its audiences the opportunity to see a substantial body of work by one major Black artist at a time. Fatally, this was an approach that steadfastly failed to acknowledge that Black artists could, like their white counterparts, make individual and substantial contributions to contemporary art practice and modern art history. Rather, the Whitechapel Art Gallery was only able to regard the work of Black artists either as an impersonal, generic art-form with quasi- or pseudo-‘ethnographic’ readings, or else as some sort of separate socio-political grouping wherein ‘difference’ became the defining characteristic. This notion of socio-political and cultural ‘difference’ was central to the thesis constructed for From Two Worlds. Several examples serve to illustrate the problematical approach of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in showing the work of artists with backgrounds beyond Europe. What might perhaps be described as ‘non-European’ exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery had tended to be undertakings that leaned towards the anonymous and borrowed extensively from the areas of 36

“Sonia Boyce in Conversation with John Roberts,” Third Text 1.1 (Autumn 1987):

55–64.

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‘craft’, ‘ethnography’, and ‘history’. Their non-European exhibitions were unusual, in that similar shows by white/ European artists were never presented. For example, in 1992 the gallery mounted an exhibition titled Living Wood, subtitled Sculptural Traditions of Southern India. The exhibition consisted of “relatively unknown [.. .] Southern Indian art of wooden sculpture.” The work was drawn from collections in India and Europe.37 The gallery, in East London, is located at the centre of several large communities of people originally from the South Asian subcontinent. ‘Asian’ people in East London had come to be associated with, among other things, the importing, manufacture, and selling of textiles and clothing. This curatorial strategy on the part of the Whitechapel Art Gallery (and, indeed, from time to time, other major galleries in the country) pointed to a somewhat racialized conflation of ‘traditional crafts’ with the notion of ‘contemporary art’. While a range of institutions, such as museums and crafts galleries existed (particularly within London) in which ‘traditional crafts’ could perhaps be shown in a more appropriate context, gallery spaces nominally or periodically reserved for ‘Black’ representation would from time to time be occupied by decorative arts that conspicuously bypassed Black artists keen to demonstrate that they, too, were part of the contemporary art world. To a large extent, this appropriation of exhibition spaces reflected the worry, expressed by Rasheed Araeen, and noted by Richard Hylton, that “as ‘Black art’ entered common parlance in the broader (visual) arts terrain in Britain, its meaning became ever more generalized, signifying ‘anything that cannot be attributed to white or European people’.” Hylton went on to quote Araeen: “‘from exotic Zulu dances to Indian bridal decorations, from the work of a black professional artist to black children’s drawings, etc.’.”38 In mounting exhibitions such as Living Wood and Woven Air,39 the Whitechapel Art Gallery believed it was acknowledging the presence of, and cater-

37

Living Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India, Whitechapel Art Gallery,

10 April–31 May 1992. 38 Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 97, quoting Rasheed Araeen. “The Emergence of Black Consciousness in Contemporary Art in Britain,” in The Essential Black Art (1988), 7. 39 Woven Air: The Muslin & Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 4 March–1 May 1988. This was, according to the press release issued 21 January 1988, a “major exhibition of historical and modern textiles from Bangladesh.”

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ing to the needs /tastes of, these local ‘Asian’ communities. This strategy was spelt out in the Woven Air press release: It is appropriate that the exhibition should be shown at the Whitechapel, since the Gallery stands in an area with a long textile tradition. In the last two decades this district has attracted a large Bangladeshi community which has stimulated a resurgence in the industry.40

Likewise, the preface to the Woven Air catalogue stated: The exhibition aims, firstly, to provide the local Bangladeshi community in Spitalfields with a chance to review its own culture and particularly for young Bangladeshis growing up in this country to see a significant expression of their own background.41

On other institutional levels, this problematical thinking informed the various ways in which the Arts Council, the Regional Arts Boards, municipal art galleries, and local authorities have all responded and related to Black artists’ work, though, like that of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, these responses have taken on the guise of ‘liberal’ or ‘positive’ gestures. Towns and cities such as Leicester, Oldham, and Bradford are widely regarded as having large ‘Asian’ populations. Municipal galleries in these towns and cities have either mounted a number of exhibitions or established and developed collections of work by artists of South Asian origin, believing these initiatives to be ways of acknowledging, addressing or servicing the local ‘South Asian’ communities. By the mid-1980s, Black artists had found their work largely framed in the contexts of racial difference (in the form of one-off group exhibitions) or audience development (in which nearby communities of African-Caribbean or South Asian people were sporadically addressed by generic exhibitions deemed suitable or appropriate for them). Few Black artists, if any, were able to break free of these formidably constraining contexts and pathologies. But this was not simply a case of ‘Asian’ artists for ‘Asian’ audiences, or ‘Black’ artists for ‘Black’ audiences. It has never been clear why potential and actual ‘Asian’ or ‘Black’ audiences, as well as the wider gallery-going public, should not be able to see major one-person exhibitions of work by contem40

Woven Air press release. An appraisal of the “Bangladeshi community,” its “arts” and “culture” is contained in Naseem Khan, The Arts Britain Ignores: The Arts of Ethnic Minorities in Britain (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Community Relations Commission, May 1976). 41 Beth Stockley, “Preface” to Woven Air catalogue, 6.

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porary South Asian or African-Caribbean artists, particularly those living in Britain. The only ‘representation’ that South Asian practitioners were able to secure at galleries such as Whitechapel was through anonymous ‘crafts’ exhibitions, made all the more problematical by the fact that, as mentioned, similar ‘crafts’ exhibitions by white/European makers were never shown. A message that radiated from such a strategy was that, as contemporary, individual fine artists, ‘Asian’ artists had little or no place in the Whitechapel Art Gallery. But as weavers of textiles and carvers of wood from time immemorial, occasional slots could be found, and with these exhibitions the ‘Asian’ communities would be acknowledged, addressed, and serviced. This inability to include Black artists in its ongoing exhibition programme formed the historical background, both before and after, for From Two Worlds. But this tendency to substitute exposure of substantial bodies of work by individual Black artists for anonymous ‘craft’ work was not unique to the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Other major galleries such as the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford also pursued strategies that worked against, rather than in favour of, individual Black artists. It organized and toured an exhibition of Makonde East African sculpture in 1989.42 Like the Whitechapel Art Gallery, MoMA had no history of presenting substantial exhibitions of work by individual British-based Black artists. However, in 1989 it began what it called “a series of exhibitions of art from the African continent which will be organized during the next three years.”43 Nothing subsequently offered up by MoMA included substantial showings by individual artists. This curatorial strategy of ignoring individual contributions that a Black artist could make had profound and adverse effects on the fortunes of Black artists. Few Black artists considered these problems to be sufficient reason to dissociate themselves from exhibitions such as From Two Worlds, which was organized in under six months. The organizing of Black artists’ exhibitions at short notice was a not uncommon feature during the 1980s. Sonia Boyce, one of the artists closely involved in organizing and selecting the exhibition, mentioned the constraints of the limited time-frame in the Third Text/John 42 Makonde: Wooden Sculpture from East Africa From the Malde Collection, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 2 April–21 May 1989, subsequently touring to galleries in Preston, Southampton, Bristol, Glasgow, Leicester, and Bradford, 1989/90. 43 David Elliott (director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford), “Foreword” to Makonde: Wooden Sculpture from East Africa From the Malde Collection (exh. cat., 2 April–21 May 1989; Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1989): 7.

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Roberts piece.44 She made it clear that the limited time available ruled out particular types of exhibitions, such as an open-submission one. “Given the amount of time we had it was felt that an open submission exhibition would be too much for us to handle.”45 The organizers had been happy to state that an unspecified number of artists had previously committed themselves to other exhibitions, and were therefore unable to participate in the Whitechapel Art Gallery project. Such a situation may have arisen as a direct result of an extraordinarily limited amount of time between the conception and the execution of From Two Worlds. It had by now become widely accepted that the previous survey shows were unsatisfactory, and that the Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition should attempt to be a positive development. The means by which From Two Worlds was to be a better or more credible group exhibition lay within its curatorial construction. The full list of artists selected for the exhibition was notable for several reasons. The first was that the array of artists shown came closer than any exhibition (before or since From Two Worlds) to being a definitive guide to the best-known and most-accomplished British-based Black artists of the period. Possibly the most far-sighted and inspired choice for inclusion was Zarina Bhimji, who had barely finished at Goldsmiths College. Her curriculum vitae was slight,46 so she was not selected for reasons that included experience and seniority, as was the case with artists such as Keith Piper and Tam Joseph, although, within the next five or six years, Bhimji went on to become one of the most successful Black artists of her generation.47 A perhaps

44

Sonia Boyce, in conversation with John Roberts, Third Text 1.1 (Autumn 1987):

55–64. 45

“Sonia Boyce in Conversation with John Roberts,” 59. Bhimji’s curriculum vitae in the From Two Worlds catalogue (25) consisted of four minor exhibitions, at Brixton Art Gallery, the South Bank Centre, the Chelsea School of Art, and Camerawork. 47 By the early 1990s, Bhimji had exhibited widely. One of her most important solo exhibitions of the period was I will always be here, Ikon Gallery, 4 April–9 May 1992. She also completed residencies at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and at Kettle’s Yard / Churchill College, Cambridge University. Apart from private collections, her work had been bought by the V&A, Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, and the Arts Council Collection. Bhimji established herself as one of few artists to emerge in the 1980s whose practice continued to find favour throughout the 1990s and on into the new millennium. 46

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less inspired and curious choice for inclusion in the exhibition was Franklyn Beckford. Like Bhimji, he too had finished art school one or two weeks earlier. So slight was his exhibition experience that he was the only artist not to have a curriculum vitae in the From Two Worlds catalogue. Beckford’s exhibitions career then moved on to obscurity, though he was subsequently included in a group exhibition titled Double Vision (1986/87) and he completed a residency and exhibition at Watford Museum.48 Two other artists in the exhibition were chosen to represent different constituencies with close geographic, political or historical links with the Whitechapel Art Gallery. These were Zadok Ben–David and Shafique Uddin. Given the relationship between Jewish artists and the Whitechapel, stretching back to the beginning of the century, it was politic for the Whitechapel Art Gallery to include at least one Jewish artist in this exhibition.49 Similarly, the proximity of a large Bangladeshi community to the gallery meant that the inclusion of Shafique Uddin, a popular local artist, was perhaps inevitable.50 In terms of recognized and accomplished artists, there were very few omissions, though conspicuous by their absence were artists such as Sutapa Biswas, Chila Kumari Burman, and Donald Rodney.51 In the five years since Black-

48

There was, as mentioned, no curriculum vitae for Beckford in the From Two Worlds catalogue, though a few sentences summarized his biography to date. See From Two Worlds catalogue (21). Franklyn Beckford’s exhibition, Food, was at Watford Museum, 9 September–28 October 1989. 49 In her article “Mods, Yids and Foreigners,” Third Text 15 (Summer 1991): 29–38, Juliet Steyn began by discussing an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1914. Called Twentieth Century Art, it had an isolated section of works by Jewish artists, curated by David Bomberg. Serota and Jantjes had also drawn attention to the symbolic importance of the inclusion of Jewish artists in the exhibition, in the opening of their introduction to the From Two Worlds catalogue. (Though they suggested that the Jewish presence was, at that time, “new to Britain” 5.) 50 Senior figures among the Whitechapel’s senior staff were conscious of the presence in the Whitechapel area of a large Bangladeshi community. It would not have been politic to ignore a popular artist so closely identified with that community. 51 Naseem Khan commented, in her review of the exhibition, on what she saw as the conspicuous absence of Chila Kumari Burman: “A world of difference,” New Statesman (29 August 1986): 22. The absence of Sutapa Biswas could possibly have been due to other exhibition commitments on her part. She made a major contribution to an exhibition titled The Issue of Painting, which corresponded closely to From Two

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British artists had made themselves visible, a number of relatively successful careers had been built by a few. These included artists whose work, for a variety of reasons, was approved by the art establishment. The exclusion of others from the exhibition, such as Rasheed Araeen, would have been unthinkable and unacceptable, given his seniority and given that he had spent a number of decades struggling to make himself and other Black artists visible to the British art establishment.52 Although the main organizers of the exhibition (the Whitechapel Art Gallery director Nicholas Serota, and Gavin Jantjes) felt sure they had attracted the most ‘suitable’ or ‘appropriate’ Black artists, they accepted that there were omissions and confessed that there were a number of artists who, when approached to exhibit in From Two Worlds, declined the invitation: There are some omissions in the exhibition, of artists whose work fits naturally into such a theme. In some instances the artists approached were committed to other exhibitions and did not have sufficient work for a further presentation; in others artists declined the invitation to participate, perhaps fearing the imposition of an ‘ethnic’ label that they have aimed to avoid.53

This practice of declining invitations to exhibit occurred a number of times in relation to two of the major 1980s Black artists’ exhibitions, The Essential Black Art and The Other Story (both curated by Rasheed Araeen). In the case of The Essential Black Art, the catalogue registered a brief regret that two artists in particular had declined the curator’s invitation.54 The refusal of a number of artists (including the celebrated and successful Anish Kapoor) to participate in The Other Story was seized on and trumpeted time and time again by critics and writers covering that particular show.55 These critics and Worlds. The exhibition showed at Rochdale Art Gallery, 21 June–26 July 1986, before touring to the Air Gallery in London, 5 September–5 October 1986. 52 Much of the documentation relating to these decades of struggle was included in Rasheed Araeen, Making Myself Visible (London: Kala, 1984). 53 Nicholas Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds, 8. 54 The wording in the The Essential Black Art catalogue was “Lubaina Himid and Marlene Smith were also invited but we regret that they were unable to participate in this exhibition”; The Essential Black Art (1988), 29. 55 Homi Bhabha, reviewing The Other Story for New Statesman and Society (15 December 1989): 40, commented: “Most reviewers have fanned the polemic and the controversy, arguing that the best postcolonial British artists – always the same two solitary figures, Anish Kapoor and Dhruva Mistry – have kept out of ‘the ghetto show’.”

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writers appeared to gloat at the apparent refusal of ‘proper’ artists to associate themselves with a ‘substandard’ exhibition. It should be made clear, however, that artists such as Kapoor declined invitations to participate in ‘Black’ exhibitions not as a protest against the perceived racist strategies of art galleries. Rather, they declined because they saw such exhibitions as inferior products and wilful acts of marginalization on the part of Black artists themselves, which would do the careers of practitioners such as Kapoor little or no good. That an exhibition such as From Two Worlds, with its emphasis on cultural difference and synthesis, was mounted in the mid-1980s was not incidental. In her recollections of how the exhibition came about, Sonia Boyce made it clear that, in the preliminary discussions, they were seeking artists from all parts of the world. We wanted to include the work of African, Asian (North and South), Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and South American artists working in Britain. None of us knew any indigenous artists from Australia or New Zealand working in Britain.56

This was the period when ‘world culture’, ‘world arts’, and, above all, ‘world music’ were in the process of being introduced to white audiences. An organization known as W O M A D – World of Music Arts and Dance – enthusiastically championed this consuming of ‘other’ cultures. W O M A D festivals have taken place since the mid-1980s, proving highly popular among those who listen to and enjoy music from other parts of the world – music that they might not otherwise be able to access. The W O M A D festivals were characterized by an evident need to present international singers, musicians, and bands. No continent was passed over, no stone left unturned, in W O M A D ’s desire to import musical talent from countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. This provided the backdrop to the thinking of Boyce, Jantjes, and Serota – the organizational core of From Two Worlds. W O M A D were keen to bring all music under the umbrella of Western postmodern cultural consumerism. Not dissimilarly perhaps, Boyce and company were evidently keen to bring the world’s artists, or the world’s artists living in London, under the umbrella of postmodern art practice and art consumption. From Two Worlds betrayed an almost manic need to be allinclusive, as if supposed omissions were a mark of failure or inadequacy on

56

“Sonia Boyce in Conversation with John Roberts,” 57.

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the part of the selectors. This has been a recurring problem with whiteinitiated, large-scale ‘Black’ exhibitions. The premise on which From Two Worlds rested was that many artists from non-European backgrounds working in Britain were the product of two distinct and different ‘worlds’ or cultures. This fusion meant that much of the art produced was dynamic and loaded, in terms of its references to this inter- or transcultural ‘two-worlds’ dichotomy. As the press release stated, Many artists living and working in Britain today have roots in more than one culture. Some have grown up in their country of origin and settled here since; others were born here and their experience of another ‘world’ has been entirely through their family or community.57

Earlier and commonplace references to the bridging of ‘two cultures’ notwithstanding, the title and much of the intellectual and curatorial framework on which the exhibition rested was provided by Gavin Jantjes. He delivered a paper at a conference in the East Midlands Arts region on 12 April 1986, during which he stated: “A contemporary black visual art is an innovative synthesis of two worlds.”58 He continued: The first [world] holds the artists’ traditional roots; the second, the contemporary world of the artist. So a black art is rooted in tradition but not bound to it. It is a contemporary art that is addressing the realities of the present....59

The From Two Worlds thesis was to become something of a facsimile of this paper. Jantje’s paper was a focused effort to promote debate and argument about the work of Black artists in Britain. By this time, ‘Black art’ had become a somewhat confused and confusing term, besides which, the art establishment had developed arguably inflexible attitudes towards, and fixed readings of, Black artists and their work. These artists were being continually lumped together, irrespective of differences in content, identity, or position. The focus was on the apparent ‘ethnicity’ of the Black artist, to the exclusion of all other readings or characteristics of their individual practice.

57

Press release for From Two Worlds (June 1986). Gavin Jantjes, “Black Artists White Institutions,” talk delivered at the East Midlands Arts Conference (12 April 1986), Artrage 15 (Winter 1986): 36. Jantjes’ paper was reproduced as “Art & Cultural Reciprocity: Talk Delivered at the East Midlands Art Conference on 12 April 1986,” in The Essential Black Art (1988): 42–45. 59 “Black Artists White Institutions,” 36 (“Art & Cultural Reciprocity,” 42–45). 58

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Considered and convincing though it may have been, the Jantjes ‘twoworlds’ thesis, when applied to the Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition, was arguably inadequate, insofar as it failed to consider the ramifications and implications of so many Black artists’ being corralled into one exhibition in an otherwise ‘white’ gallery programme. Overriding Jantjes’ consideration of artists’ practice, the construction of From Two Worlds pointed to the primacy of one particular agenda on the part of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. First and foremost was the apparent need or desire to have a large-scale ‘Black’ exhibition that included many of the leading artists of the moment. But in the press release, such a strategy was not acknowledged: The artists participating in From Two Worlds are all of non-European background but live and work in Britain, and all draw their inspiration and motivation from the diversity of their cultural heritage. From this complexity of influences, and from this broad consciousness, each individual develops in his or her art a creative fusion or synthesis, which is the theme of this exhibition. The exhibition aims to explore the ways in which these ‘syntheses’ are achieved, and to increase appreciation not only of the special qualities of this art, but also of the contributions it is making to contemporary British culture.60

Serota and Jantjes expanded on the press release in their introduction to the exhibition catalogue. They proposed to make the show a positive departure from previous Black artists’ exhibitions by emphasizing what they called “synthesis” rather than “difference.” Previous exhibitions such as Into the Open had centred on the notion that the artists connected with the exhibition were all ‘different’ from white artists by virtue of their skin colour. From Two Worlds proposed the view that skin colour was an insufficient basis for interest in non-European artists and that one of the most salient characteristics of these artists was the way in which they embodied a sort of cultural hybridity. Of course other shows could have been made which sought to explore difference, rather than synthesis. However, at this point the selectors of this exhibition felt that the most valuable exhibition at this moment would be one that sought to reveal the limitations of labels such as ‘Asian’ [. . . ] or ‘Afro-Caribbean’, which are often used unthinkingly to describe art of very different moods and ambitions.61

60 61

Press release for From Two Worlds (June 1986). Nicholas Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds, 5.

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FIGURE 7 Gavin Jantjes photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

This emphasis on something more than ‘difference’ alone echoed the reservation voiced two years earlier by Januszczak and quoted earlier in this chapter. Reviewing Into the Open, he wrote, “it is not enough to be finally noticed.” Or, it is not enough to have your difference finally acknowledged. He continued: “You must also have something worthwhile to say.”62 For Serota and Jantjes, that “something to say” was the dynamism of coming ‘from two worlds’. Serota and Jantjes were advancing the notion that the From Two Worlds artists were special, or different. But this thesis, while of some validity, did nothing to address the absence of Black artists from the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s ongoing exhibition programme. These artists were ‘special’, but not special enough to be treated as individual artists of ability. Serota and Jantjes went on to illustrate just how single-minded they were at arriving at an exhibition that justified and reflected their thesis. They reported that thirty-six artists were invited to offer work for consideration, and that these were asked to suggest the names of others whom the selectors might have overlooked. This meant that the work of nearly fifty artists was examined for inclusion: Of principal importance to their selection was the work’s achievement as an innovative synthesis of a ‘lived’ cultural plurality. Artists whose work draws 62

Waldemar Januszczak, “Black Art,” 9.

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on other cultures primarily as a stimulus for their own artistic development, but without a deeper understanding of that culture, were of lesser interest here.63

On the face of it, twelve individual artists (in addition to Boyce, Jantjes, and Ryan, who were ‘involved in the selection’ and presumably selected themselves or each other) managed to convince the selectors that they and their work was coming ‘from two worlds’. So most of the artists considered for the exhibition were rejected as being inappropriate, substandard, or simply “of lesser interest here.”64 The newly introduced and exacting notion of ‘from two worlds’ was a standard that a great many Black artists could not/did not apparently measure up to. Hetti Perkins, an Australian curator, made mention of the difficulties Black artists faced in attempting to synchronize themselves to the vagaries of erratic curatorial demands. Perkins quoted Bronwyn Bancroft, an artist who was simultaneously referring to art practice and Aboriginal identity when she said “For years we were punished for being [too] Black, now we are punished for not being Black enough.”65 Now, it seemed, artists were being rejected for not treading a sort of cultural middle ground. The exacting requirements of displaying a ‘two worlds’ hybridity left many Black artists out in the cold. It is intriguing to consider the identity of the thirty-odd artists who were excluded from the exhibition. Even more intriguing was the rationale that must have been employed by Rasheed Araeen in justifying his own inclusion. In 1978 he had written an article taking to task an exhibition that he saw as ‘ethnicizing’ the Black artist. The article concluded: There will in fact be many such exhibitions, supported by the establishment, taking place under various ethnic titles during the coming years [. . . ] which will attempt to re-ethnicise the Black artist and thereby marginalise further his/her role in this society.66

He could have been writing specifically about From Two Worlds, an exhibition that stubbornly refused to accept Black artists as individual practitioners of merit. The ‘from two worlds’ thesis did not sit comfortably with a number

63

Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds, 8. Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds, 8. 65 Hetti Perkins, “Races in Outer Spaces,” Versus 2 (1994): 31. 66 Rasheed Araeen, “Afro-Caribbean Art,” exhibition review, Black Phoenix 2 (Summer 1978): 31. 64

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of other artists in the exhibition,67 so either they had subordinated their reservations in order to be included, or else the criteria wer not applied as rigorously or as precisely as Serota and Jantjes had suggested. A number of artists, specifically Araeen, Boyce, Himid, Jantjes, and Piper, simply had to be in the exhibition, irrespective of the relevance of the exhibition thesis to their work, such was their status and seniority. Two others, Camp and Ryan, were becoming very desirable entities to the art establishment,68 perhaps not unlike the embrace of Anish Kapoor or Dhruva Mistry.69 The inclusion of Camp and Ryan was predictable and inevitable, while Ben– David and Uddin were perhaps more strategic inclusions. That left half a dozen artists, Arif, Beckford, Bhimji, Forrester, Joseph, and Niati, who were chosen either because of their proximity to the selectors or because their work was deemed to be of sufficient quality and chimed with the show’s thesis. Limitations of space aside, it remains a fact that a large number of artists were considered to be of “lesser interest” to a group of selectors who were at pains to stress that their choices were not in the least random, and that each of the exhibiting artists was carefully selected. Richard Hylton, for one, was not convinced that curatorial rigour had indeed been applied to the exhibition: Despite its attempts at creating a more credible and thematic structure for a ‘Black’ survey show, From Two Worlds arguably embodied the very proble67

Adeola Solanke, in her From Two Worlds catalogue essay, stated that “Tam Joseph does not consider himself as coming from two worlds” (11). 68 Camp’s exhibitions at that time included solo showings at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and the Exhibition Gallery, Milton Keynes. Contributions to group exhibitions included Five [Garden] Festival Sculptors, Stoke on Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, and Conceptual Clothing, an Ikon Gallery touring exhibition. In 1987, Veronica Ryan was to become one of the first and only Black-British-based artists to have a solo exhibition at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol. Her group exhibitions of the early / mid-1980s included Sculptors and Modellers at the Tate Gallery, and contributions to the Whitechapel Open. 69 Anish Kapoor, an Indian-born sculptor embraced by the British art establishment, made what was described as a “striking debut” in the Aperto of the 1982 Venice Biennale. See Kapoor, “Introduction” to Anish Kapoor (exh. cat., British Pavilion, X L I V Venice Biennale, May–September 1990; British Council, 1990): 8. In 1985, Dhruva Mistry, another Indian-born sculptor, completed the prestigious annual residency hosted by Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. In time, both artists would achieve other successes, including becoming Royal Academicians.

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matic nature of such exhibitions. Its racialising of artistic practice, coupled with a selection policy seemingly based on strategic inclusions rather than curatorial coherence, reflect this.70

The ‘from two worlds’ thesis itself raised doubts about the plausibility and integrity of the stated process and criteria of selection. The press release declared: “Many artists living and working in Britain today have roots in more than one culture.”71 It could, however, be argued that most people of nonEuropean origin living in Europe are the embodiment of the negotiation of two worlds, or two cultures. Even millions of people who have never lived or ventured beyond Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central/South America are, in a variety of ways, experiencing and being influenced by this hybridity and duality. If most of the ‘Black’ artists in Britain embodied or in some way experienced that sense of ‘living in’, or ‘being’ from ‘two’ worlds, then the selection of a mere six artists bestowed on these practitioners the weightiest burden of representation. Yet it hardly seemed possible that some artists would convincingly embody this hybridity in their work, while yet others would refuse to or fail to convincingly indicate anything of this fusion. If subtle intimations of cultural and racial hybridity were to be downgraded or ignored in preference to supposedly more dynamic indications of those sorts of fusion, this suggested either a blinkered agenda or an idiosyncratic approach to curating on the part of the Whitechapel Art Gallery selectors. The suggestion that some artists were better at, or more capable of, displaying this hybridity than others meant that From Two Worlds created a perhaps unthinking and clumsy hierarchy of artists. For the summer of 1986, those who passed the From Two Worlds test were on top. Those who failed it were out of the picture. Another problem with the From Two Worlds thesis was that it could easily be applied to a number of white and European artists, who incorporated an African, Asian, or other non-European sensibility and aesthetic in their work. And yet there were no white artists included in the exhibition, even though their inclusion would, on the basis of the Serota/ Jantjes thesis, have been suitable and appropriate. Furthermore, the inclusion of a number of white artists would have sent out a clear signal that From Two Worlds was not just

70 71

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 79–80. Press release for From Two Worlds (June 1986).

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another ‘Black’ exhibition.72 But the biggest single problem with From Two Worlds was that it remained, by and large, another Black ‘survey’-type show masquerading as something of greater depth, intelligence, and credibility. Hence Serota’s eagerness to canvas opinion from a number of key practitioners within the Black visual-arts sector. Writing a year after From Two Worlds, Keith Piper summarized this major shortcoming and explained why From Two Worlds would be remembered as not much more than a ‘survey’ show, albeit one of the most prestigious ones of the 1980s: Here, an attempt was made to structure a show around the complex and intricate notion of cultural ‘reciprocity’; in short, the use and merging of diverse cultural references within the work of Black artists. Fascinating as this concept may be, the prioritisation of reciprocity is by no means a concern shared by a large portion of the Black arts community. Insensitivity to this fact, along with a sorry lack of detailed discussion of the implications of the theme at the point of selection, led to a show which to all intents and purposes looked and operated as if it had been formulated within the classic ‘survey’ mould. Namely, an insensitive lumping together of a hotch-potch of art objects apparently linked only be the ‘non-European-ness’ of their makers.73

72 There were a small number of exhibitions in which Black artists showed alongside their white counterparts. For example, Veronica Ryan, while she was Artist Fellow, Kettle’s Yard / Jesus College, 1987/88 selected an exhibition titled Dislocations (Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge, 12 December 1987–7 February 1988). In it, Simone Alexander, Zarina Bhimji, Mona Hatoum, and Veronica Ryan exhibited alongside Ruth Lakofski and Peter Robinson. Several years later, in 1992, Keith Piper, working with a number of galleries including Arnolfini, Bristol, 21 November 1992– 10 January 1993, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, 17 October–15 November 1992, and Bluecoat Galley, Liverpool, 10 October–14 November 1992, developed an exhibition project called Trophies of Empire. The exhibition contained contributions by white as well as Black artists. Thus, Trophies of Empire avoided being labelled a ‘Black’ exhibition, thereby ensuring that debate and dialogue about the project had to be necessarily more sophisticated than the often crude and simplistic language frequently used to discuss Black artists’ exhibitions. Several other ‘mixed’ exhibitions of the 1980s are referred to in fn 132 of chapter 3, p.139 below. 73 Keith Piper, “Foreword” to Keith Piper & Marlene Smith, The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art (exh. cat., 13 June–19 July 1987; Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1987).

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Piper himself had participated in the exhibition, and had not, at the time, voiced such sentiments of disapproval. In assessing Piper’s comments, Richard Hylton noted: In his critical autopsy of From Two Worlds, Piper’s criticisms seem to imply that artists were somehow either duped into participating in this exhibition, or were victims of particular curatorial shenanigans imposed on a ‘Black arts community’ by a ‘white institution’.74

Adeola Solanke, a writer and journalist from Nigeria living in London, was commissioned to write an essay for the exhibition catalogue.75 Solanke may have sensed that From Two Worlds would come to be remembered as the latest in a line of token gestures rather than as marking the start of a serious attempt by the art establishment to respect and engage with the work of Black artists. She wrote: It would be [. . . ] counter-productive if From Two Worlds proved to be a oneoff exercise; simply another addition to the already long list of tokenistic exhibitions white establishments have staged to ward off charges of racism.76

Diplomatically, she proposed that the motives and credibility of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in mounting this exhibition could only be properly assessed at a future date. “The real measure of this show will be seen in the future programming record of the Whitechapel Art Gallery....”77 The programming policies of the Whitechapel Art Gallery failed to adequately or properly incorporate the work of Black-British artists, and tended to rely on sporadic largegroup exhibitions.78

74

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 80. Over the next few years, Solanke wrote several empathetic articles and reviews relating to Black artists. These included a review of Crisis, a solo exhibition by Donald Rodney at Chisenhale Gallery, London. Adeola Solanke, “Donald Rodney, Crisis, Chisenhale Gallery,” Art Monthly 124 (March 1989): 13–14. 76 Adeola Solanke, “Juggling Worlds,” introductory essay for From Two Worlds catalogue (1986): 10. 77 Solanke, “Juggling Worlds,” 10. 78 The only significant Whitechapel representation that Black-British artists were able to secure, in the years immediately following From Two Worlds, was through Sonia Boyce, who had an exhibition of new work in the New Gallery at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, May 13–June 26 1988. 75

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To Solanke, it was clear that only “some” of the artists in the exhibition displayed the sort of cultural hybridity trumpeted by Serota and Jantjes. In writing the essay, she set herself the following task: The ways in which cultural tension is made manifest in the visual expression of artists in from From Two Worlds is my subject, and my object to discover the results of cultural intercourse in terms of the internal dynamics of the works themselves, and with regard to the dynamics of the extended social struggles which they wittingly or unwittingly re-enact.79

Solanke referred to the work of Arif, Ben–David, Boyce, Camp, Forrester, Himid, Joseph, and Ryan in buttressing her argument, though, in a frank admission that threatened to torpedo the essay, she stated: “Tam Joseph does not consider himself as coming from two worlds.”80 In contrast to the terms of reference employed by Serota and Jantjes, Solanke couched most of her essay in more didactic language that dwelt on the political realities and experiences of some of the artists she had singled out. She began: To title an exhibition From Two Worlds [. . . ] is to provoke into prominence the panoply of historical and political forces which have conspired to bring antipodal and often antipathetic into contact, and conflict, with one another.81

For her, the idea of two worlds related squarely to the power of one world to abuse and exploit the other – rich north versus poor south, First World versus Third World, white world versus black world, etc. For her, the title of the exhibition was a reminder “of the economic, political, social, religious and cultural havoc systematically unleashed by European imperialists on Africa, 79

Adeola Solanke, “Juggling Worlds,” 10. Solanke, “Juggling Worlds,” 11. Tam Joseph went on to express unambiguous sentiments reflecting the extent to which he was jaded and disenchanted about group exhibitions such as From Two Worlds. In a conversation with Nancy Hynes, for one of his exhibition catalogues, Joseph recalled that in the mid-1980s “there was a rash of exhibitions with titles like ‘Into the Open’ and ‘From Two Worlds’, whatever kind of ‘new flower rising out of nowhere’ title they could give it. Enough people jumped on the bandwagon so that it rolled for a while. All people who were considered not quite white enough were loaded onto the same wagon. But it didn’t last very long, a year or two.” “Nancy Hynes in Conversation with Tam Joseph,” in Tam Joseph: This is History (exh. cat., 7 March–19 April 1998; touring exhibition, including City Museum and Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1998): np. 81 Solanke, “Juggling Worlds,” 9. 80

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Asia, the Caribbean and other parts of the globe.”82 But Solanke did not limit this assessment purely to an historical context. She was keen to stress that the conflict of two worlds was as much a contemporary as an historical experience. In her view, the exhibition had the potential to “draw attention to the present material deprivation in which the greater majority of the people who inhabit those areas live, and to link their circumstances to the comparative affluence of Western Society.”83 The anticolonial tone of Solanke’s essay seemed out of step with Serota’s and Jantjes’ combined effort to create a thesis that was intellectually tactile, rather than politically emotive. Her sentiments appeared crude, and none of her main thrusts had formed part of Serota and Jantjes’ argument. In reading her essay, one senses a frustration at what Solanke considered to be the selectors’ occasionally timid choices of work. She dismissed one of Tam Joseph’s contributions to the exhibition, “Is It O K at the Back?” – a depiction of a scene in a Black barber shop – as having “technical merits” but not being one of his “more politically probing works.”84 She questioned what she saw as “the selectors’ decision to bypass works with more dynamic content, but perhaps less able form.” She suggested that this “begs questions about the criteria and priorities that we bring to our appraisal of black art.”85 It seemed astonishing that Serota and Jantjes would accept an essay that castigated them for their apparent pusillanimity. Solanke had, in her essay, bitten the hand that fed her. Yet the critical tone of Solanke’s piece was not sufficient to salvage or rescue the exhibition. Instead, her fractious tone served to increase the sense that there was something not quite right about this exhibition and that it reflected the extent to which Black artists were, as I mentioned in my introduction, in all sorts of bother as far as their engagement with white galleries was concerned. Solanke concluded her essay by suggesting that while notions of cultural and aesthetic hybridity were all well and good, ultimately Black artists had to pledge allegiance to their Black communities, their Black cultural heritage, and their Black struggles. “Artists may be able to trace their roots back to two or more worlds but at the end of the day can be loyal to only one.”86 A more 82

Solanke, “Juggling Worlds,” 9. “Juggling Worlds,” 9. 84 “Juggling Worlds,” 11. 85 “Juggling Worlds,” 11. 86 “Juggling Worlds,” 13. 83

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complete demolition (or misreading) of the Serota/ Jantjes thesis cannot easily be imagined. Despite the considered and convincing arguments proposed by Jantjes in the paper he delivered on 12 April 1986,87 he and Serota, in constructing the exhibition as they did, missed an important and potentially historic opportunity to relocate the terms of reference around which Black artists’ work was, thus far, being discussed. The From Two Worlds thesis was not new, and had many problematical dimensions. Particularly, it adhered to the belief, seemingly validated by sociologists, that young Black-British people were caught up in some sort of identity-crisis, in which they were neither one thing or the other, neither one identity or another, neither one nationality or another. In their own way, Serota and Jantjes were doing nothing to dispel or shed light on the notion that Black people were disproportionately prone to cultural ‘schizophrenia’.88 The common misconception of schizophrenia was that it produced in its sufferers a sort of split personality – that they simultaneously occupied ‘two’ worlds. The exhibition thesis carried with it implications that did nothing to interfere with the prevailing notion of the Black person as dilemma-ridden victim, in need of sympathy and understanding, or the Black artist as being an inevitable embodiment of two opposing sensibilities, one ancient, one modern, the modern being also the ‘Western’ one.89 Maggie Lett, in her review of Into the Open, had written: 87

Gavin Jantjes, “Black Artists White Institutions,” 36 (“Art & Cultural Reciprocity,” 42–45). 88 On this, cf., for example, Errol Lawrence, “In the abundance of water the fool is thirsty: sociology and black ‘pathology’,” in The Empire Strikes Back: Race and racism in 70s Britain, ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1982; London & New York: Routledge & Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1992): 95–142. 89 The idea of cultural duality was not an entirely new one, and had surfaced regularly in discussions of the work of Black-British artists. Una Howe, reviewing an exhibition of work by the Jamaica-born painter Errol Lloyd, 19 May–19 June 1978, described him as “one of the creative persons who is able to bridge two cultures”; Race Today (July–August 1978): 119. In his introduction to the brochure accompanying a G L C -sponsored exhibition held in 1984, Reflections of a Different World, Ken Little wrote: “The G L C is happy to have the opportunity to highlight the contribution made to London’s artistic expression by artists and craftspeople from non-European countries […]. In this exhibition […] we see an affirmation of this in the synthesis of traditional and modern styles.” Quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 48.

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those [Black artists] that cling desperately to African imagery often hint at a creative drive floundering in the search for a true expression of a reality experienced in white culture, but rooted many thousands of miles away.90

She also reflected that “This must be one of the major dilemmas for a black artist working in Britain.”91 The notion of cultural duality was widely perceived as being something that had a particular relevance to people – and even mammals – of Africa. In a B B C documentary that touched on Born Free: Elsa – the Lioness of Two Worlds, David Attenborough commented: “She thus proved that she was a lioness of two worlds. A lioness who could live in the world of the wild savage bush and also in the world of human beings.”92 As mentioned earlier, the From Two Worlds thesis could be applied to white artists, as much as it could to Black artists. But the notion of cultural duality was perceived to apply to Black, African, and other ‘non-European’ peoples, and was regarded as having no particular relevance to the (white) people of Britain and Europe. Serota and Jantjes could have made a greater contribution if they had attempted to locate the work of Black-British artists in relation to notions of postmodernism – which were then in a certain ascendancy – that demanded new ways of looking at artistic practice and identity. The work of Black artists was infused with many different references and influences, so any attempt to corral the artists and their work into a two worlds/ two influences thesis was bound to appear wooden and a bit strained. But this is to assume that the Whitechapel Art Gallery had the best interests of Black artists at heart when it embarked on this project. The stratagem of senior Whitechapel Art Gallery staff, together with the support and involvement of a limited number of Black artists, ensured that From Two Worlds was very much part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, to the developing marginalization of Black artists in Britain. Although the 1980s were far from over, and although a mainstream London gallery had never before hosted such a stellar body of Black artists, From Two Worlds represented a conspicuous accelerating of the declining fortunes of Black-British artists. The exhibition secured a significant amount of press coverage, but arguably the most telling, and damning,

90

Lett, “Lessons still to be learned,” 6. “Lessons still to be learned,” 6. 92 David Attenborough, in Reputations: Joy Adamson – Born Wild?, prod. & dir. Liz Hartford (B B C Four / Arts & Entertainment Network, U K 1996; 55 min.). 91

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assessment was again provided by the then art critic of the Guardian, Waldemar Januszczak. One of the most significant aspects of the From Two Worlds press coverage was that it signalled the beginning of the end of the brief flirtation between the art establishment and Black artists. Black artists’ exhibition activity continued, press coverage continued, but the tone of the latter, regarding the former, became in some ways increasing fractious, bad-tempered, and uncharitable – so much so, that, by the close of the decade, The Other Story attracted a number of reviews that used almost violent, and certainly dismissive, language.93 Writing for the Guardian of Into the Open and The Thin Black Line, Januszczak singled out the work of artists such as Sonia Boyce, Keith Piper, Sutapa Biswas, and Veronica Ryan as being the most interesting and accomplished.94 Dismissing most of the others as being, in effect, mediocre and surplus to requirement, he thereby did more than any other single white art reviewer to stamp an art-establishment seal of approval on the above-named artists and, by extension and consequence, commit to obscurity most of the Black artists he did not favour. However, Januszczak’s review of From Two Worlds95 marked a distinct shift in his attitude to Boyce, Piper, and company. 93

Brian Sewell, “Black Pride and Prejudice,” review of The Other Story, Evening Standard (4 January 1990): 25, was perhaps a pronounced example of the hostile tone that was evident in certain reviews. Sewell, the art critic for the Evening Standard, had developed a considerable and fearsome reputation as a sometimes severe and unforgiving critic, whose no-holds-barred demolition of certain exhibitions frequently stood in marked contrast to more favourable reviews of the same exhibitions that appeared in other sectors of the (art) press. Several years after Sewell trashed The Other Story, the exhibition’s curator, Rasheed Araeen, was still smarting: “When Brian Sewell reviewed The Other Story exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, 1989–90, which pointed out the gaps in the official history of British art, we were told that Sewell was a right wing journalist and we should therefore not pay too much attention to him.” Araeen, “Gravity & [Dis] Grace,” exhibition review, Third Text 22 (Spring 1993): 97. 94 Waldemar Januszczak, “Anger at Hand: Waldemar Januszczak on the barely controlled fury of The Thin Black Line,” review of The Thin Black Line, The Guardian (27 November 1985), Arts Section: 23. 95 Waldemar Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere: Waldemar Januszczak on why British art should take off its blinkers,” review of From Two Worlds at the Whitechapel and Colin Self at the I C A , The Guardian (16 August 1986): 8.

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Evidently, Januszczak had been growing increasingly aware of the emerging vigorous presence of non-European artists in Britain. He even went so far as to state it as ‘fact’ that “British art is currently being enriched, as never before, by artists of Third World and non-European origin.”96 As examples, he cited artists such as Anish Kapoor, Dhruva Mistry, and Shirazeh Houshiary, who, because of their “telling contributions to British art,” had effectively been ‘annexed’ by the British art establishment. By annexation he was referring to the process by which Indian-born artists such as Kapoor had come to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale97 and Mistry had created major sculptures at the recent national ‘Garden Festivals’ at Liverpool in 1984 and Stoke on Trent in 1986. In Januszczak’s view, “they had been granted an honorary Britishness.”98 To him, the embracing of these artists represented a landmark in British art history, as, “quite simply, it has never happened before.”99To underline the point, he stated: “However carefully you study the annals of British art, chapters and footnotes, you will not find a single non-Western artist.”100 While the contributions of non-European artists to British art were considerable, Januszczak flamboyantly suggested that the “optimistic observer is surely entitled to ask the momentous question: has a real challenge at last been mounted to the Greco-Roman tradition that has dominated Western art for 2000 years?”101 In the work of Kapoor et al., Januszczak perceived the potential for the mounting of a “real challenge.” That Kapoor was one of the artists apparently most anxious to distance himself from other British artists of African, Asian, and Caribbean background was something that seemed to enhance his “honorary Britishness” and further push to the margins those Black artists less well regarded. 96

Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere,” 8. This was a reference to Anish Kapoor’s work being included in the “1982 Aperto [at the Venice Biennale] in the company of other artists to whose work the label ‘New British Sculpture’ has been loosely applied” (quoted from the introduction to Kapoor’s catalogue for his major exhibition in the British Pavilion of the 1990 Venice Biennale, 8). The issue of Black artists representing Britain at the Venice Biennale is discussed in chapter 4 of this study. 98 Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere,” 8. 99 “There is a world elsewhere,” 8. 100 “There is a world elsewhere,” 8. 101 “There is a world elsewhere,” 8. 97

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In his review of From Two Worlds, Januszczak went on to mention that, of the artists he considered as potentially mounting “a real challenge […] to the Greco-Roman tradition,” two were from India, one was from Japan, and one was from Iran. Januszczak’s grouping did not include any British-born artists, or artists whose British residency spanned several decades. To Januszczak, it was ‘unfortunate’ that From Two Worlds did not pose the grandiose “real challenge” question. He thought it “inexplicable” that Kapoor, Mistry, and company were not included in the exhibition. Januszczak had not considered the possibility that those sculptors could be among the unidentified artists “who declined the invitation to participate, perhaps fearing the imposition of an ‘ethnic’ label which they had aimed to avoid.”102 As mentioned, Januszczak’s review marked the abrupt ending of his flirtation with his ‘favourite’ Black artists. Having done more than any other single white reviewer to create a sense that the only good Black artists in Britain were the likes of Boyce, Piper, and Ryan, Januszczak now dismissed the inevitability of their inclusion, labelling it a “cosy selection.” Rounding on the artists that he himself had promoted,103 he wrote that they had “dominated” 102

Nicholas Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds, 8. It is likely that several or all of these same four sculptors were among those who refused to participate in The Other Story. Writing in the foreword to The Other Story catalogue, Joanna Drew, the Director of the Hayward Gallery, and her Assistant Director, Andrew Dempsey, stated the following: “A number of important artists felt unable to participate, wary of such a context for reasons which are perhaps understandable” (5). Although Drew and Dempsey failed to mention names, they did offer clues to the identity of these artists: “Four of those five artists have shown in the Hayward before” (suggesting that, unlike the artists assembled for The Other Story, the work of those “four” artists was of sufficient quality to merit inclusion in the Hayward’s apparently non-racially-specific exhibition programme). — In the “Postscript” to The Other Story catalogue, Araeen named the artists who declined to participate as being “Kapoor, Houshiary and Mistry, as well as Kim Lim and Veronica Ryan” (106). 103 In the previous year, 1985, Waldemar Januszczak had curated Room at the Top, a group exhibition. The exhibition took place at Nicola Jacobs Gallery, 9 Cork Street, 6 February–9 March 1985. The artists included in the exhibition were Sonia Boyce, Mary Mabbutt, Paul Richards, Gerard de Thame, and Adrian Wiszniewski. The exhibition was one of the very few such undertakings, during the 1980s, in which the work of a Black artist (in this instance, Sonia Boyce) was exhibited alongside work by white artists. Boyce was for a while an artist with whom Januszczak (at the time, visual arts reviewer for The Guardian) was particularly impressed.

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Into the Open and The Thin Black Line. Those artists, though, had not “dominated” Into the Open or The Thin Black Line. They had simply been included in one or both exhibitions, contributing the same amount of work as the other artists. It was Januszczak’s reviews of these two exhibitions that had been dominated by Boyce, Piper et al. Only three of the From Two Worlds artists appeared in the two shows cited by Januszczak. They were Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, and Veronica Ryan. The only other artists to represent an overlap between Into the Open and From Two Worlds were Gavin Jantjes, Tam Joseph, Houria Niati, and Keith Piper. Reviewing the exhibition, Januszczak expressed the view that the selectors of From Two Worlds had taken a blinkered or timid position, in limiting its scope and the number of artists involved. Having bemoaned the absence of artists like Kapoor and Mistry, Januszczak complained: “The show does not go to Latin America. It does not go to Japan. It does not go to the Far East.”104 In actuality, the selectors of From Two Worlds did not go anywhere. Instead, they selected an exhibition drawing work from British-based (and, more specifically than that, London-based) artists. The crucial sentence that marked the end of Januszczak’s interest in Black artists was: I always welcome the opportunity to see the work of Veronica Ryan, Keith Piper, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid et al. but here surely was an opportunity to expand the argument, the catchment area and the group of favoured contributors?105

That sentence and its attendant sentiment encapsulated the eclipse of Januszczak’s and, indeed, the art establishment’s interest in Black artists. Further exhibition activity took place throughout the remaining years of the decade, but much of this activity took place in a variety of contexts fatally regarded by the art establishment as peripheral and lacking. Furthermore, while there was much press coverage of Black artists’ work that was, by degrees, liberal, earnest or supportive in tone, there was also significant media attention that was dismissive and signally unimpressed with what those perceived to be, and those who presented themselves as, Black artists were doing. Richard Hylton, in The Nature of the Beast, effectively summarized the difficulties many Black artists found themselves in, by the mid-1980s:

104 105

Waldemar Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere,” 8. Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere,” 8.

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Although the 1980s signalled an unprecedented level of visibility for Black artists within the mainstream, it also pointed towards the tendency for such visibility to be constructed around a largely segregated agenda. The Black survey show became the common route by which many of the major publicly funded galleries would interact with the majority of Black artists. Despite working alongside their white peers in Britain’s art colleges and beyond, many Black artists would almost as a matter of course end up in the Black ‘survey’ exhibition. This may have represented a ‘stepping stone’ leading to improved recognition for the ‘chosen few’. However, rather than signifying recognition of a new era of Black artistic practice, unfortunately the Black survey show came to signify the ways in which opportunities for many Black artists would be limited by the mainstream. Whilst there were some opportunities for a select few, opportunities for the majority rarely progressed beyond large group exhibitions. It was this sort of mainstream engagement that would arguably stigmatise and stifle Black artistic practice into the 1990s.106

By the mid-1980s, Black artists found themselves in an increasingly vulnerable position. Despite the relative slenderness of their individual and collective profile, they were now beginning to be perceived as having outstayed their welcome. The remaining years of the decade, as well as the following one, were to bring, for many, additional disappointments. Unbeknownst to the majority of Black artists, their fifteen minutes were nearly up. For others, though – by and large, a different body of practitioners – the 1990s were to be a blessed decade, in which developments and changes in the cultural arena mirrored developments and changes in the political landscape.

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106

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 91.

2

Service to Empire 

The middle of the nineteenth century marked the high point of the power and wealth of Great Britain, and her people were proud not only of these: they were conscious of the greatness of their contribution not only to law and to the natural sciences, to literature and to the arts of government, but also to the visual arts.1

I

2002, T H E S C O T T I S H A R T I S T M A U D S U L T E R ’ S P L A Y Service to Empire was published.2 The play was an innovative recasting of Sulter’s own biography. While she herself was born of a white Scottish mother and a Ghanaian father in Glasgow in 1960, the central narrative of Service to Empire was located in mid-twentieth-century Ghana and centred on the relationship between a white Scotsman and a Ghanaian woman; an illicit union which resulted in the birth of JJ, a fictional character growing up to bear more than a passing resemblance to Flight Lieutenant Jerry J. Rawlings, who was, for two spells, one of Ghana’s military rulers. As the play moves towards its denouement, Big Man John (JJ’s father, who has spent much of his life working as a pharmacist in colonial Ghana) receives a communication “from Buckingham Palace. The Queen of England.” It reads: N

I have been asked to inform you that it is the Secretary of State’s intention to have the Prime Minister put to The Queen a recommendation that She may be pleased that you be appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire. The Secretary would be glad to know that this mark of Her Majesty’s favour is acceptable to you. The suggestion should, of course, be kept strictly confidential until publication of the list takes place.3

1

Sir John Rothenstein [Director, Tate Gallery, 1938–64], A Brief History of The Tate Gallery (Pitkin Pride of Britain Books; London: Pitkin Pictorials, [1963]): 1, 4. 2 Maud Sulter, Service to Empire (Edinburgh: A19, 2002). 3 Sulter, Service to Empire, 62.

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Although the British Empire, for the most part, no longer exists, there still persists the somewhat anachronistic practice of the monarch or her representative awarding medals to those so chosen, for Service to Empire, and in recent years those deemed to have given such service have included a growing number of Black artists, who, along with others thus favoured, have found themselves being offered ‘gongs’ in the Queen’s Birthday and New Year Honours. As such, this is to some extent an unfolding phenomenon, as each year new names of Black artists sporting British Empire suffixes to their names are added to a growing list. It has only been over the course of the past decade or so that Black artists have come to – or have been brought to – the attention of the secretive committee of Whitehall mandarins whose duty it is to make recommendations concerning the awarding of these honours. Though a roll call of previous refuseniks was leaked to the Sunday Times, towards the end of 20034 (apparently divulging the names of some three hundred people who had rejected honours in the past sixty years), we cannot, by definition and for the most part, know which artists and which others, if any, have – year on year – declined the offer of a gong. Furthermore, we are not privy to definitive reasons that may have motivated the refuseniks. Rejecting a gong seems to be informed by one or more of three chief motives. First, a disavowal, by the approached would-be honoree, of the entire honours system; secondly, a sense that the gong offered is below the level at which the refusenik would prefer to be – or considers her or himself to be entitled to be – honoured; and thirdly, reluctance on the part of the would-be honoree to be publicly identified with the politics or the leadership of the government of the day.5 Con4

David Leppard & Robert Winnett, “Revealed: secret list of 300 who scorned honours,” Sunday Times (21 December 2003) 1, 3. The Sunday Times made much of the revelations, and related stories occupied not only the front page, including the headlines, but also the next four pages of the newspaper. The related titles were “They’d really rather not: roll call of the honours refuseniks,” “Ambition, jealousy and the people who won’t take no for an answer,” “It’s not unusual… to promote yourself.” and “Gongupmanship is a contest for the wilier social climber.” The stories were by Leppard and Winnett and the Sunday Times Reporting Team of Richard Woods, Maurice Chittenden, Rachel Dobson, Steven Shukar, David Robertson, and Sarah Keenlyside. 5 John Walker mentions two of these three possible motivations, in Chapter One (“Honouring – the system”) of his study of the honours system: “Fifteen to twenty people per list will turn down the offer, either because they disapprove of the system, or

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sequently, in seeking to research the honours system and its seeming attempts to increasingly embrace Black people, we can do little more than speculate as to why, for example, “Comedian Lenny Henry rejected an O B E under the Tories [and John Major] in 1994 but accepted a C B E from [Tony Blair’s] New Labour in 1999.”6 Perhaps the most conspicuous refusenik (prepared to set out his stall to display the reasons that lay behind his rebuttal) has been the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who was apparently offered an O B E in late 2003. Had Zephaniah accepted, his name would have appeared in the then forthcoming list of New Year’s Honours. Breaking with established and requested protocol, Zephaniah publicly declined and decried the offer, in a somewhat polemical piece published in the Guardian newspaper in late November of 2003. The piece’s headline, “Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought,” gave unambiguous clues to what Zephaniah thought of the offer and his contempt for this particular system of patronage. For good measure, the sub-heading added “An

because they feel they have not been offered a high enough dignity.” Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased: The British Honours System at Work (London: Secker & Warburg, 1986): 18. 6 Richard Price & Andy Dolan, “We don’t want to be honoured,” Daily Mail (22 December 2003): 6. Along with other newspapers, the Daily Mail was reporting on the story of honours refuseniks that had been broken by the Sunday Times of the previous day. The Daily Mail article was introduced as “From Nigella Lawson to Lowry and Lenny Henry to Larkin, the hundreds of public figures who turned their back on 700 years of history.” It may possibly have been ambivalence towards Conservative party politics that informed Henry’s initial rejection of an honour. Henry’s biographer, Jonathan Margolis, reported that when Henry was “asked by the Guardian about his political outlook in 1988, he replied, ‘It’s obvious isn’t it? I don’t get invited to parties by the Conservatives any more. I was once invited to a golf dinner with Denis and Margaret. What do you mean did I go? Of course not! You think I turned up and said ‘Yeah Maggie, what’s going down? This music’s useless Maggie. Haven’t you got any Public Enemy?’.” Margolis, though, was careful not to present Henry as a left-wing firebrand, by going on to mention that in the early 1990s Henry left “the Anti-Nazi League because of a suspicion about its extreme left-wing tendencies – it shared premises with the Socialist Workers’ Party.” Margolis, Lenny Henry: A Biography (London: Orion, 1995): 188. Elsewhere in the biography, Margolis suggested that “Henry’s tireless efforts over more than a decade for the [Comic Relief] charity make it a sure bet that, by the time he gets a few grey hairs, he will be Sir Lenworth Henry” (115).

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invitation to the palace to accept a New Year honour… you must be joking. Benjamin Zephaniah won’t be going. Here he explains why.”7 The piece was well-promoted by the newspaper. On the banner of the front cover of the main newspaper, Zephaniah’s article was trailed as “‘Benjamin Zephaniah O B E ? No way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen’ Why I’m turning down an honour.” Zephaniah’s piece appeared in the G2 section of the newspaper, the cover of which showed a photograph of an honours medal. Appearing with the photograph were the words “You know what you can do with this, Mr Blair By Benjamin Zephaniah.” Zephaniah (who between 1998 and 2010 collected some fifteen honorary doctorates8) was not only scathing about being the possible recipient of an O B E ; he was also derisive of those accepting of such honours. I was shocked to see how many of my fellow writers jumped at the opportunity to go to Buckingham Palace when the Queen had her “meet the writers day” on July 9 2002, and I laughed at the pathetic excuses writers gave for going. “I did it for my mum”; “I did it for my kids”; I did it for the school”; “I did it for the people”, etc. I have even heard black writers who have collected O B E s saying that it is “symbolic of how far we have come.” Oh yes, I say, we’ve struggled so hard just to get a minute with the Queen and we are so very grateful – not.9

In Zephaniah’s view, the offering of honours to writers such as himself reflected not only a concerted attempt to foster New Labour’s own brand of inclusivity, but was also meant to reflect the media’s branding of said government as the self-appointed arbiters of ‘cool Britannia’. (So-called New Labour was said to be a modernized version of the traditional Labour Party, shorn of what were considered to be unpopular associations. One of its chief architects, the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Tony Blair, who became British 7

Benjamin Zephaniah, “ ‘ Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought’,” 2–3. See “A List of Honorary Doctorates,” http://www.benjaminzephaniah.com/content /317.php (accessed 2 April 2011). 9 Zephaniah, “ ‘ Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought’,” 3. Zephaniah’s derision at the “pathetic excuse” sometime offered by honours recipients that “I did it for my mum” was perhaps echoed in a feature on Steve McQueen in The Independent of 15 July 2008, 14–15. In it, the writer reported that McQueen was “dismissive of the O B E he was awarded in 2002, saying he only accepted it for the sake of his parents, who were proud of him, and that it doesn't mean anything to him.” McQueen was awarded first an O B E , then a C B E , several years later. 8

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Prime Minister in 1997, personified and championed New Labour. The demise of New Labour began when Blair resigned from office a decade later, and his successor, Gordon Brown, lost the General Election of 2010.)

FIGURE 8 Benjamin Zephaniah, 2007 photograph  Pascal Saez

Furthermore, Zephaniah perceived a none-too-subtle strategy of appropriation and neutralization to be at work in that letter from the Prime Minister’s office – a strategy in which Black writers (and others, including Black artists) were packaged, promoted, and, above all, used as colourful motifs of New Labour’s era of fairness, justice, and creativity. I’ve never heard of a holder of the O B E openly criticising the monarchy. They are officially friends, and that’s what this cool Britannia project is about. It gives O B E s to cool rock stars, successful businesswomen and blacks who would be militant in order to give the impression that it is inclusive. Then these rock stars, successful women, and ex-militants write to me with the O B E after their name as if I should be impressed. I’m not. Quite the opposite – you’ve been had.10

10

Zephaniah, “ ‘ Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought’,” 3.

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Apparently feeling both inspired and chided by Zephaniah’s example, the journalist Yasmin Alibhai–Brown returned her M B E , having accepted it in 2001. Alibhai–Brown wrote of the episode several times. She was responsible for a comment piece for the Independent, in the same edition of the paper, covering the news story of the honours refuseniks that had been broken by the Sunday Times the previous day.11 Several years later, Alibhai–Brown again authored a comment piece critical of the honours system. In it, she wrote: I was stupid once and allowed myself to accept an M B E , partly to please my mum. . . Then the poet Benjamin Zephaniah shamed me live on Channel 4 news, just as the Iraq war was building up and my republicanism was solidifying. I returned the lovely object and have had to put up with scorn ever since, some deserved.12

Zephaniah and leaked names aside, we have no way of knowing what refusenik company, if any, he might be keeping. (Though it has been reported, by the Independent newspaper, that an estimated two percent of those approached to be honoured do not accept the invitation.13) So, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, “we know there are some things we do not know.”14 In this 11 Harvey McGavin, “Honoured? No thanks say elite of arts and tv,” The Independent (22 December 2003): 7. Yasmin Alibhai–Brown, “It is an honour to stand among the refuseniks, The issue has not gone away since Zephaniah spoke up and since I, rather humiliatingly, gave up my M B E ,” The Independent (22 December 2003): 15. 12 Yasmin Alibhai–Brown, “These shameless honours dishonour us all: If the deserving refused because they want no part in this charade, we could get a revolution going,” The Independent (19 June 2006): 29. It was Alibhai–Brown who, in 2000, wrote a major feature for the Guardian Weekend magazine about “Muslim artists in Britain.” The feature was introduced as “After years of dispiriting neglect, there has been a renaissance among Muslim artists in Britain. Not all of them devote their art to God, but most give short thrift to the notion of art for art’s sake and sheep in formaldehyde.” Alibhai–Brown’s piece was illustrated with portraits of Ali Omar Ermes, Zarina Bhimji, and Vaseem Mohammed. Yasmin Alibhai–Brown, “Sacred Beauty,” Guardian Weekend (15 January 2000): 32–38. 13 Harvey McGavin, “Honoured? No thanks say elite of arts and tv,” The Independent (22 December 2003): 7. 14 As the U S Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld gave several press conferences in which he conveyed his gnomic epistemology: “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

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instance, that leaves us with what we can and do know, and we know for certain that a significant number of Black artists are now Commanders of the Order of, Officers of the Order of, or Members of the Order of the British Empire. While we should not recklessly dissociate this phenomenon from the broader issue of the awarding of gongs to Black people in other professions and areas of human endeavour (and, indeed, the awarding of gongs to British and Commonwealth people in general), we can nevertheless identify, as a recent and pronounced trend, the awarding of such honours to an increased number of Black people, including visual-arts practitioners. Given the absolute dearth of published material (be that documentary, investigative or critical) on the subject of Black people and the honours system, trying to make sense of it is in some ways a difficult task. There are, for example, no references whatsoever to the honours system in the Oxford Companion to Black British History. Less surprisingly, the publication The Queen Has Been Pleased, which examined The British Honours System at Work and claimed to be “the first full investigation into the workings of the honours system,” was silent the subject of Black people and the honours system, beyond a paltry reference to Kenny Lynch’s receiving an O B E and, in parentheses, “black popular performers [unnamed by Walker] were honoured in two successive lists.”15 Official government papers pay only the slightest attention to Black people and their proximity to, and involvement in, the honours system. In July 2004, the Cabinet Office issued a Review of the Honours System, by someone who was clearly a beneficiary of that system, Sir Hayden Phillips.16 Running to some ninety pages, apart from statistics in the annexes on the proportion of women recipients and ethnic-minority recipients of awards, its fleeting references to Black people came in the section “D I V E R S I T Y A N D N O M I N A T I O N S ” and the sub-section “Ethnic minorities.” In it, Sir Hayden wrote:

15

John Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased: The British Honours System at Work (London: Secker & Warburg, 1986): 149. The claim that the book represented “the first full investigation into the workings of the honours system” was made on the book’s flyleaf. 16 Sir Hayden Phillips, Review of the Honours System (London: Cabinet Office, July 2004), http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090118230434/http://www.cabinet office.gov.uk//media/cabinetoffice/corp/assets/publications/reports/honours/honours.p df (accessed 2 April 2011).

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The estimate of the proportion of people from black and minority ethnic (B M E ) groups receiving honours in the Prime Minister’s List is running at 4%–6%. I call this an estimate because the method of identifying B M E [Black and Minority Ethnic] recipients needs to be improved. At the moment the definition used is anyone who might be expected to classify himself or herself as falling under any of the non-white headings used for the census.17

He goes on to make the recommendation that “There should be a form sent with the letter offering an award which asks for information on ethnicity, using the census definitions.”18 As with so much of the narrative of this study, we must look to concerted political strategies enacted and pursued by Tony Blair’s New Labour government, elected to office in 1997, and maintaining power (though changing Prime Minister) until 2010. In Blair’s Britain, Black people ceased to be (regarded as) perpetually disgruntled irritants to and within the body politic, and became instead a certain barometer of the equity, vibrancy, and limitless potential of both the government and those whom it governed. It was arguably this process that so dismayed Zephaniah, who regarded this particular ‘interest’ in Black people as being not much more than a cynical exercise. Upon entering Downing Street, Blair seemed to pass up no opportunity to stress the ways in which his government was, or sought to be, markedly different from the previous, Conservative administrations, the last, under John Major, having been ousted in decisive manner in May 1997. The strategy took a number of forms, one of the most notable being the announcement by Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, that Britain would henceforth be pursuing an ‘ethical’ foreign policy.19

17

Phillips, Review of the Honours System, 42. Review of the Honours System, 42. 19 Robin Cook’s speech on the ethics of the Government’s foreign policy was given in May 1997, shortly after Tony Blair’s New Labour government took office. Cook was at the time the recently appointed Foreign Secretary. For an initial assessment of this, see “Profile, The Foreign Office: Cook’s tour of duty,” The Guardian (12 May 1997), G2: 6–7. The profile was introduced as “In just one week the most radical member of Blair’s cabinet has blown the winds of change through Whitehall’s stuffiest ministry. Ian Black assesses the obstacles that Robin Cook may face.” Black drew attention to what he saw as Cook’s defining positions: “more emphasis on human rights, closer scrutiny of arms sales to dodgy regimes, imaginative ways of looking at nuclear weapons proliferation now that the Cold War is well and truly over.” 18

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Furthermore, alongside and within this apparently more favourable and sympathetic political landscape, including efforts to combat racist violence,20 Black-British people in a plurality of professions and callings could expect to have their achievements recognized. Going beyond the somewhat traditional areas of excellence and achievement such as sport, education, and community development with which Black people were most identified and decorated, the honours system gradually began, with seeming determination and tenacity, to widen the body of recipients of honours in the Queen’s Birthday and New Year’s lists. Perhaps the most striking area of human endeavour to be more greatly incorporated was that of culture, and particular strands in it such as literature, music, and the visual arts. That the visual arts should be so deliberately drawn into the mix is consistent with the strategies of New Labour, which tended to regard the arts as a barometer of the dynamism, creativity, and unbridled sense of Britishness of this new, Blairite era. As Gary Younge recalled, “Following New Labour’s election in 1997 […]. Throughout the late 90s, the arts became far more popular.”21 It was perhaps fortuitous for New Labour that it came to power in the years immediately heading into a new millennium. Along with many people throughout the world, the British public was taken, arguably to points of exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, with the idea of witnessing and, indeed, being a part of the dawning not only of a new century but also of a new millennium. The notion that the coming of the new millennium was a worldwide event of almost messianic proportions was fuelled by near-hysteria over the so-called ‘millennium bug’ – said to be a likely catastrophic inability of the clocks in the world’s computers to successfully and smoothly move beyond 23:59 31.12.1999. With so much of the world’s infrastructure relying on the use of computers, it wasn’t difficult for an apocalyptic scenario to be envisaged by a populace already caught up in the excitement of the moment and the drama of a one and three nines changing into a two and three zeros. Media-stoked worries about the millennium bug aside, the late 1990s represented – as far as the government was concerned – an era of unbridled optimism and a greater appreciation of creativity. To this end, a plethora of new visual arts spaces were prepared and brought into existence as a way of 20

See below (129–35) for an extended discussion of the Stephen Lawrence murder and Chris Ofili’s artistic engagement with the affair. 21 Gary Younge, “Chris Ofili: A bright new wave,” Guardian Weekend (16 January 2010): 27.

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marking the year 2000 and the era of newness and promise that it represented. Across the country, major initiatives for visual-arts spaces, many on a cathedral-like scale, were developed. In Gateshead, in the north-east of England, the huge ex-industrial Baltic building was renovated to become the B A L T I C Centre for Contemporary Art, eventually opening in the summer of 2002. Further south, in the West Midlands, the imposing structure of the New Art Gallery, Walsall, opened in January 2000. The most conspicuous and significant of these new building projects was Tate Modern, established, like Walsall’s New Art Gallery, in 2000. Other initiatives, some ill fated, were undertaken in centres such as Sheffield, which saw the National Centre for Popular Music open in early 1999 and close not much more than a year later; Cardiff, with its similarly ill-fated Centre for Visual Arts, and West Bromwich, in which an arts project known as The Public had a somewhat troubled birth and chequered history. (London’s so-called ‘Millennium Dome’, though, was perhaps the most ill-fated of all these projects.22) Richard Hylton, referring to what he described as “notable failures,” noted that The demise of Camerawork and The L U X (both based in London) the Centre for Visual Arts, Cardiff and the Nia Centre, Manchester, and more recently The Public, West Bromwich, suggest that capital projects are built on shifting sands. Not only are they subject to the vagaries of both the funding system and the political climate, they can also be the site of inappropriate investments made in organisations which may be unable to support such developments.23

Several other commentators expressed degrees of scepticism about the ways in which New Labour effectively supervised the establishment of no end of building-based arts projects, meant to celebrate both the millennium and the benevolence and farsightedness of New Labour itself. Not surprisingly perhaps, these commentators drew attention to a number of catastrophic failures of certain projects. Chin-tao Wu wrote: The mushrooming of new arts buildings and the refurbishment of old ones has, for example, been one of the most tangible results of Lottery money becoming available for the arts, heritage and the Millennium Commission. Since 1994, some £1 billion of Lottery money has been allocated for 2,000 building schemes up and down the country. The extent to which the building 22

See Adam Nicholson, Lid Off the Dome: The Inside Story of Britain at the Millennium (London: HarperCollins, 1999). 23 Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 123.

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boom will serve the people, rather than enriching architects, construction companies and developers, remains to be seen. Some of these grand projects, such as the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield, the Earth Centre in Doncaster, the Centre for Visual Arts in Cardiff and the Royal Armories in Leeds, faced financial difficulties and closure even within a few months of their opening, giving them the status of ‘white elephants’ in the eyes of the general public.24

Writing in 2010, Rosie Millard offered a particularly dispiriting and sobering assessment of the decidedly mixed fortunes of the building-based projects – a number of which centred on the apparent needs of Black artists and the communities they were regarded as representing – that proliferated at the turn of the millennium. The subtitle of Millard’s feature in the Independent summed up the tenor of her assertions: ‘Many of the costly arts projects that were supposed to transform the country's cultural landscape have flopped.”25 The piece began: Ten years on since the great Millennium Lottery rush to turn this country into an all-singing, all-dancing culture-box, the picture is distinctly less sparkly.” Millard then proceeded, “It’s important to remember just how much capital outlay there was. The Millennium Lottery payola heralded one of the greatest building sprees the British arts world has ever known. A staggering £1.3 billion was spent on 222 projects across the country, of which Arts and Culture grabbed a third (the others being Community and Education). And instead of a glittering web of arts institutions across the land, what we are left with is a series of buildings by “named” architects, many of which are dark, vandalised or which are living in the crepuscular world of free comedy nights and amateur dramatics.26

The feature chronicled and detailed not only a number of the most high-profile and costly flops, but also ruminated on the ideas that held sway and led to the apparently ill-fated creation of so many millennium projects. The arts lobby, which perceived itself as having been left out in the cold for the entire Thatcher era, could hardly believe its luck. Secondly, there was a heady notion that British art – after years of dreary earnestness – was sud24

Chin-tao Wu, Privatising Culture, 277. Rosie Millard, “Money for nothing: Many of the costly arts projects that were supposed to transform the country’s cultural landscape have flopped. Rosie Millard finds out what went wrong,” Independent Life (11 February 2010), Arts: 14–15. 26 Rosie Millard, “Money for nothing,” 14. 25

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denly sexy. Arts grandees saw Damien Hirst on Top of the Pops, pointed to the queues outside Charles Saatchi's Sensation at the Royal Academy and convinced themselves that everyone could have their own little piece of the Y B A phenomenon. Rather naively, they thought that everyone would dump their traditional British suspicion regarding art and charge into their Lotteryfunded arts centres, to watch the subtitled movies, eat the focaccia al pomodoro and lap up shows of digital art. Yet when the wrapping paper was torn off and the much heralded projects completed, the goods were never delivered.27

Gen Doy’s book Black Visual Culture was written and published at the turn of the new millennium. Not surprisingly, Doy alluded to its supposed significance, the millennium bug, and the ill-fated Dome, in the opening lines of her “Introduction”: The somewhat arbitrary dating of a world historical shift in history, based on the birth of Jesus Christ, is being seen in Britain as both a cause of (controversial) celebration and commemoration and as an expensive nuisance to computer software. The planned Millenium [sic] Dome to be constructed at Greenwich, London, at a cost of £750 million has proved difficult to sell to a sceptical public.28

Apart from being totemic of a new spirit of optimism which the New Labour government was keen to foster and be identified with, these new building initiatives reflected a long-standing belief that the arts could be a means of economic renewal and sustenance as much as a reflection of a creative nation, at peace with itself and in touch with its artistic side. The apparent availability of relatively large sums of lottery cash certainly helped engender this thinking and bankroll many nationwide projects to refurbish or expand existing visual arts facilities such as galleries and museums, and, in due course, to bring others into existence.29 Perhaps more than any other entity or structure, the art

27

“Money for nothing,” 15. Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture: Modernism to Postmodernism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000): 1. 29 A note of caution should perhaps been struck with regard to Lottery funding. Periodically, the New Labour government was accused by critics of financial sleight of hand when it came to funding and other fiscal matters. Lottery cash may well, in the first instance, have been both new and additional, but over time, the additionality ebbed and Lottery funding became in many instances core or sole funding, particularly with regard to grants. In effect, significant streams of what was once funding 28

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gallery and museum was taken to represent, and be symbolic of, all that was good and dynamic about New Labour and the new millennium. Notwithstanding the mixed fortunes of millennium projects, a greater governmental appreciation of the arts was a discernible and conspicuous aspect of cosmopolitan New Labour.30 Part and parcel of this, the phenomenon of awarding honours to ever increasing numbers of Black people in the arts, began in the run-up to the new millennium, though it was to continue years after the symbolism of the new millennium had, in some instances, been tarnished and, more generally, had lost its public appeal. The government of John Major (and, indeed, that of Margaret Thatcher before it) had been largely indifferent to the singular and dynamic contributions to British culture by Black-British people from immigrant backgrounds.

provided by the state became instead funding provided via the National Lottery. Dangerously, though, a sense of ‘additionality’ remained. The precarious nature of this development alarmed some commentators, and the consequences, implications, and complexities of this shift were to be keenly felt by many people. In “Lottery Britain,” a section of the conclusion to her book Privatising Culture, Chin-tao Wu noted: The lottery had been established in November 1994 under the previous Tory government to fund projects in addition to, and not in the place of, government funding. By changing the principle of ‘additionality’ in Lottery grants, something that Labour had endorsed while in opposition, Labour in power was able, in 1998, to set up a ‘New opportunities Fund’, sharing 13,3% of the Lottery money with other good causes. Up to January 2000, some £1.2 billion had been spent to fund specialist health, education and environmental projects for which the government would otherwise have had to raise taxes. (277) 30 As noted in the entry “Museums” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 323–28, “it was not until the accession of the New Labour government in 1997, with its concerns about social inclusion, that museums embraced black history to any significant extent.” Later on in the entry, the point was reiterated as follows: By May 1997 Labour’s landslide victory in the general election ensured that the pressure for change gathered pace. By December the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had set up the Social Exclusion Unit, designed to promote social inclusion of previously marginalized groups. […] Over the next few years the government increasingly urged museum professionals to see museums as instruments of social regeneration.

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As Richard Hylton posited, “Thatcher’s government was minded to treat agendas such as those promoting ‘race’ equality and anti-racism with a certain degree of antipathy.”31 The clearest, albeit grudging, comment from Thatcher about the cultural value of immigration was “Every country can take some small minorities, and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country.”32 This reluctantly expressed sentiment came in the middle of what was regarded as Thatcher’s most vociferous and notorious anti-immigrant push, in 1978, during her time as then leader of the Conservative opposition. Tellingly, the perhaps overly modest representation of women and people from ethnic minorities drew little comment from John Walker, in his 1986 study of the honours system, beyond the observation that the ‘Main Honours Committee’ ensuring that the bi-annual lists contained “a fair sprinkling of women and perhaps, increasingly, that there is the odd Asian name on the list.”33 In contrast to the ruling Conservatives’ apparent indifference to the likes of jazz musician Courtney Pine, or Jazzie B (real name, Trevor Beresford Romeo), one of the creators of the hugely successful and influential Soul II Soul,34 Blair’s government saw to it that such people (and other Black artists), having been previously overlooked, were now brought to the attention of the Whitehall committee on the Queen’s honours. To this end, Blair’s government set about the task of honouring the likes of Courtney Pine and Jazzie B (who, it could be argued, had been doing much of their most significant and celebrated work beginning some years earlier, in the period of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s). Pine received an O B E in the New Year Honours of 2000, and a C B E some eight years later in the New Year Honours of 2008, at which time Jazzie B was awarded an O B E . Attendant on this was a new sense of opportunism that was to see contemporary successes rewarded by, in short order, a mention in the Queen’s New Year or Birthday lists. In this regard, gongs were awarded not only, or not so much, for longevity and/or depth of 31

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 128–29. “World in Action,” 30 January 1978, quoted in Trevor Russel, The Tory Party: Its Policies, Divisions and Future (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978): 116. 33 John Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased, 16. 34 One of Soul II Soul’s most celebrated songs was “Keep on Movin’,” from their debut album Club Classics Vol. One. The song was a highly successful and popular dance tune, the sentiments of which referenced social struggle as much as it urged on dancers, with its message to “keep on movin’, don’t stop.” 32

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contribution, but more as a benefit of an individual, or group of people, attaining, however fleetingly or rapidly, the politically attractive status of ‘celebrity’. Artists and others who had been practising for several decades were accordingly recognized alongside those whose contribution had emerged or developed over a relatively foreshortened and much briefer period of time. In this scenario, naked populism and opportunism took their place alongside political posturing, on the part of government ministers, in the awarding of honours. The issue of foreshortened timescales in the awarding of honours can be seen reflected in the electing of artists of the yBa generation to the Royal Academy. While major British painters such as Patrick Caulfield and David Hockney practised for thirty years or so before being elected to the RA, and Frank Bowling practised for nearly half a century before being elected to the RA, artists such as Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, and Fiona Rae were elected to the RA within not much more than a decade of establishing their respective reputations. Nowhere was this strategy of naked expediency clearer than in the contrasting fortunes of England’s winning 1966 World Cup football squad and the 2003 victorious England World Cup rugby squad. Alf Ramsey, England’s football manager at the time of the 1966 victory, was knighted the following year in 1967, the year in which Bobby Moore, the England captain, was awarded an O B E .35 A couple of years later, another of the squad’s senior players, Bobby Charlton, was also awarded an O B E . Thereafter, various members of the team were honoured in dribs and drabs, though several remain unacknowledged – as far as the awarding of Queen’s honours goes. While opportunistic manoeuvrings have, by their very nature and to varying degrees, always been a feature of the honours system since the first, the Order of the Garter, was created in the fourteenth century, with other orders being added over the centuries, including the Order of the British Empire during World War One,36 the honours fortunes of all those associated or involved with the England 2003 World Cup rugby squad contrast markedly with the victorious England 1966 football team. As reported in the Independent for the last day of 2003: 35

See the chapter “The Wilson Years,” in Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased,

143–63. 36

For a detailed history of the honours system, see Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased.

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All 31 members of England’s World Cup-winning rugby squad have been decorated, a month after vanquishing Australia in Sydney. Clive Woodward, the head coach, receives a knighthood, and Martin Johnson, the captain, is created C B E . Jonny Wilkinson and Jason Leonard, the record-breaking prop, are appointed O B E s. Francis Baron, the chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, is also appointed O B E and every other member of the squad, including the reserves and specialist coaches, are created M B E s. Downing Street indicated that Tony Blair had insisted the names of England’s rugby heroes be included in the New Year list. […] A spokeswoman said: “The Prime Minister felt it was important that their fantastic achievement should be marked as soon as possible.”37

This episode underlines Benjamin Zephaniah’s perception of a none-toosubtle strategy of appropriation to be at work, as well as piecemeal populism, in the granting of honours, in which the recipients were packaged, promoted, and, above all, used as emblems of New Labour’s dynamic era of success and creativity. Had Zephaniah accepted the honour that was apparently offered, he would presumably have been collecting it from Buckingham Palace alongside Johnson, Wilkinson, Woodward, et al. Blair’s apparent insistence on the universal honouring of the victorious rugby squad pandered to a particular populist sentiment, even as he simultaneously rode roughshod over a greater, more profound, and more important popular sentiment – that of the British people’s profound and widespread ambivalence about going into what was widely regarded as an illegal and unjust war, against Iraq. As Zephaniah concluded in his Guardian piece, You can’t fool me, Mr Blair. You want to privatise us all; you want to send us to war. You stay silent when we need you to speak for us, preferring to be the voice of the U S . You have lied to us, and you continue to lie to us, and you have poured the working-class dream of a fair, compassionate, caring society down the dirty drain of empire…38

Those civil servants working on the honours system do so, in great measure, at the behest of the sensibilities of the government of the day. Not only could this be seen in relation to the ways in which the 2003 England rugby 37

Matthew Beard, “England’s rugby World Cup winners are honoured,” The Independent (31 December 2003): 11. The article also reported that, Blair’s decision was taken “to avoid a repeat of the haphazard way the awards were allocated to the winning members of the 1966 World Cup team.” 38 Benjamin Zephaniah, “ ‘ Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought’,” 2–3.

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squad were, en masse, given gongs, but also in the way Blair’s spokesperson, evidently with a straight face, had, as quoted earlier, let it be known that “The Prime Minister felt it was important that their fantastic achievement should be marked as soon as possible.”39 A similarly blunt process can in some ways be ascertained by the apparent quickening of the pace at which Black people in the arts were honoured during the New Labour regime. Not only that, but the very nature of the types of people thus favoured bears scrutiny. While having no pronounced regard for multiculturalism, cultural diversity, or any of the other fiendishly imprecise, though increasingly popular terms of reference for the changing nature of the ethnic minority presence in Britain, John Major’s government nevertheless extended honours to a number of Black people working in entertainment and the arts (such as the veteran theatre director Yvonne Brewster, who was awarded an O B E in the New Year Honours list of 1993, and the writer, comic, and actor Meera Syal, awarded an M B E in the New Year Honours list of 1997). To some extent, gong recipients were inextricably bound to the notion of having been granted this particular favour at the behest of a given or particular political administration. In this regard, it could be argued that Blair and his civil servants deliberately selected for honours those whose practice or work could be seen as reflecting the NewLabour zeitgeist, and its sensibilities of cosmopolitanism, inclusivity, and the aforementioned diversity.40 To this end, Anish Kapoor was awarded a C B E in 2003; Sanjeev Bhaskar was given an O B E in 2006, in which year the Scottish writer Jackie Kay was given an M B E in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, Salman Rushdie was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of June 2007, and Hanif Kureishi received a C B E in the 2008 New Year Honours. Such awards represent a conspicuous acceleration of a trend that began several years earlier. The trend is likely to continue, despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration of scepticism about what he labelled “state multiculturalism.”41 39

Beard, “England’s rugby World Cup winners are honoured.” We can do little more than speculate about the routes and means by which Black artists and, indeed, many other honours recipients are brought into consideration. John Walker pointed to the somewhat opaque process: “nobody at Number 10 has the faintest idea who the people are” (The Queen Has Been Pleased, 16). 41 Cameron’s scepticism about what he termed “state multiculturalism” was reported in a front-page story of the Daily Telegraph (5 February 2011): “Muslims must embrace core British values, says Cameron.” The Prime Minister was quoted as saying 40

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It was perhaps inevitable that ever greater numbers of Black people would figure in the honours system, once the politics of representation were added to the mix. For decades the honours system existed essentially without regard for proportional representation of women or people regarded as being ‘ethnic minority’.42 Gradually, all that was to change; so much so that when the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2010 was published, it was declared that “Women make up 47 per cent of recipients, while more than 7 per cent of awards have gone to people from ethnic minority communities.”43 The statistics may well have been declared with the Cabinet Office’s report into the honours system, commissioned several years previously, in mind. That report, mentioned earlier in this chapter, made known the extent to which proportional representation of women and what the document termed “people from black and minority ethnic (B M E ) groups” was now figuring in the thinking of those administering the honours system.44 A recent Sunday Telegraph headline announced that “Honours quotas to boost women and ethnic groups,”45 Subtitled “Government orders that more females and non-whites be nominated for decoration by the Queen as unequal shortfall is ‘not acceptable’,” the article began: “Quotas have been covertly introduced to the honours system by the Government so more women and members of ethnic minorities are decorated by the Queen.”46 The newspaper article continued: The Cabinet Office, which oversees the honours process, has told Whitehall departments submitting nominations to ensure that their lists include more female and non-white candidates. The instruction was disclosed in a letter seen by The Sunday Telegraph in which Hayley Harris, the deputy honours secretary at the Department of Communities and Local Government, demanded that more than half of all local government candidates for next year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours are women. In her letter, sent to John Ransford,

that under “the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream.” 42 As mentioned, there was no consideration whatsoever of this notion of representation and proportional representation in John Walker’s The Queen Has Been Pleased. 43 “Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2010 – full details,” Directgov (12 June 2010), http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_188464 (accessed 2 April 2011). 44 Sir Hayden Phillips, Review of the Honours System. 45 Richard Eden & Tim Walker, “Honours quotas to boost women and ethnic groups,” Sunday Telegraph (12 July 2009): 5. 46 Eden & Walker, “Honours quotas to boost women and ethnic groups.”

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the chief executive of the Local Government Association, Mrs Harris also made clear that there should be more candidates from two specific ethnic groups, “Black African” and “Chinese”’ which had allegedly been “under represented” in the past.”47

If a ‘quota’ system was, as reported, now in place, it can be imagined, or anticipated, that increasing numbers of Black people might be named in future honours lists, albeit predominantly at the modest end of the spectrum. As is usually the case when statistics and percentages are bandied about, figures deserve close scrutiny. The Independent reported, several years ago: Despite an avowed policy to “scrupulously observe equal opportunities” only 20 per cent of those who receive honours of C B E and above are women and less than 4 per cent are black or Asian.48

Those opposed to the honours system, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, may well take the view that any honour, all honours – whether C B E , O B E , M B E , or whatever, should be damned. Such blanket dismissals of the honours system refuse to countenance (or attach any significance to) the perception of a pronounced hierarchy in which Black honours recipients are disproportionately clustered at the modest end of the scale. John Walker, who was responsible for a study of the honours system noted that “M B E is about as ordinary as things get in the honours stakes.”49 One of the first Black artists to be awarded a Queen’s honour (in this instance, an O B E ) was the Manchester-based performance poet SuAndi, in 1999. Since that time, the numbers of Black artists and other Black people in the arts sporting British Empire suffixes to their names have, relatively speaking, increased markedly. Lola Young, a writer, media-studies lecturer, and cultural strategist, was awarded an O B E in 2001, Steve McQueen was awarded an O B E in 2002, less than a decade after graduating with a B.A. in Fine Art, as Steven McQueen, from Goldsmiths.50 Eight years later, he received a 47

Eden & Walker, “Honours quotas to boost women and ethnic groups,” Harvey McGavin, “Honoured? No thanks say elite of arts and tv,” 7. 49 John Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased, 13. 50 Goldsmiths B.A. Fine Art Nineteen 93 degree show catalogue. In 2008, it was reported, in the Independent, that McQueen was “dismissive of the O B E he was awarded in 2002, saying he only accepted it for the sake of his parents, who were proud of him, and that it doesn't mean anything to him.” “McQueen and Country,” The Independent (15 July 2008): 15. 48

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C B E , in the New Year honours of 2011. As mentioned, Anish Kapoor was awarded a C B E in 2003 (having apparently refused what he deemed to be

FIGURE 9 Sokari Douglas Camp photograph by Jonathan Lodge  Telegraph Media Group Limited

a lower-ranking honour earlier in his career); In addition to the O B E awarded to her in 2001, Lola Young was, in 2004, created a life peer in the House of Lords as Baroness Young of Hornsey, in the London Borough of Haringey. Sokari Douglas Camp was made a C B E in 2005, the same year in which Yinka Shonibare was made an M B E . David Adjaye was awarded an O B E in 2007; Saleem Arif Quadri was made an M B E in 2008, the same year in which Magdalene Odundo and Frank Bowling were made O B E s. An O B E was also to go to John Akomfrah, the film director widely known and celebrated for his work with the Black Audio Film Collective. Another pioneering Black filmmaker to be honoured was Horace Ové, who was awarded a C B E in 2007, for his contributions to film in the U K . To these names can be added those of David A. Bailey, Sonia Boyce, and Lubaina Himid, all M B E recipients between 2007 and 2010. Himid, closely associated with the practice of Black women artists in the mid-1980s, was honoured for services to Black women’s art. Thereby, the specificity and particular agendas and challenges of Black women artists, as declared and expressed several decades earlier, were finally incorporated and recognized by monarchy and state. In the New Year honours of 2011, Sarup Singh Dhandia secured an M B E “for services to Art in Leicester.” Six months later, in the Queen’s birthday honours of 2011, the Merseyside-based artists Amrit Kumari Dhigpal Kaur Singh and Rabindra Kumari Dhigpal Kaur Singh were honoured “For services to the Indian

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Miniature Tradition of Painting.” Arts administrators, too, were not to go unrecognized, with Naseem Khan, the veteran researcher and strategist whose interests lay in the fields of ‘ethnic arts’, ‘minority arts’, ‘cultural diversity’ and so on, being awarded an O B E in 1999. Khan was responsible for a pioneering report, which, when it was published in 1976, sought to highlight and draw attention to the range of cultural activity then emerging from Britain’s ‘ethnic minorities communities’.51 Much later, Khan was to become Head of Diversity for Arts Council England. Her association with ‘ethnic minority arts’, ‘cultural diversity’ etc. led one critic to refer to Khan as “that ambassador for happy-clappy ethnics.”52 Another arts administrator to be honoured was Deirdre Figueiredo, director of a Birmingham-based visual arts initiative known as Craftspace Touring, who collected an M B E in the 2010 New Year’s Honours list. Educators identified with ‘Multicultural arts education’ also fell under the purview of the honours system. To this end, Dr Jacques Rangasamy, a senior lecturer at the University of Salford, was awarded an M B E in the New Year honours of 2011. Away from the visual arts, the playwright and critic Bonnie Greer was appointed an O B E in the 2010 Birthday Honours. One of the most significant aspects of this plethora of honours is the way in which it contrasts so markedly with the ways in which honours were perceived in earlier, albeit fairly recent, times. Several decades ago, an altogether different mind-set obtained with regard to Black honours recipients. In those days, it was not just sportspeople, such as the Black-British sprinter Sonia Lannaman, who collected an M B E in 1977, who were perceived by the government as ‘playing the game’. There was a perception that M B E s, O B E s etc. were awarded to Black people for ‘fitting in’, representing ‘the best of British’, and seeking to help other Black people achieve greater degrees of citizenship and belonging, through endeavours such as community work, education, and social services. In this regard, honours recipients had achieved the status of honorary Britishness – irrespective of whether they had been born in Britain or, as was more likely in the late 1970s or early 1980s, in one of the ex-colonies or Commonwealth countries. Honorary Britishness having been bestowed, the recipients were sent forth, and could be relied upon to act as shining examples, for their unwashed brothers and sisters of a darker hue, of 51

Naseem Khan, The Arts Britain Ignores. Niru Ratnam, Decibel: Running To Stand Still, Spin Cycle (Bristol: Spike Island / Systemisch, 2004): 76. 52

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what could be achieved if chips were removed from shoulders and opportunities taken for advancement, self-improvement, and social uplift. In some instances, Black honours awardees could be called upon to carry messages – in one form or another – from the government to the people. This at a time in which ‘the people’ preferred to communicate with the government not through intermediaries but through direct action such as petrol bombs, demonstrations, marches, or the chanting-down of Babylon system and its agencies. One particularly telling episode is recounted by Menelik Shabazz in his short documentary film Blood Ah Goh Run, about events in the aftermath of an horrific fire in New Cross, south London, which claimed the lives of thirteen Black youngsters.53 The film focused on the Black Peoples Day of Action, a march on Monday, 2 March 1981, through London, called to protest the apparent indifference of the authorities to the catastrophe. The march took place some two months after the tragedy of January 1981, which became known among certain people as the New Cross Massacre.54 The thirteen Black youngsters, attending a birthday party, lost their lives in a suspicious house fire. This was a horrific incident that galvanized the Black community, sharpening its sense of identity and purpose. Mystery surrounded the cause of the fire and, among Black people at least, speculation was rife, particularly that the fire pointed to the work of racist arsonists. Arson attacks on the homes of people of African and Asian background were not uncommon, in parts of London and elsewhere in the country. As Peter Fryer noted, Deptford, the area in which the tragedy occurred, was

53

Menelik Shabazz, dir. Blood Ah Goh Run (Kuumba Black Arts, U K 1982; 13 min.). For an account of the tragedy, see Cecily Jones, “New Cross fire,” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 341–42. See also The New Cross Massacre Story: Interviews with John La Rose (London: Alliance of the Black Parents Movement, Black Youth Movement and The Race Today Collective, 1984), and Peter Fryer, “The New Generation,” in Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto, 1985): 387–99. 54 For more on the Black People’s Day of Action, see the entry “Black People’s Day of Action,” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 56–58 (“The largest ever demonstration of black people in Britain”).

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an area where other black homes had been attacked and a black community centre had been burnt down. As usual, police discounted the possibility of a racial motive; but the entire community, not just the anguished parents, were convinced that the fire had been started by fascists.55

In other quarters, an accident or the malicious work of a disgruntled partygoer was cited as a possible cause of the fire. One thing, however, was certain. The aftermath of the tragedy threw into sharp focus an apparent widespread indifference shown to the deaths by the mainstream news media and important religious or political figures of the day. Even the Queen, who was in time to become the bestower of so many honours on Black people, had no declaration of condolences for the bereaved. This widespread indifference deeply offended many within the Black community.

F I G U R E 10 Poster for Menelik Shabazz & Imruh Caesar, Blood Ah Goh Run (Kuumba Black Arts, U K 1982; 13/20 min.)  Menelik Shabazz

Furthermore, there was the disturbing perception that any efforts made by the police to establish the cause of the fire, or to apprehend possible suspects, appeared unconvincing, botched, and lacklustre.56 In the aftermath of the fire, there was the sobering belief that the British establishment appeared indiffe55 Peter Fryer, “The New Generation: Resistance and Rebellion,” in Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto, 1985): 398. A publication which sought to explore the mystery of the fire was Stephen Cook, “Unsolved: Accident or Arson?” Unsolved 4/42 (1984): 829–48. 56 Over a decade later, similar accusations would be levelled against the Metropolitan Police’s handling of, and response to, the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

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rent to the sufferings and trauma of Black people. Following the tragic events, there were, as mentioned, two months of screaming silence on the part of the Monarchy, the Prime Minister, the heads of the established churches, and much of the mainstream the media. It was in this context that the cry of “Thirteen Dead, Nothing Said” was raised.57 The Day of Action drew thousands of Black people and some sympathizers onto the streets. The New Cross Massacre had given rise to this massive act of protest by many Black people whose sense of grievance was near palpable, and it is this demonstration that formed the bulk of Shabazz’s film. As Peter Fryer wrote, Three months [after the fire] some 15,000 black people, in the most remarkable demonstration ever mounted by Britain’s black communities, marched the ten miles from Deptford to central London. They demanded justice for black people and an end to racist murders. They protested against police conduct of the Deptford inquiry. And, as they marched through Fleet Street [where the offices of England’s major daily and Sunday newspapers were based] they protested against media indifference to the mass murder.58

Like the rioting that was to follow some months later, it was as if this violent deed was, quite literally, the fire that forged the identity and agenda of young Black Britain: “The New Cross fire was to mark a pivotal point in race relations in England. The tragic deaths occurred at a particularly turbulent time in British race relations.”59 As the narrator of Blood Ah Goh Run noted, The effects of this march forced the political head of state, Margaret Thatcher, to blunder into sending a letter of condolence to the parents of the dead. It was not addressed to the parents but to a local community worker with an M B E . And to add insult to injury, it was two months late.

In this sorry tale, the M B E -holder was cast in the role of message-carrier, as someone with and through whom the authorities could safely and appropriate-

57

The cry was given particularly poignant expression in the song “13 Dead (Nothing Said),” Johnny Osbourne ( Simba record label, 1981). 58 Peter Fryer, “The New Generation: Resistance and Rebellion,” in Fryer, Staying Power, 398. 59 Cecily Jones, “New Cross fire,” 341.

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ly convey a message of condolence, which presumably was intended to be enough to placate the many families of the fire’s victims.60 For many years, the indelible perception existed that Black holders of C B E s, O B E s, and M B E s were somehow suiting an establishment, rather than a people’s, agenda. But with insistent, albeit cautious attempts being made by successive governments to pluralize or democratize aspects of the honours system, it is arguable that the honours system has to some extent lost its stigma, or its more pronounced associations with ‘selling out’, and so on. Away from considerations of race, the enduring association of the honours system with cronyism was taken up by John Walker: “Acrimony and accusations of collusion, class collaboration, selling out the workers and worse, greet every announcement of honours given to trade unionists.”61 In this regard, Rasheed Araeen was particularly scornful of a number of the Black artists who have come to dominate the art world in recent years, regarding them as no more than collaborators with ‘the system’. In a major interview conducted by Richard Dyer, the question was put to Araeen that You founded Third Text. . . the original subtitle being ‘Third World Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture’. Today the subtitle is ‘Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture’. Could you explain how this change of intent mirrors the changes in the perception of African, Caribbean and Asian artists in the West? I am thinking of course of the rise of members of the second and third generation such as Chris Ofili, Yinka Shonibare and Isaac Julien and the solidification of the reputation of some members of the first generation such as Anish Kapoor and Frank Bowling (recently elected as a Royal Academician after years of exile in New York where his work was well received).

In part, Araeen responded thus: Frank Bowling did struggle hard to reach this point, but I have no regard for the remaining. They are not important. They are successful like others who 60

The “community worker” in question was Sybil Phoenix. Born in British Guiana in 1927, she was given an M B E in 1973, thereby becoming the first Black woman to receive this honour. Phoenix subsequently received a number of other awards, including an O B E in 2008. For references to Phoenix’s M B E , including her apparent ambivalence about accepting it, see John Newbury, Living in Harmony: The Story of Sybil Phoenix (Faith in Action Series; Exeter: Religious and Moral Education Press, 1985): 14–15. 61 John Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased, 116.

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are very good at producing commodities for the market, and good luck to them. They are not alone but represent a class of ambition that leads people to join and serve the system, the very system that is now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of them actually end up with O B E s and M B E s and even places in the House of Lords.

Perhaps using the ‘majestic plural’, or the ‘royal we’, Araeen concluded this response with “We have nothing to do with them.”62 To some extent, despite ritualistic utterances of surprise and humility, a sense of entitlement may also be involved among honours recipients. That is, having worked in their given field, an M B E or an O B E , C B E or whatever, is the least one deserves for one’s efforts. As Benjamin Zephaniah suggested, when he paraphrased “black writers who have collected O B E s saying that it is ‘symbolic of how far we have come’,”63 there may be a feeling among some honours recipients that a gong is evidence that, in the words of Macka B, they’ve “come a long way since the plantation.”64 Additionally, it may well be thought that a gong can come in useful to its recipient, in securing commissions or employment, both now and in the future. Thus among Black honours recipients there can be the perception of an interplay between entitlement and personal advancement on the one hand, and, on the other, manoeuverings on the part of the government to promote its own notions of meritocracy and inclusivity. As such, there now seems to exist a clearly symbiotic relationship between gong awarders and gong awardees. Ironically perhaps, being awarded an M B E or some such honour might be a more substantial level of recognition or respect than that accorded the recipient in his or her day-to-day life or work. The blunt question of ‘what’s in it for me?’ may well be a motivating factor, with certain people, in accepting or rejecting a Queen’s honour. That seems to have been at the core of Chris Ofili’s decision to decline an invitation to become a Royal Academician. The alleged exchange was summarized by Gary Younge: He was invited to be a member of the prestigious Royal Academy, but couldn’t fathom any way in which it would be beneficial for him or his work.

62

Richard Dyer, “Rasheed Araeen in Conversation,” Wasafiri 53 (Spring 2008):

29–30. 63 64

Benjamin Zephaniah, “ ‘ Me? I thought, O B E me? Up yours, I thought’,” 3. Macka-B, “Black Man,” written by McFarlane (Natural Suntan, Ariwa 1990).

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“Does it come with a parking space outside the Royal Academy?” he asked. “Because, if not, I can’t see anything in it for me.”

If indeed it took place as recalled, the Royal Academy’s approach to Ofili pre-dated its approach to Frank Bowling, who was elected to the RA in May 2005, making him the first Black Royal Academician. (In the 1990s, the Indian-born sculptors Dhruva Mistry and Anish Kapoor had both become Royal Academicians.65) A major difficulty of making sense of Black artists’ increased involvement with the honours system is the apparent reticence or coyness on the part of many of those in receipt of these awards to discuss publicly why they have chosen to accept the nomination, over and above the somewhat formulaic statements issued by most recipients. It may be that, for some, the reasons for accepting an honour are self-evident, or merit no particular justification or explanation. Some may perhaps take the view that the least said, the better. While the most celebrated/notorious refusenik, Benjamin Zephaniah, and the latter-day honours cynic Yasmin Alibhai–Brown have gone on record with their reasons for refusing (or, in Alibhai–Brown’s case, returning) their medals, there are no equivalent statements available from those accepting these honours, save for glib expressions of gratitude. Yinka Shonibare66 has presented himself as the principal and quite conspicuous exception to this. When awarded his M B E , as mentioned, in 2005, Shonibare promptly began to use, and sometimes apparently insisted on, ‘M B E ’ as a post-nominal: i.e. added after his professional name. A Time magazine journalist made mention of Shonibare’s pronounced attachment to his M B E post-nominal, in a review of the artist’s major exhibition Yinka Shonibare M B E (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, thereafter touring to several venues in the U S A ): Four years ago, when Queen Elizabeth made Shonibare a Member of the Order of the British Empire (M B E ), his leftist friends expected him to turn the award down. Instead, he just bolted the letters M B E to his name, but with

65 Ofili’s claim is made in a feature on him by Gary Younge, “A bright new wave,” Guardian Weekend (16 January 2010): 26. For relevant references to the Royal Academicians Dhruva Mistry, Anish Kapoor, and Frank Bowling, see Royal Academy of Arts, “Royal Academicians,” http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/academicians/ (accessed 2 April 2011). 66 Yinka Shonibare is referred to throughout this study, but particularly in chapter 3.

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a very broad wink. “I was always part of the empire,” he says. “Now I’ve been officially incorporated by it.”67

In a feature on Shonibare from late in June 2008, the artist appeared somewhat conflicted about the M B E , though, revealingly, he seemed to be suggesting that it was ultimately up to him, or within his power, whether or not he was “alienated from the society.” Historically, alienation was an emphatic and miserable state from which its victims had little or no chance of escaping, and certainly did not come down to a sort of life-style choice. When Yinka Shonibare accepted his M B E from the Prince of Wales in 2005, there was a certain irony to the situation. Shonibare’s work explores British history – and colonialism in particular. Born in Britain to Nigerian parents, he uses traditional African fabrics in his work, which express the entangled relationship between Africa and Europe. The cloth is used as critique of the history of Empire, yet an M B E brought Shonibare to the heart of the Establishment. He wasn’t mocking the award by accepting it – he is genuinely proud of it – although he feels there is a critical element to his attitude. “I don’t know whether I am collaborating with or critiquing the idea of the award. There’s an ambivalence within me,” he says. “It’s quite a common thing for people to challenge the Establishment and also to want to be a part of it. I don’t want to alienate myself from the society I live in.”68

In a later interview, Shonibare suggested that being honoured with an M B E represented the conferring of power, though he may have been laughing at himself for his declarations of love: “I don’t want to be the underdog all the time – I crave the opportunities that power gives you. I love the Queen. I love my M P . [Laughs.] I guess I’m a rebel who wants in, not out.”69 Shonibare’s by turns cheery and conflicted embrace of Empire is in many ways at odds with the sustained and profound antipathy expressed by many Black-British artists, in their practice, to the machinations of Empire. Reflect67

Richard Lacayo, “Decaptivating: Yinka Shonibare’s headless sculptures make a witty damning commentary on colonialism,” Time (6 July 2009): 60. 68 Hannah Duguid, “Yinka Shonibare: The battle of Trafalgar – His ship in a bottle will be sharing the fourth plinth in London’s most famous square with Antony Gormley’s soapbox. But who is Yinka Shonibare? Hannah Duguid meets him,” The Independent (25 June 2008), Extra, Arts: 12. 69 Ossian Ward, “The Fourth Plinth: Yinka Shonibare,” Time Out London (13 May 2010), http://www.timeout.com/london/art/article/1133/the-fourth-plinth-yinka-shoni bare (accessed 2 April 2011).

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ing this, one of the most powerful visual devices utilized by a number of artists has been the British flag. As Mora Beauchamp–Byrd noted, the symbolism of the flag has called forth a thick, brackish stew of British history from the 16th through the 20th centuries: maritime & military exploits, legacies of enslavement, economic exploitation, overarching racist ideologies & cultural imperialism.70

Likewise, some of the Commanders, Officers or Members of the Order of the British Empire have in their practice been responsible for some of the most articulate, exacting, and withering critiques of the British Empire and its legacies. In some ways, work such as Sonia Boyce’s “Lay [sic] Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great”71 and one of the Black Audio Film Collective’s first works, Expeditions: Signs of Empire and Images of Nationality,72 in no way anticipate future developments such as the awarding of Queen’s honours to those responsible for, or involved in, creating these works. Boyce’s title can in some ways be read as a grim parodying, or echoing, of the expression ‘Lie back and think of England’, meaning to put up with something, however unpalatable or distasteful the experience, in the name of or for the sake of, a greater good. As with many such expressions, its precise origins are unclear, or disputed, though the phrase has been widely taken as referring, in part at least, as a tip to a wife on how to endure sexual intercourse with her husband, particularly if such intercourse is against her will, or an otherwise rough, painful or unpleasant experience. In this context, the phrase is taken as candid advice given, in earlier times, from one wife to another, or a sentiment of encouragement or endurance a wife might give to herself, as to how best to survive or simply endure her conjugal duties. Its common use is now somewhat different, as over time the expression began to mean to put up with what is happening, or to grit one’s teeth when conditions were particularly difficult and called for grim fortitude. Or when encouragement to do something un-

70

Mora J. Beauchamp–Byrd, “Everyday People: Vanley Burke and the Ghetto as Genre,” in Back to Black (exh. cat.; London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2005): 175. 71 Sonia Boyce, “Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great” (1986; charcoal, pastel and watercolour on paper, 152.5 x 65 cm each panel, Arts Council Collection). 72 35mm Kodak tape slide (sound, 1982–84; 44 min.).

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palatable, for a greater good, was called for. In this regard, the phrase has pronounced associations with sacrifices required to endure the hardships – some relatively petty, some less so – of wartime, or having to live as a colonial expatriate in circumstances and conditions that might perhaps not be what one was used to. At a stroke, Boyce’s sampling of the phrase ‘Lie back and think of England’ evoked British military expansionism during the days of the British Empire and, simultaneously, hardships, discomforts or privations that had to be endured by colonials and expatriates, in the name of, or for the sake of, this expansionism. At the core of this is a grim understanding by Boyce that while the phrase, in one of its original contexts, might have been somewhat jovially applied to wives needing to perform their conjugal duty, the realities of sexual submission to colonials and expatriates, by indigenous people, particularly women, were, during the centuries of the British Empire, of an altogether more menacing, abusive, and coercive nature. Sexual abuse was very much part of the fabric of colonial life.73 Boyce evokes the memory of such abuse. Consequently, the work evokes an interplay between sexual submission/ domination and political submission/ domination. Other works by Boyce, her “Missionary Position” drawings,74 also kindle such an interplay, and, as with “Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great,” evoke the roles and experiences of Christianity in both British Imperial domination and the artist’s own history, identity, and biography. “Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great” is a work divided into four equal panels, each significantly taller than it is wide. Each of the first three panels features crucifix-like crosses, entwined with Boyce’s trademark black roses. To some extent the rose, as a metaphor used by Boyce and other Black women artists during the 1980s, exists as a bold, defiant, yet charismatic symbol of Black women and the ways in which they were marginalized in conventional constructs of both beauty and British-

73

See Anton Gill, Ruling Passions: Sex, Race and Empire (London: B B C Books,

1995). 74

These works were “Missionary Position I ” (1985; pastel and oil stick on paper, 76.2 x 101.6 cm) and “Missionary Position I I ” (1985; watercolour, pastel and crayon on paper, 123.8 x 183 cm). “Missionary Position I I ” was purchased by the Tate Gallery, 1987.

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ness.75 The notion of the English Rose, when called to mind, did not presuppose the inclusion of women who looked like Boyce. But the artist’s singular use of the black rose existed as an emphatic counter to this exclusion, marginalization, and attempts to render the Black woman as less than visible, or to deny her beauty and womanhood. The use of the crucifixes in the piece can be read in a number of ways. In some senses, they function as in memoriam markers for lives and cultures brutalized and decimated by colonialism. In other ways, they represent one of the most insidious aspects of colonialism – the pretext of spreading the gospel as a foil for naked land-grabbing and wholesale subjugation of other peoples, in the name of the British Empire. Furthermore, the crosses in the three panels function as portals through which can be seen vignettes of corners, or sections, of the Empire – Cape Colony (South Africa), India, and Australia. The vignettes are reminiscent of romanticized illustrations of native or Imperial scenes. The first scene, in which the name “Cape Colony” is draped across/ within the crucifix, features a native man hunting an ostrich. In the second scene, “India” is similarly draped, over a scene of tiger-hunting, the hunters sitting atop an elephant, in a classic image of the British Raj, the period of British colonial rule in India between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. In the third scene, the name “Australia” appears beneath a rendering of the Southern Cross and above a scene of Aboriginal men hunting kangaroos. The work is very much a presentation of Empire, centred on the sentiment, as expressed by Boyce, and echoed by Shonibare, that “I was always part of the empire.”76 This is a profoundly empathetic work by Boyce, in which she finds common cause with those on the receiving end of Imperial military, political, and colonial aggression. From the fourth panel, a Black woman – Boyce perhaps – stares out directly at the viewer, thereby putting herself directly in the mix, while simultaneously seeking to implicate the viewer in this unsavoury history, the consequences of which are still being played out today in many parts of the world. Gilane Tawadros noted: It is significant that for many of these artists history is not something which lies out there in dusty academic tomes, buried beneath the weight of the past. Rather, like the designs which paper our walls, the pre-existing frame of his75

Other Black-British women artists to make use of the rose motif in their practice include Val Brown (“A British Product,” c.1988) and Mowbray Odonkor (“Maid and Madam,” c.1988). 76 Richard Lacayo, “Decaptivating,” 60.

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tory is conceived of as something which envelops our everyday life. In other words, history’s designs decorate our present and it is those designs – in every sense of the word – which the artist Sonia Boyce appropriated and transformed in an earlier work entitled Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great (1986). The black woman stares out at us from the final panel – a self-portrait of the artist herself – suggests that this English rose, as woman or as identity, inherits a history of resistance as well as a history of oppression, that is, separate histories but ones which are locked together inextricably. Boyce is saying something else too about history. Into the four panels of her work are inscribed the words: Mission – Missionary – Missionary Position – Changing. These are not fixed words, but subtly shifting words which incline, slowly bending with the bough of the black rose. Like language, Boyce seems to suggest, history and historical relationships are subject to change from within the very frame of representation.”77

Reece Auguiste, a member of the Black Audio Film Collective, described Signs of Empire as a “visual textual exploration of nation, the mythology and rhetoric of race, the uncertainties of empire, of paranoia and the psychic disintegration of colonial imaginations.”78 More formally, Jean Fisher wrote as follows of the work: A slow dissolve of archival photographs of colonisers and ‘natives’, many of them more typical of intimate family albums than official historical records, are sparingly interrupted by short film clips – Asian tea pickers, black industrial workers, the fires of urban riots. Series of images cut to details of public monuments in angled shots that undermine the stability and permanence that such sculptures are intended to evoke. Throughout, repeated extracts from two political speeches expose the distance between myth and reality: one eulogising the multiracial unity of the British Commonwealth, the other expressing anxiety at the alienation of diasporic youth. In this way Signs of Empire presents an extraordinary, condensed soliloquy on a mythic national identity that, constructed in the confidence of Empire, was now fragmented

77 Gilane Tawadros, “The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Black Women Artists in Britain,” in New Feminist Art Criticism, ed. Katy Deepwell (Manchester: Manchester U P , 1995): 26. 78 Reece Auguiste, “Handsworth Songs: Some Background Notes,” in The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of the Black Audio Film Collective 1982–1998, ed. Kodwo Eshun & Anjalika Sagar of the Otolith Group (Liverpool: Liverpool U P & London: Foundation for Art and Creative Technology 2007): 156.

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under the uncertainties posed by the presence of diasporas searching for their own sense of identity and belonging.79

Fisher goes on: “By sampling the colonial archive, the historical discourse derived from it is dis-assembled, realigning the dismembered body of the past with the constellation of the present to ‘decentre the autobiography of empire’.”80 The apparent frugality of Signs of Empire acted as a foil for what was an incredibly sophisticated, layered, and textured work. The tape slide work was a devastating critique of Empire, but avoided locating it merely as a fixed historical series of interlinked traumas, albeit ones with continuing contemporary ramifications. Instead, the work sought to animate the sobering and near-infinite ways in which the Empire and its legacies soak the very fabric of present-day conditions and the ways in which we live. As Fisher noted, about this and other successful work by the Black Audio Film Collective, The question posed by Signs of Empire, and which emerges as a preoccupation of B A F C ’s subsequent films, is: How can the past and the present be made to communicate with each other?”81

Signs of Empire made considered and intelligent use of the visual and literary iconography of Empire. Such iconography included a sort of alphabet in which British schoolchildren learned about the might of Britain and its Empire.82 ‘N’, for example, stood for Navy: N is for Navy We keep at Spithead It’s a sight that makes foreigners Wish they were dead.

Perhaps bringing to mind the second panel of Sonia Boyce’s “Lay Back, Keep Quiet,” discussed earlier, ‘I’ stood for India: I is for India Our land in the East 79

Jean Fisher, “In Living Memory… Archive and Testimony in the Films of the Black Audio Film Collective,” in The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of the Black Audio Film Collective 1982–1998, ed. Kodwo Eshun & Anjalika Sagar of the Otolith Group (Liverpool: Liverpool U P & London: Foundation for Art and Creative Technology 2007): 18. 80 Jean Fisher, “In Living Memory,” 19. 81 Fisher, “In Living Memory,” 19. 82 Mrs Ernest Ames, An A B C For Baby Patriots (London: Dean & Son, 1899).

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Where everyone goes To shoot tigers, and feast.

Although in some ways the verses reflected a simple, distilled, and almost comical jingoism, in Signs of Empire the viewer was obliged to consider the ways in which the verses’ sentiments have an enduring application to the ways in which the world and, for that matter, the Black presence in Britain are constructed by British people. The British Empire might have come and gone, but its legacies remained. As Okwui Enwezor writes, one enduring historical experience, especially in the context of Britain, was the connection to the British Empire and its social intervention into the subjectivity of the native. The members of B A F C shared this legacy of empire.83

Notwithstanding the insistent sense of reframing in Boyce’s “Lay Back, Keep Quiet,” or the similarly insistent deconstruction/reconstruction taking place in Black Audio Film Collective’s Signs of Empire, works such as these – and many others by Black artists, which unswervingly took to task both Empire and its legacy – could now be said to exist more as part of an historical rather than an ongoing or contemporary narrative, residing in the past and reflective of now outdated certainties about the British Empire, its implementations, pathologies, and aftermath. One of the most profound aspects of artists’ work which declared itself to be critical of the Empire was the way in which the artists responsible found common cause with those in other lands who were, and arguably continued to be, on the receiving end of the consequences of British expansionism and colonialism. The notion that Black people such as the sons and daughters of African and Caribbean immigrants are part of the legacy of the British Empire is a given, to which Shonibare had alluded in his statement that “I was always part of the empire.”84 But the prospect of being enlisted in the residue of Empire through the awarding of medals was perhaps an unforeseen or unimagined scenario for many BlackBritish people coming of age in the late 1970s or early to mid-1980s. Perhaps this speaks of profound political shifts in which the dominant framework employed by Black people, regarding their presence in Britain, moves from a 83 Okwui Enwezor, “Coalition Building: Black Audio Film Collective and Transnational Post-Colonialism,” in The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of the Black Audio Film Collective 1982–1998, ed. Kodwo Eshun & Anjalika Sagar of the Otolith Group (Liverpool: Liverpool U P & London: Foundation for Art and Creative Technology 2007): 117. 84 Richard Lacayo, “Decaptivating,” 60.

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perception of marginalization and political exclusion to one of recognition and inclusion in the fabric of the political process, at least for certain individuals. Honours recipients may perhaps be turning intellectual or psychological somersaults, whereby the British Empire and its pronounced associations of privilege, patronage, and the exercise of power become in some way effectively, conveniently, or pragmatically dissociated from the medal of Commanders of the Order of, Officers of the Order of, or Members of the Order of the British Empire. Although apparently mindful of Zephaniah’s decision to reject an O B E , Yinka Shonibare, who, on receiving his M B E , proved to be a consistent defender of the honours system (or, at least, his place in it), broke new ground by suggesting that his post-nominal use of ‘M B E ’ was akin to how certain homosexuals had attempted to neutralize, through appropriation, the word ‘queer’, which had for so long been a homophobic term. In a 2007 interview, Nima Poovaya–Smith asked whether the artist’s use of the M B E suffix was intended to be ironic. In his answer, Shonibare drew together, or conflated, irony, neutralization, and appropriation. By way of an addendum (and for good measure) Shonibare also suggested that a desire on his part to embrace what he called “the pleasure of aesthetics” was part and parcel of the strategy of appropriation which he felt black people ought to pursue. N I M A P O O V A Y A – S M I T H : I am particularly curious about the pointed use

of the M B E after your name. I am guessing it is ironic but am not sure I understand exactly how you are being ironic? Y I N K A S H O N I B A R E : Absolutely. It is definitely ironic. When I was offered the M B E in 2005, it was expected by the people around me that I would refuse it. I was in a dilemma because I did think about Benjamin Zephaniah, you know. His rejection of the M B E [sic] is obviously something that will always qualify and inform subsequent responses to such honours anyway. But then I thought I want people to think about Empire and power in relation to Africa. I thought that by accepting it, and incorporating it into my work, I would be diminishing its power in the same way gays did by appropriating words like ‘queer’. The tension runs through all my work… While it is controversial to accept and use the title because of what the letters stand for, I also feel it is important that black people begin to appropriate the word ‘Empire’. Its devastating historical legacy is still here but its power is finished. I also wanted to problematize the dichotomy between the powerful and the powerless. The ‘powerless’ also have the freedom to occupy this space and make it what they want. I am fed up that, in visual terms, in artistic terms

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(and I feel very strongly about this), the pleasure of aesthetics has been the sole preserve of the white male.85

Later in the interview, Shonibare added further justification (or explanation) for his accepting an M B E : “I like to incorporate these ‘symbols’ of establishment in order to interrogate them – the M B E is part of this process – using the establishment’s own devices rather than me announcing myself as the disgruntled ‘other’ – it is like being a Trojan horse.”86 By contrast, Bonnie Greer (who had previously been photographed by Maud Sulter, in the manner of the well-known eighteenth-century painting by Marie–Guillemine Benoist, “Portrait d’une Négresse”),87 when commenting on the news that she was to awarded in O B E in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list of June 2010, declared: It’s just for me something I would never have thought would have happened. From just, you know, basically coming here as an immigrant and not expecting at all to be able to find any place in British society. To be honoured this way by Her Majesty is just a testament I think to the British spirit of generosity, of acceptance of foreigners, and something I hope that we never ever lose here, because it’s important in terms of what Britishness means is that tolerance, that acceptance, that generosity.88

At no time in Britain’s imperial, colonial, or recent history has the country or the bulk of its populace wavered significantly from its self-perception as a generous or ‘tolerant’ nation, upholding the principles of fair play and equal treatment of all. But throughout said histories, Black people have persisted in challenging, disputing, and refuting this benign self-image. In that regard, Greer’s conceivably fawning comments indicate a movement, concession or capitulation by certain Black people towards Britain’s view of itself as a beacon of fairness, steadfastly maintained over decades and centuries – an eventual acceptance of what British people have, as far as they are concerned, known, and practised all along.

85

Nima Poovaya–Smith, “An Interview with Yinka Shonibare,” Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings 7.2 (2007): 29–30. 86 Smith, “An Interview with Yinka Shonibare,” 32. 87 Sulter’s version, “Portrait d’une Négresse (Bonnie Greer)” (2002), is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 88 “Birthday Honours: Bonnie Greer on her O B E ,” B B C News U K (12 June 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10300176 (accessed 2 April 2011).

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During the period in which ever-greater numbers of Black people, including visual artists, were drawn into the honours system, the notion of difference, as embodied in the work of a great many Black artists, undertook a critical transformation. It by and large ceased to exist as a signifier of an oppositional state of being, alternating between confrontation and marginalization. Instead, as the 1980s turned into the 1990s and the 1990s brought us into a new century and millennium, difference came to exist as a valued component of citizenship, tolerance, and inclusivity. Much of the existing powerstructure not only remained intact but was even strengthened by this co-opting of difference. It is conceivable that we are witnessing a process by which, in accepting C B E s, O B E s, or M B E s, certain Black artists are making their peace with the machinations and aftermath of Empire. If there is any merit in this notion, it ought not to detract from the power, strength, integrity, and intelligence of the body of Black artists’ work that sought to damn the Empire, even as it sought to understand and explain it and the share of Black people in its legacy. One of the most pressing questions to emerge from consideration of those artists who have been rewarded for service to Empire is this: how might one best revisit or re-read earlier works such as Boyce’s “Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great” (made by a subsequent M B E recipient) or the Black Audio Film Collective’s Expeditions: Signs of Empire and Images of Nationality (made by a group of practitioners, the most prominent of whom, John Akomfrah, was subsequently awarded an O B E )? Indeed, is there a need to read these works in the light of subsequent developments in the dispensing of O B E s and M B E s, or should the works be left to exist solely or largely within the historical context and period in which they were made? After all, as Keith Piper noted, “any historical view is also essentially a product of its own time, and as such is destined to (almost instantaneously) become itself fixed within history.”89 Collectively, the granting of such a relatively large number of Queen’s honours to Black artists, over a relatively short period of time, has had the effect of strengthening the notion that artists exist, in part at least, to validate 89

Keith Piper, catalogue statement in Depicting History: For Today (1987): np. The exhibition was at Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 6 November–12 December 1987, then Leeds City Art Gallery and Rochdale Art Gallery; it featured work by David Alker, Terry Atkinson, Peter Clarke, Ken Currie, Sarah Edge, Rose Finn–Kelcey, Lubaina Himid, Glenys Johnson, Tina Keane, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, Nigel Rolfe, and Peter Seddon.

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the state, as much as, or even more so, than the state might exist to periodically validate artists. The regularity with which Black artists have gone to

F I G U R E 11 John Akomfrah O B E photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

Buckingham Palace to collect their gongs has created the strong impression that they are not just British artists, but Britain’s artists, existing – again, in part at least – to metaphorically and, in some cases, literally ‘decorate’ the state and its institutions. Furthermore, among those not yet honoured, it is in some instances possible to imagine that some Black artists are making naked, unashamed, and quite conscious efforts to be brought to the favourable attention of Whitehall officials in charge of the honours system and process.

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A significant amount of artists’ activity now takes place away from the traditional art gallery, in public, and/ or quasi-official contexts and locations. It is this public interfacing that carries with it so many associations of state meddling, or state approval. It is within this context that high-profile commissions for the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth (of which Shonibare was such a notable recipient) become not just public art projects, but projects that must involve all manner of officialdom. In this context, the artist ceases to be any sort of free-spirited and independent practitioner, but becomes instead a component – albeit a central one – of governmental or quasi-governmental initiatives. Artists have, of course, undertaken commissions in public or semi-public spaces for centuries and, indeed, millennia, but in the present age we have seen an unprecedented ratcheting-up of official willingness to be identified with those projects, and those artists perceived as somehow reflecting the image of itself that a government, local authority or similar body is keen to present. It is in this context that artists find themselves voluntarily bound to governmental or state manoeuverings, through the awarding of honours. Whether one considers the range of pronounced social narratives pursued by many Black-British artists of the late 1970s through to perhaps the mid1990s, or the more formalist enquiries pursued by artists of the older generation from Commonwealth countries, in contrast to these broad spectrums of visual-arts practice, certain Black artists now seem to have made their peace with the aftermath of Empire – an assessment inconceivable to previous generations of Black artists. Not only that, but some seem to be willing to benignly embrace heroes of the British Empire. Shonibare’s Fourth Plinth sculpture, unveiled in May 2010, saw him give his trademark faux-African-fabric treatment to the fighting ship most closely identified with one of Britain’s greatest heroes of empire, Nelson, whose iconic statue stood only a short distant away, in the centre of Trafalgar Square. As Michael McCarthy wrote, in one example of the significant volume of press coverage the commission garnered, It is Trafalgar Square, named after the naval battle of 1805, so it might seem fitting that the space on the celebrated empty fourth plinth should be occupied by a memorial of the battle – and, as of yesterday, it is. Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle is a 1:30 scale replica of H M S Victory, the flagship of Admiral Horatio Nelson who at Trafalgar defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain in the greatest sea battle of the Napoleonic wars. It has been created by the leading Anglo-Nigerian artist, Yinka Shonibare. But inside its 4.7m by 2.8m bottle, is the model battleship, with its 37 large sails made of brightly patterned African fabric, a celebration of British historical power and vic-

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tory? Or a subtle subversion of it? Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, made the point yesterday in welcoming the new artwork when he said: “The fourth plinth is about enigma and this will be a national conversation piece – people will ask what it says: is it pro-empire, is it anti-empire?”90

A little while later, the shortlist for a future Fourth Plinth installation was announced. Hew Locke, whose practice for some years had concerned itself with the iconography of Britain as Empire and state, was one of the artists

F I G U R E 12 Yinka Shonibare, Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth unveiling, May 2010 photograph by Geoff Pugh  Telegraph Media Group Limited

whose submissions was shortlisted as a potential Fourth Plinth commission recipient. Locke wanted to create a work called “Sikandar,” and replicated a statue of Sir George White, a British field-marshall who died in 1912. An existing equestrian statue of White stood in Portland Place; Locke sought to re-create it and, in his words, transform “it into a fetish object.”91 As Locke explained, 90

Michael McCarthy, “ ‘ Nelson’s ‘Victory’ joins him in Trafalgar Square,” The Independent (25 May 2010): 16. 91 Mayor of London, http://www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/idea/sikandar (webpage discontinued).

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the sculpture will be embellished with horse-brasses, charms, medals, sabres, ex-votos, jewels, Bactrian treasure and Hellenistic masks, creating layers of material and meaning with multiple possible readings. Sikandar translates as Alexander in Urdu; Khandahar being one of the cities Alexander the Great named after himself. Commanders to this day measure themselves against him, and at this moment somewhere in Afghanistan, a member of our troops will be reading his histories. Alexander’s military empire was short-lived, but his Hellenic cultural influence lasted centuries…92

Although profound anti-war sentiment in Britain prevailed, and the longrunning campaign in Afghanistan solicited seemingly ever greater levels of disquiet and opposition, Locke made mention in his statement of “our troops.” Likewise, although people in Africa, India, and elsewhere in the British Empire had found themselves on the receiving end of British Army violence and brutality, Locke was keen to stress that the proposed work was not pacifistic: The work will bring a social and historic focus to the Square, contributing to its role as a place of dissent and celebration. The proposal is not an anti-military critique. It is an investigation into the idea of the Hero and the problematic and changing nature of heroism.93

As if to underline the extent to which Fourth Plinth commissions came to exist as a sort of cross between media circus and local-government initiative, it was the Mayor of London who took to announcing the winners of the shortlists for the commission, as well as unveiling new works. At no other time in British history has there been such a convergence of artistic vision, artistic ambition, and state patronage, particularly in the ways in which these things relate to Black artists. The latter period under discussion in this study has thrown up numerous examples of unanimity of purpose between artists, the work they seek to do, and strategies of embrace, appropriation, and benevolence enacted by the state. As exhibition opportunities for Black artists – in the gamut of traditional galleries and venues to which they had gained some access – seemed to dry up, the few opportunities offered up to Black artists by national institutions of the realm took on a particular character of state patronage. Typical in this regard was Sonia Boyce’s 2007 project at the National 92

Mayor of London, http://www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/idea/sikandar (webpage discontinued). 93 Mayor of London, http://www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/idea/sikandar (webpage discontinued).

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Portrait Gallery, Devotional.94 An homage to the history of Black women singers in Britain, Devotional was simultaneously anchored to governmentsponsored activities commemorating the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade by the British parliament, dubbed by cynics ‘Wilberfest’ or ‘Wilberfarce’, in mocking reference to the figure who loomed largest in Britain’s construction or remembering of the abolitionist movement.95 This special installation by the artist, pays homage to the great musical tradition created within the African Diaspora following the period of the transatlantic slave trade, and highlights the wealth of creative talent in Great Britain.96

In similar regard, the National Portrait Gallery also hosted Scratch the Surface,97 which described it thus: Marking the bicentenary of the Act of Parliament abolishing the transatlantic slave trade, Scratch the Surface explores both the role that the slave trade played in the creation of two works that have subsequently entered the National Gallery’s collection, and how the history of these works continues to inspire artists today. This two-part exhibition will feature two paintings from the Gallery’s collection and a stunning installation by 2004 Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Yinka Shonibare M B E , created especially for this event. The exhibition has been curated by Jonah Albert who is working with the National Gallery as part of the Arts Council England Inspire Fellowship scheme.98

One possibly unforeseen consequence of the proliferation of honours to Black artists is the way in which it frames a wider body of Black artists as seeming to exist primarily as illustrators of governmental ethos and initiative and the symbolism of the state. Perhaps now more than at any other time in recent history, state patronage – on a multiplicity of local and national levels – is a 94

https://www.npg.org.uk/devotional/index.asp (uncertain website). As was perhaps to be expected, a great many book-launches, exhibitions, displays, and other events took place throughout 2007, to commemorate the bicentenary. One of the only books to question the account of abolition that Britain had constructed for itself was Michael Jordan, The Great Abolition Sham (Stroud: Sutton, 2005). 96 https://www.npg.org.uk/devotional/index.asp (uncertain website). 97 National Portrait Gallery, Rooms 1 and 36, 20 July–4 November 2007. 98 “Scratch the Surface,” The National Gallery (May 2007, http://www.national gallery.org.uk/about-us/press-and-media/scratch-the-surface (accessed 2 April 2011). The Inspire programme is discussed in chapter 5 of this study. 95

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means by which an artist might further his or her career, particularly when it seems well-nigh impossible now for an artist to make work which the state cannot warm to or manipulate for its own ends, co-opting it as reflecting its own agendas of justice, pluralism, inclusivity, and equity, coupled with its self-image of dynamism and creativity. Likewise, through their practice, certain Black artists appear keen, anxious even, to bring themselves to the favourable attention of those civil servants administering the honours system. From Chinwe Roy’s ingratiating recollection of her commission to paint a portrait of the Queen99 through to Hew Locke’s conspicuous attachment to picturing members of the Royal Family,100such artists appear particularly eager to hear from the Prime Minister. In “The Peak of Her Career,” the final chapter of Verna Wilkins’ Chinwe Roy: Artist, a biography for children, Roy recalls events surrounding the undertaking of her portrait of the Queen. “The Queen entered and greeted me with a warm smile and a handshake and I felt more relaxed. I addressed her as ‘Your Majesty’ and did a very wobbly curtsey. After a while I started to call her Ma’am because everyone else did.” […] “The Queen is a wonderful person to work with. She asked about my family here and in Nigeria. I told her about the baby and how good my sons were becoming at childcare. She talked about her family as well. She is humorous and has a keen eye for detail.”

Later on, young readers learned from Roy that “Her Majesty was extremely generous with her time. Each sitting was due to last for one hour. She usually stayed longer, quite happily.” However, on the third sitting, she had to leave promptly in order to attend a meeting with the President of the United States of America, President George W. Bush.101 So forthright were Locke’s seemingly uncritical visual declarations of Britishness that one critic levelled the

99 “The portrait was commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat to mark the Queen’s Jubilee and the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002. It will hang between portraits of King George V and Queen Mary at Marlborough House in London.” Verna Wilkins, Chinwe Roy: Artist (Black Profiles series; Northwood, Middlesex: Tamarind, 2002): 43. 100 See Hew Locke’s exhibition catalogue for his show at the New Art Gallery, Walsall, 29 April–26 June 2005, which included a significant number of his works featuring prominent or senior figures associated with the Royal Family. 101 Verna Wilkins, Chinwe Roy: Artist, 39–43.

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charge of “an exaggerated display of [his] identity” and that such a strategy “remains one option to achieve visibility, as Hew Locke has shown.”102 Locke seemed to waste few opportunities to stress his interest in the British monarchy, albeit through a supposedly knowing angle of vision. Another commentator noted that “Locke seems more fascinated than disapproving of the British monarchy. He collects Royal ephemera,” before proceeding to quote Locke, “I love coming back from a jumble sale, sitting on a bus, reading a Seventies Royal Family souvenir book, and getting strange looks.” In the same conversation, Locke recalled: “As a kid in Guyana the Queen’s head was on school-exercise books. You’d be in serious trouble if you defaced her with a beard or wig.”103 The possibility of receiving an honour exists in no less tangible a way than the actual receiving of an honour. John Walker alluded to this in the epilogue to his book The Queen Shall Be Pleased: Just a little sprinkle of a couple of dozen names twice a year on an otherwise innocuous-looking list pays off accumulated debts and gives the nod and the wink to other would-be recipients. A few more hopefuls are kept in order and will continue to provide long, loyal, and in some cases lucrative service in the expectation of gongs to come.104

Mention should also be made of a parallel trend – the awarding of honorary doctorates to Black artists. This dispensing of patronage emerged as a strategy on the part of universities old and new to increase their proximity, momentarily at least, to famous or successful individuals who were not necessarily alumni of the institution concerned. Concomitant with that strategy is a 102

Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 119. Locke’s leitmotif of Britishness and Royalty was referenced in a small life-style feature that appeared in the “New Review,” a supplement to The Observer: Hew Locke, 51, is a sculptor. Born in Edinburgh, he spent his formative years in Guyana before moving to London to study. His work has focused on and explored ideas and images of Britishness. He first came to national attention in 2002 with Cardboard Palace, a vast installation inspired by royal architecture. He has since exhibited extensively in the U K and abroad. His latest show, Starchitect, is at the Artsway Gallery, Hampshire, until 3 April. He lives in London with his wife, curator Indra Khanna. — Amy Powell Yeates, “On My Radar: Hew Locke’s cultural highlights,” The Observer (13 February 2011), The New Review: 3. 103 Neal Brown, “Hew Locke,” Art Review 53 (April 2002): 58. 104 John Walker, The Queen Has Been Pleased, 207.

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posture of liberal benevolence in awarding honorary doctorates to those whose contributions a university feels might be otherwise overlooked or inadequately recognized. Honorary doctorates thus mirror, in form, intent, and practice, the awarding of C B E s, O B E s, and M B E s. Among the artists thus honoured, Keith Piper was in September 2002 awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Arts by the University of Wolverhampton; those similarly honoured included Frank Skinner, Nigel Slater, and Esther Rantzen C B E . Over several years, Wolverhampton gave the same award to Rasheed Araeen, the veteran artist and long-time documenter of Black Britain, the photographer Vanley Burke, and the painter Frank Bowling. Araeen collected other honorary doctorates; in 1995, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Southampton and, in 1997, an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of East London. The awarding of honorary doctorates can perhaps be bracketed with the awarding of honorary fellowships. Anish Kapoor has held several such fellowships, awarded by the likes of the London Institute and Leeds University (1997), the University of Wolverhampton (1999),105 and the Royal Institute of British Architects (2001), while Chris Ofili (who had apparently declined the invitation to become a Royal Academician)106 was the recipient of an honorary fellowship from the University of the Arts, London, in 2004 and Yinka Shonibare was made a Fellow of Goldsmiths College (F G C ), among other honours. In 2006, Frank Bowling became an Honorary Fellow of the Arts Institute, Bournemouth. The relative proliferation of university honours bestowed on select Black artists stood in marked and arguably mocking contrast to the fortunes of Black university lecturers and professors in the U K . In May 2011, the Guardian reported: “14,000 British professors – but only 50 are black.”107 Nearly a decade earlier, the same newspaper had reported: “2% of U K professors from ethnic minorities.”108 No more than one 105

Anish Kapoor had, towards the end of the 1970s, taught at The Polytechnic, Wolverhampton, the previous incarnation of the University of Wolverhampton. 106 Gary Younge, “Chris Ofili: A bright new wave,” 26. 107 Jessica Shepherd, “14,000 British professors – but only 50 are black: Figures show huge racial imbalance at universities,” The Guardian (28 May 2011): 6. Below the article by Shepherd was “Viewpoint,” a comment piece by Hugh Muir, who spoke of a “Failure to nurture talent.” 108 Lee Elliot Major, “2% of U K professors from ethnic minorities,” The Guardian (21 January 2002), www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/jan/21/raceineducation.race (accessed 28 August 2011).

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or two Black artists were able to secure permanent work at the art schools across the country, reflecting what seemed to be a general ambivalence in the higher-education sector to employ Black lecturers or professors in significant numbers. As mentioned earlier, in July 2004, the Cabinet Office issued a Review of the Honours System, by Sir Hayden Phillips. His opening remarks, addressed apparently without irony to another knight of the realm, hastened to reassure supporters of the honours system and simultaneously disabuse cynics and critics of the hope, however fanciful, that that system might be brought to an end: I have looked at the system as a whole very carefully and I have no evidence that broad public opinion wants to see Honours abolished. Indeed quite the opposite; there is substantial support in principle and the award of an Honour is our way in the United Kingdom of saying thank you publicly to those who have ‘gone the extra mile’ in their service or who stand out ‘head and shoulders’ above others in their distinction. But I would want the system to be more widely understood and more easily accessible to the population as a whole.109

With no remote possibility of the honours system’s being abolished, and with governments apparently determined to draw what they see as a proportional number of Black people into the system, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, it can be imagined, or anticipated, that increasing numbers of Black people, including visual artists, might be named in future honours lists, albeit predominantly at the modest end of the awards spectrum.

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109

Letter from Sir Hayden Phillips to Sir Andrew Turnbull, in Phillips, Review of the Honours System, 4.

3

1

Chris, Steve, and Yinka: We Run Tings 

Until the 90s, there were hardly any black students at British art colleges. Ofili’s success showed that, if you have the intelligence, savvy and ambition, being an artist is a career option. Someone has to pave the way. And it was clear from the first not just how ambitious Ofili was, but how individual his take on painting was – once he’d ditched his student style of narrative figuration (funny how things make their return, and are never entirely lost). Rather than living up to his reputation, he is now more concerned to push his art forward. One of Ofili’s earlier solo shows was called Freedom One Day: let’s see where freedom leads him.2

I

R A S H E E D A R A E E N ’ S E S S A Y S F O R T H E O T H E R S T O R Y catalogue, one passage stands out as being particularly pithy. It was a comment on the British art scene, which stood accused, by Frank Bowling, of flagrant disregard for his accomplishments, when as a young painter he was overlooked for an important exhibition, The New Generation, held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1964.4 The exhibition, wrote Araeen, “featured all 1

N ONE OF 3

“We Run Tings” was a popular late-1990s reggae record, by an artist known as Red Dragon, which featured in the 1999 Jamaican film Third World Cop. Assuming the voice of a no-nonsense, street-tough police officer, the song expressed the sentiment that certain persons (“We”) were in control, in charge, rulers of their own destiny and masters, rather than victims, of circumstance – a blessed state owing much to determination, self-confidence, and fortitude. “We run tings, tings nuh run we.” 2 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 (26 January 2010), G2: 21. 3 Rasheed Araeen, “In the Citadel of Modernism,” in The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain (exh. cat.; London: Hayward Gallery & South Bank Centre, 1989): 16–49. 4 The New Generation: 1964, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, March–May 1964. The exhibition, from which Frank Bowling considered himself to have been excluded,

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of [Bowling’s] friends who were later to become famous.”5 His exclusion apparently “confused”6 Bowling: he had received critical acclaim from almost every art critic of note and there was tremendous enthusiasm for his work. When he tried to find out why he was turned down, he was apparently told, “England is not yet ready for a gifted artist of colour.”7

Several decades later, England declared itself ready for not just one, but three particular gifted artists of colour. Their names were Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare. The scale of their successes, the nature of their successes, and the extent to which these successes were celebrated – these things were quite unparalleled in the history of Black artists in Britain. The achievements of other Black artists, before these three took centre stage, were decidedly modest by comparison. The triumphs of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare were, by any standard, substantial, enduring, and ultimately epochmaking. I’m minded, or tempted, to refer to the artists by their first names of Steve, Chris, and Yinka, simply because they represent an art-world equivalent of the dominant culture’s familiar references to celebrity T V chefs such as Delia, Gordon, Jamie, and Nigella. Very simply, given the virtual omnipresence of these three artists, constantly feted as celebrities, there are ways in which first names would suffice. There was, in actuality, a precedent for addressing high-profile artists of the yBa generation by their first names alone. The cover of Art Monthly for September 1998 trailed one of its pieces with “No Damien No Gary No Tracey,” in which Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, and

featured work by Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Anthony Donaldson, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Paul Huxley, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Patrick Procktor, Bridget Riley, Michael Vaughan, and Brett Whiteley. Bowling had shown at Grabowski Gallery in London less than two years earlier, with Derek Boshier. Frank Bowling and Derek Boshier, Image in Revolt, 5 October–3 November 1962. In his introduction to the catalogue, David Thompson wrote: “They [the artists in the exhibition] are starting their careers in a boom period for modern art. British art in particular has suddenly woken up out of a long provincial doze, is seriously entering the international lists and winning prestige for itself.” 5 Rasheed Araeen, “In the Citadel of Modernism,” 40. 6 Araeen, “In the Citadel of Modernism,” 40. 7 “In the Citadel of Modernism,” 40.

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Tracey Emin were the three artists for whom first names would suffice. The writer referred to them, and several other artists, as “A-list art celebs.”8 While Black artists of the 1980s and early 1990s achieved some notable successes and accomplishments, in terms of raising their profile, they nevertheless, to a great extent, remained, for various reasons, quarantined from the mainstream and rooted in particular art-world pathologies relating to the Black artist. But McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare have each, it could be said, broken through in the most dramatic of ways. Their successes are legion. McQueen became the first Black-British artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Shonibare was a recipient of the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award9 and was responsible for one of the most celebrated Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth10 commissions; and Ofili and McQueen both won the coveted Turner Prize, in back-to-back years, the first British-born Black artists ever to do so. Individually and collectively, these artists have secured large, significant, and, it seems, ever-expanding amounts of press coverage. This coverage even extends to Vogue magazine11 and incidental cartoons on the front pages of broadsheets, as well as substantial features, interviews, and reviews, across a wide spectrum of magazines, newspapers, and T V and film programmes. Not only have these artists managed to locate themselves in the centres of art-world activity, they have also been able to attract attention far beyond the traditional art press. These are indeed three lucky, lucky artists. The use of this adjective ‘lucky’ is not, of course, intended to suggest that their success is simply based on good fortune. Instead, my assertion is that other artists before them, of much ability, saw their efforts go largely unrewarded by an art world ultimately indifferent to their presence and parsimonious about their achievements and practices. In this regard, Ofili, Shonibare, and McQueen were, to varying degrees, fortuitous beneficiaries of pronounced political and cultural shifts that occurred in the 1990s.

8

David Barrett, “No Damien No Gary No Tracey: David Barrett ponders New Art from Britain,” Art Monthly 219 (September 1998): 7–10. 9 The Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists, 1998. Other Black artists who have received this award are Donald Rodney, 1996, Zarina Bhimji, 1999, Hew Locke, 2000, and Horace Ové, 2006. 10 On the Fourth Plinth Project, see fn 60 above, p. xlv. 11 Louisa Buck, “Living Colour: Chris Ofili’s vivid paintings reveal the psychedelic city experience,” Vogue (January 1999): 124–25.

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As the 1980s turned into the 1990s and the 1990s wore on, there was an identifiable contraction of Black artists’ opportunities to show in the sorts of spaces that had, relatively recently, embraced their practice. Municipal art galleries, independent spaces, artist-run venues (with only sporadic exceptions) – opportunities for Black artists to exhibit here became fewer and fewer. Simultaneously, the art world saw a burgeoning of private galleries and the manifestation of visual art spaces, in substantial receipt of public funding, that took on the operational character of the private sector. Increasingly, one of the main criterions for assessing an artist’s worth or importance was whether or not they had gallery representation. As Julian Stallabrass noted, “In the mid 1990s there were only three black artists in Britain who had contracts with private dealers: Ofili, Steve McQueen and Yinka Shonibare.”12 Stallabrass’s observation is of considerable significance. By the mid-1990s, the art market was well on its way to being the only trusted universal barometer of artistic success. Where once curators were one of the most important types of player in the international art arena, they were being gradually but noticeably displaced by gallerists. And the gallery exhibition, which had long existed as the chief measure of an artist’s worth and profile, was also being noticeably nudged aside by the auction house. During the 1990s, many publicly funded galleries adopted the look and feel of private galleries, to the extent that in many cities, not just in Britain, public gallery and private gallery in effect operated within the same sphere and mind-set, sharing the same sorts of artists. Concurrently, the apparatus of state arts funding retreated into what were the cul-de-sacs of funding art as social uplift or art as a facilitator of cultural diversity. In this environment, Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare were safe; while the great majority of Black artists floundered, with no safe place to call home. In his book Black Art: A Cultural History, Richard J. Powell weaves Ofili, McQueen, Shonibare and other Black-British artists such as Isaac Julien, Keith Piper, and Maud Sulter into his brisk but textured appraisal of the ‘cultural history’ of Black artists’ practice on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere in the world.13 Inevitably perhaps, the bulk of Powell’s study focuses on the history of African-American artists, so his references to Ofili et al. are necessarily brief. Notwithstanding Powell’s inclusion of Ofili et al. in his 12

Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 118. Richard J. Powell, Black Art: A Cultural History (Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century, 1997; World of Art series; London: Thames & Hudson, 2nd ed. 2002). 13

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‘Black Art’ narrative, trying to establish a substantial relationship, or dialogue, between the work of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare and earlier struggles and practices of Black-British artists (or, indeed, Black artists in other parts of the world) is no mean task. Precious few commentators were minded to attempt to describe, define or, indeed, create such a relationship, and while McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare mentioned all manner of influences on or within their respective practices, they were for the most part notably reticent to cite, acknowledge or credit influences from Black (British) art history, including the practices of artists no more than a few years older than they. This, though, is very likely to be within the established order of things. BlackBritish artists who emerged in the early 1980s were, with rare exceptions, similarly disinclined to cite influences from the Black-British art history that preceded them. The influences that were cited by Black-British artists of the early 1980s tended to come from elements of the Black-American struggle, such as the civil rights, Black Power, or Black Art movements.14 The most that Ofili had to say about the work of Black-British artists who had practised before him was that “A lot of black art that came before was set up to critique the system. I thought that was boring.”15 Some fifteen years previously, Ofili had made an oblique reference to ‘sampling’ David Hammons’ work, but the comment appears to have been passed over by Marcela Spinelli, to whom the reference was addressed in the course of an interview.16 In other respects, too, the in some ways pronounced taciturnity on the part of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare might well have some legitimacy. Simply put, their respective practices were, in a British context, quite unlike any art practice, from whatever quarter, that preceded it. Discernible or actual British influences might well genuinely, and ultimately, be few. The nature of the curatorial attention paid to these three artists also mitigated against attempts to discuss their practice in relation to that of other Black-British artists. Time and again, McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare were the artists singled out for 14

See catalogues of Black artists’ work from the early 1980s such as Black Art an’ Done (Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 1981). For further discussion of these American influences, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986,” in particular Chapter One, “The Black 70s, Brixton, April 1981 and other influences.” 15 Gary Younge, “A bright new wave,” 27. 16 Chris Ofili, in an interview by Marcelo Spinelli (London, 23 March 1995), in Brilliant! New Art From London (exh. cat.; Walker Art Center, 22 October–7 January 1996 and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 17 February–14 April 1996): 67.

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attention that removed them from the company of other Black artists. Frequently, those within the wider body of Black artists simply did not get a look in when it came to the sorts of exhibition in which these three were often included. Typical in this regard was the important and epoch-making Royal Academy exhibition Sensation.17 Of the forty-two artists exhibited, only Ofili and Shonibare were Black artists whose practice had come to be associated with latter-day narratives of race and the Black image (though in the catalogue they were rather coyly described as “young British Post-Colonial artistexplorers”18). Compelling evidence of the disconnect between McQueen, Shonibare, Ofili, and the wider body of Black artists can be found, albeit by default, in the St James Guide to Black Artists, published in 1997.19 Striving for comprehensiveness, the guide consisted of alphabetical entries – biographical data, as well as short essays – on all the practitioners represented. To this end, the book covered a broad range of artists, most of whom were of African, African-American, and African-Caribbean background. Though the guide was somehow able to include Edna Manley, the white British sculptor who made her home in Jamaica in the early-twentieth century, it could find no place for Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare, even though, by the mid1990s, each of them was well on his way to multiple career successes and international stardom. Perhaps failing to comprehend or fully appreciate the changing landscape of (Black) British artists’ practice, the guide chose to limit its British coverage to artists such as Sonia Boyce and Keith Piper.20

17

Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 18 September–28 December 1997. The epoch-making nature of Sensation was widely perceived. An appraisal five years on appeared in the Art Review (April 2002). In it, Ossian Ward advanced the view that “The history books will show that out of the 42 artists in ‘Sensation’, very few have not become near-household names on the British art circuit” (“Sensation: Five years after the fallout,” 35). 18 Brook Adams, “Thinking of You: An American’s Growing, Imperfect Awareness,” in Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection (exh. cat.; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 18 September–28 December 1997): 39. 19 St James Guide to Black Artists, ed. Thomas Riggs (Detroit M I : St James / Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1997). 20 Other British artists – such as Frank Bowling, Lubaina Himid, and Tam Joseph – were also represented in the sizeable book, though they were listed as being Guyanese, Tanzanian, and Dominican respectively.

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It seemed, at every turn, that an unlikely alliance (of apparently disgruntled Black artists and gloating art-world insiders) seemed to disconnect, rather than connect, the new generation of 1990s practitioners, particularly Chris Ofili, with previous generations of Black artists. This much seemed clear to Coco Fusco: Some Black British artists I spoke to would lower their voices to a whisper as they avered that Ofili was attracting attention just because he gave whites the kind of nasty, depraved image of Blacks they loved to see. Cognoscenti of the Y B A phenomenon would point out that Ofili was one of only three Black British artists to have succeeded in getting represented by a commercial gallery, and that this young painter, along with Steve McQueen and Yinka Shonibare, was being touted tokenistically by an increasingly smug British art establishment, and to suggest that government sponsorship of Black British art was not only no longer necessary, but that it was also counter-productive. To them this meant that the Black British art of the 1980s was being relegated to what was now largely perceived as the garbage heap of social engineering that New Labour was sweeping away as it celebrates a hipper, more market driven form of global culture.21

Lubaina Himid aimed barbed comments at those artists whom, she felt, had “distanced themselves from the very idea of black art [and] donned clowns’ clothing and won the prizes.”22 Two commentators who attempted, at different times and in different contexts, to put McQueen and Shonibare into wider, British artistic contexts were Keith Piper and Amna Malik. Piper’s comments took the form of a brief appreciation of the artist Donald Rodney,

21

Julian Stallabrass, echoed the observations of Fusco’s unnamed “Cognoscenti of the Y B A phenomenon” when, as quoted earlier in this chapter, he observed: “In the mid-1990s there were only three black artists in Britain who had contracts with private dealers: Ofili, Steve McQueen and Yinka Shonibare” (High Art Lite, 118). Whoever the unnamed “Cognoscenti of the Y B A phenomenon” were, they apparently failed to consider, or grasp, that Tony Blair’s New Labour administration was a government with perhaps the most pronounced multiple agendas of ‘social engineering’ of the modern or contemporary era. Coco Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom: The Work of Chris Ofili,” 41. 22 Lubaina Himid, “Inside the Invisible: For/Getting Strategy,” in Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce (Durham N C : Duke U P & London: I N I V A /A A V A A , 2005): 41.

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with whom Piper had enjoyed a long and fruitful working relationship.23 Writing in 1997, Piper stated his opinion that Rodney seemed poised to have the same sort of profile, career success, and exhibition opportunities that were starting to be secured by prominent figures of the yBa (or, as Piper referred to them, the ‘Brit Pack’ generation). Now as his catholic approach to materials evolves exponentially through multifaceted installations, we seem set to recognise Donald’s unique position amongst artists of his generation. I feel that Donald may become perhaps the only artist to emerge out of the reactive hot house of the self-proclaimed ‘Black Art Movement’ of the 1980s whose work and sensibilities remain comfortably in step with those of the so-called ‘Brit Pack’ artists of the late 1990s. I feel that, uniquely, Donald may come to be seen as much a contemporary of Yinka Shonibare and Steve McQueen as he is an ingrained and integral player in the recalled narratives of the 1980s.24

Piper’s comments were perhaps more prescient than he could have known. Rodney’s work was included in The British Art Show 525 of 2000, which featured a conspicuous number of said ‘Brit Pack’ artists. Rodney’s inclusion, however, came posthumously, the artist having died in March of 1998. In 2008, Amna Malik provided a text for one of the volumes of Kobena Mercer’s Annotating Art’s Histories series, Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers.26 Malik’s essay focused on the work of Gavin Jantjes, Mona Hatoum, and Mitra Tabrizian, assessing it through the lenses of migration, displacement, and relocation. Malik’s concluding sentences were: The impact of such exilic artists as Jantjes, Hatoum and Tabrizian, alongside artists such as Rasheed Araeen, Keith Piper, Ingrid Pollard, Lubaina Himid and many others, would require a more extensive study to be fully apprecia23

For information and material on Donald Rodney, see his monograph Donald Rodney: Doublethink, ed. Richard Hylton (London: Autograph, 2003). The book includes reproductions of one of the collaborations between Keith Piper and Rodney, “The Next Turn of the Screw,” which is also discussed in chapter 4 of this study. 24 Donald Rodney, Nine Night in Eldorado (exh. cat.; South London Gallery, 10 September–12 October 1997). 25 The British Art Show 5. Toured to venues in Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff and Birmingham, between April 2000 and January 2001. 26 Amna Malik, “Conceptualising ‘Black’ British Art Through the Lens of Exile,” in Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers, ed. Kobena Mercer (London: I N I V A & Cambridge M A : M I T Press, 2008): 166–88.

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ted, but the present visibility of contemporary generations – including Steve McQueen, Emily Jacir and Yinka Shonibare – can be traced to the uniquely ground-breaking work of this earlier generation.27

Thus, Malik’s bold association was left unelaborated. Elsewhere, Mercer himself wrote somewhat hyperbolically about the presence and profile of BlackBritish artists, including McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare in the general mix: Artists such as Steve McQueen, Yinka Shonibare, Zarina Bhimji, and Isaac Julien have attracted the attention of curators, critics, and collectors throughout the world, and each has been featured in Documenta X I , the critical survey of international art held every five years in Germany and curated in 2002 by Okwui Enwezor. The global dimension of the process whereby international recognition has been conferred upon “black British artists” has been a crucial aspect of the evolution of the black arts scene during the 1980s and 1990s, and the transatlantic component of this has been especially important. As well as being the subject of dedicated exhibitions such as Transforming the Crown (1997) in New York, “black British art” has become a recognizable strand in contemporary art, “not only as a result of intranational factors, but also on account of the trans-national forces of con28 temporary globalisation.

Mercer went on to mention of Chris Ofili, though he erroneously cited 2002 as the year in which Ofili won the Turner Prize (he had in fact won the prize four years earlier, in 1998). Earlier, in his text for Shades of Black, Iconography after Identity, Mercer had opined: The aims and objectives of artists like Steve McQueen, Yinka Shonibare, and Chris Ofili differ radically from those that were achievable twenty years ago, although there are actually some interesting continuities as well.29

Quite what those “interesting continuities” might be, the reader was not told. Other commentators made mention of McQueen and Shonibare in the same sentence, or same paragraph, in the context of more general surveys of 27

Malik, “Conceptualising ‘Black’ British Art Through the Lens of Exile,” 168. Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. As well as having been included in Documenta 11 (Kassel, 8 June–15 September 2002), curated, as Mercer states, by Okwui Enwezor, Steve McQueen’s work had also been included in Documenta 10, 21 June–28 September 1997, curated by Catherine David. 29 Kobena Mercer, “Iconography after Identity,” in Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce (Durham N C : Duke U P & London: I N I V A /AAVAA, 2005): 51. 28

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Black artists, but by and large, these comments either treated Black-British artists as some sort of generic whole, or they were superficial and undeveloped. Typical here was the following conspectus by Leslie Primo: It was not until the emergence of a new generation of black British artists in the 1980s that the British art establishment would once again be encouraged to recognize that black British artists were still present and a potent force in the art scene. Emerging out of the fertile landscape of the 1950s and 1960s, artists such as Rasheed Araeen, Rita Keegan, Donald Rodney, Steve McQueen and Chris Ofili would be in the vanguard of this black Renaissance.30

Seeking to emphasize Shonibare’s Nigerian background and his supposed commonality with other British artists of this geographical origin, Onyema Offoedu–Okeke made the somewhat cryptic claim that Like other notable artists of Nigerian origin, such as Uzo Egonu, Sokari Douglas Camp, and Chris Ofili, certain signs of temperament indicate that they are individuals driven by contemporary issues, hinging on an awareness of identity, racial polarization and a nationalistic strand.31

Perhaps the most successful text that sought to place Shonibare’s work into the context and company of other artists (all of whom – bar Shonibare himself - were born in African countries and used textiles, or what could be interpreted as textiles, in their practice) was an essay by Jessica Hemmings, published in an issue of Wasafiri, which discussed the work of Shonibare, Nicholas Hlobo, Owusu–Ankomah, Nnenna Okore, and El Anatsui, in considered and convincing tones. Hemmings noted, “The artists all have ties with the vast region of sub-Saharan Africa, to cultures” with “extensive and discrete textile traditions.”32 In similar regard, perhaps the text that sought most successfully to place Ofili’s work to the context and company of other artists (including, significantly, a number of African-American practitioners) was “Captain Shit and Other Allegories.” Written by Coco Fusco, the article discussed Ofili’s

30

Leslie Primo, “Visual arts 2: Artists. 3 The new generation from the 1980s onwards,” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 502. 31 Onyema Offoedu–Okeke, “The Head Stream That Never Runs Dry: Shonibare’s haunting vision bears witness to the profound influence of his native country,” in Yinka Shonibare, Double Dutch (exh. cat., Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen & Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien; Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2004): 108. 32 Jessica Hemmings, “Material Meaning,” Wasafiri 25.3 (September 2010): 38.

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work with reference to Kara Walker, Barkley Hendricks, Romare Bearden, and, inevitably, David Hammons. Like Hemmings, Fusco treated the artists in considered and convincing tones. noting: The storm around Ofili’s work bears a striking resemblance to the responses [in the U S A ] to Black American artist Kara Walker’s silhouette cutouts which depict orgiastic ante-bellum plantation scenes. This similarity is further enhanced by Walker’s instantaneous market success and her having received a MacArthur “Genius” grant before the age of 30. Walker’s uncanny ability to rework a vernacular art tradition and to wring from its binary palette and iconic figuration an explosive visual statement about (white) America’s fascination with abject imagery of Black people is hardly ever discussed in depth just like Ofili’s.33

A painter by training, Shonibare had his debut solo exhibition at the Bedford Hill Gallery, in south London, in July of 1989, with a body of work titled Recent Paintings.34 As was common at the time, the exhibition was accompanied by an arresting poster, which dramatically declared the artist to be an astonishingly original and intelligent new presence. The poster featured a portrait photograph of the artist, taken by Edward Woodman, who at the time was the photographer of choice for many galleries and artists. The photo featured Shonibare, casually dapper and spruce, hat on head, standing between, in the foreground, an early desktop computer and, in the background, a wall-mounted trophy-head of a lioness. An apparently nonchalant gesture in the portrait was the framing of the three elements – computer, artist, and trophy – by two vertical wall-mounted supports, for the use of shelving brackets. Although the computer was of a certain vintage, the composition of the photograph elicited readings that were both profound and playful. Positioned between lioness’s head and computer, Shonibare was declaring himself as being comfortable in his own skin, located not so much between the two worlds that the objects or props represented as located in a world where constraining assumptions about him and his ‘Africanness’ were challenged with a particularly intelligent humour. Born in London in 1962, Shonibare spent his childhood in Nigeria, returning to London to pursue his art studies. Shonibare’s biography was not unusual and reflected the ways in which migration was such a constant, ever 33

Coco Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom: The Work of Chris Ofili,” 42. 34 Yinka Shonibare, Recent Paintings, Bedford Hill Gallery, 8–29 July, 1989.

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greater and compelling aspect of so many people’s lives by the mid- to latetwentieth century. What was particular about Shonibare’s situation was the extent to which certain people tended to make problematical assumptions

F I G U R E 13 Yinka Shonibare, Recent Paintings poster, 1989 Bedford Hill Gallery Photograph of Yinka Shonibare by Edward Woodman

about Africa, African people, and his own perceived or constructed proximity of his studio practice to these assumptions.35 In Sonia Boyce’s “Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great,” the hunting of animals, in Africa, India, and Australia, by indige35

Shonibare discussed the vexing issue of authenticity, and his attempts to challenge and circumvent it, in “Fabric and the Irony of Authenticity,” Atlántica 19 (Winter 1998): 138–39, in which he recalls: “There was a lot of pressure on me to produce something authentic” (138).

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nous peoples (and, in the case of her depiction of India, by the Indian elite and the colonial governors and other senior figures of the British Raj) signified particular pathologies about native lands.36 Likewise, the lioness’s head not only signified a certain framing of Africa but also acted as a symbol of the subjugation and plundering of the continent. In the poster for his Bedford Hill Gallery exhibition, Shonibare stood with his back to the trophy and his hand resting on the computer, thereby signalling a determination to resist being framed or regarded in terms he didn’t recognize or ways he was not comfortable with. Yet none could deny a somewhat playful association between Shonibare and the trophy, as much as between Shonibare and the computer.

F I G U R E 14 Black Art: New Directions poster, 1989 City Museum & Art Gallery Stoke on Trent

36

The work is discussed in chapter 2 above.

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It was at this time that Shonibare was making what was some of his most interesting and successful work. His paintings at the time were acrylic canvases that brought together studies of African artworks – often depicted were wooden caryatid figures – and juxtaposed them with all manner of consumer items, readily available on high streets up and down the land. What may at first have seemed like incongruous pairings or groupings were in reality bold declarations that challenged often unthinking assumptions about the nature of African cultures and the suppositions that an untroubled African way of life somehow existed separate from, the late-twentieth-century world of technological development and mass consumerism. With titles such as “Caryatid Figures Rafia Colour Motif with Viscount [telephone] from British Telecom,” Shonibare’s paintings were singular affairs. Several years after their making, Elsbeth Court described them as follows: “In 1989 he divided the plane of a single canvas into three sections, each containing figurative imagery of an ‘icon’ such as a Lega stool or global designer telephone.”37 Elsewhere, Shonibare’s paintings from this period were described thus: the diametric opposite of cultural taxidermy. Juxtaposing images of African carved figurines, advertising logos, entomological illustrations, small electrical appliances, and Chinese calligraphic characters, Shonibare disregards any hierarchical arrangements other than those dictated by his compositional choices. The canvases of the artist often suggest an almost haphazard collage of museological specimen charts and modern advertising billboards.38

Steering clear of the occasional didacticism that was not uncommon in the practice of certain Black-British artists, Shonibare was attempting to fashion new languages, new dialogues, and new terms of reference to describe the peculiarities of his life and his identity in late-1980s London. The 37

Elsbeth Court, “Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award,” African Arts 26.1 (January 1993): 79–80. 38 Interrogating Identity (exh. cat.; New York: Gray Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, 1991): 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. The artists featured, from Canada, the U S A , and the U K , were Rasheed Araeen, Rebecca Belmore, Nadine Chan, Albert Chong, Allan de Souza, 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.

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decade had given rise to several Black artists who, like Shonibare, were seeking to utilize painting as more than introspective formalism, and more than the merely illustrative. Instead, they approached painting for its potential to communicate and embody new ideas and new ways of framing elements of the world around them. Particularly noteworthy in this regard were Denzil Forrester, Tam Joseph, and Eugene Palmer.39 While a number of other artists had long since moved away from painting and other practicebased media, Shonibare kept faith with the act of painting, even as he critiqued its history and its legacies. He was to go on to make an extraordinary, penetrating work. Following two years of postgraduate study at Goldsmiths College, he was included in the prestigious Barclays Young Artist Award 1992, held at the Serpentine Gallery in London.40 This was the eighth year of the annual exhibition of London art-school postgraduates shortlisted for this award. Along with Shonibare, the other artists were Richard Ducker, Janice Howard, Andrew Kearney, Gabriel Klasmer, Joanna Lawrance, Lisa Richardson, Stefan Shankland, and Mari Tachikawa. Although five of these artists were apparently “not British in terms of birthplace or ethnicity,”41 Elsbeth Court also claimed that Shonibare was “the first non-European selected to be a finalist.”42 The significance of Shonibare’s inclusion in the exhibition cannot be overstated. More than a decade and a half after the Barclays Young Artist Award 1992, Shonibare was asked in an interview to describe what his big breakthrough was. His reply was direct: “Winning a Barclays Young Artist award in 1992. It got me noticed.”43 39

See the following catalogues: Denzil Forrester: Two Decades of Painting, (4 Victoria Street, Bristol, 4 June–6 July 2002); Tam Joseph: This is History (touring exhibition, including City Museum and Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 7 March–19 April 1998); Eugene Palmer (touring exhibition, originating at Norwich Gallery, 15 November–17 December 1993). 40 Barclays Young Artist Award 1992, Serpentine Gallery, London, 5 February–8 March, 1992. 41 Elsbeth Court, “Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award,” 79. 42 Court, “Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award,” 79. 43 Laura Barnett, “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist” (interview), The Guardian (27 January 2009), G2: 25. Shonibare’s answer is perhaps in need of some clarification. The winner of the Barclays Young Artist Award 1992 was in fact Andrew Kearney.

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Shonibare’s “big breakthrough”44 was aided by what turned out to be two quite fortuitous events. First, the coming of his practice into greater view coincided with the beginnings of contemporary African artists’ being incorporated into international biennales and mega-exhibitions. Contemporary artists from Africa – both those located on the continent itself and those who had studied at art schools in Britain, Europe, or North America and maintained a presence in the countries to which they had migrated – had been active for a number of decades. But it was not until the seminal exhibition Magiciens de la Terre held at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle at the Parc de la Villette in 198945 that contemporary African artists made the quantum jump from what might be termed wholly ethno-specific exhibitions to exhibitions in which their work was shown alongside that of artists from other parts of the world, and, more importantly, white artists, thereby triggering, and being a part of, a kaleidoscope of debates about modernity, postmodernity, globalization, migration, identity, and so on. Of similar importance to Magiciens de la Terre, in terms of introducing contemporary African artists into visual-arts arenas from which they had hitherto been excluded, was the African Countries’ (Nigeria and Zimbabwe) representation, in 1990, at the 44th Venice Biennale.46 This exhibition marked the debut of African artists, in a specific group show, at this long-established venue. The Commissioners for the exhibition were Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Grace Stanislaus, who selected some of the most accomplished and experienced contemporary artists working in Africa – Tapfuma Gutsa, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, and Henry Munyaradzi from Zimbabwe, Bruce Onobrakpeya from Nigeria, and El Anatsui, the Ghanaian sculptor based in Nigeria. Stanislaus provided the text that introduced the five artists. Among her opening remarks, she stated that contemporary African artists “continue to receive little critical attention in Europe and even 44

Barnett, “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist.” Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle at the Parc de la Villette, Paris, 18 May–14 August 1989. 46 “African Countries: Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Commissioners: Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Grace Stanislaus,” in Dimensione Futuro: L’artista e lo spazio: X L I V Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, La Biennale di Venezia (exh. cat., 27 May–30 September 1990; Venice: Fabbri, 1990): 126–31. The African participation in the Venice Biennale was also reported by David Joselit, “Africa Rising,” Art in America (October 1990): 160–61. 45

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less in the United States and remain on the periphery of the Modernist dialogue and the international art market.”47 She concluded: The artists are asserting through the quality, richness and diversity of their works, that here is art worthy of critical attention and scholarship and here is art ready to be placed squarely within the Modernist dialogue on world art.48

Problematical as Magiciens de la Terre was,49 and cautious as the African Countries debut at the Venice Biennale was, these exhibitions signalled an important development in the framing, exhibiting, and profile of artists whose practice was identified variously with ‘Africa’. Following the 44th show, practitioners from or representing the African continent showed up regularly in the Venice Biennale. In her introduction to the Fusion catalogue, Susan Vogel wrote: This exhibition of contemporary African art was originally organized for the 1993 Venice Biennale, where it marked the second occasion in the institution’s history on which African countries had represented themselves. The show is intended to contribute to a new understanding of “African art” that will remove it from the realm of the ethnographic, and place it firmly within the framework of the transcultural aesthetic that has become accepted practice among Western artists. The free-ranging references found in contemporary African work may come as a surprise to those who remember it as bound by Africa’s great art of the past, or who expect it to be subservient to contemporary Western art. In their melding of cultural codes from their own ancient traditions and from the cacophonous present, contemporary African artists may have independently arrived at their own post-Modern aesthetic.50

47

Grace Stanislaus, Dimensione Futuro: L’artista e lo spazio, 127. Stanislaus, Dimensione Futuro: L’artista e lo spazio, 127. 49 Magiciens de la Terre provoked much critical response, See, for example: Third Text 6 (Spring 1989), a special issue relating to the exhibition; Cesare Poppi, “From the suburbs of the global village: afterthoughts on Magiciens de la Terre,” Third Text 14 (Spring 1991): 85–96; Deke Dusinberre, “Conjurations: Magiciens de la Terre,” Art Monthly 129 (September 1989): 7–9; Clémentine Deliss, “Conjuring tricks,” Artscribe International (September–October 1989): 48–53; Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “The Whole Earth Show: An Interview with [the exhibition’s curator] Jean–Hubert Martin,” Art in America (May 1989): 150–58, 211–13. 50 Susan Vogel & Thomas McEvilley, Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale (exh. cat.; New York: Museum for African Art, 1993). The exhibition featured Moustapha Dimé, Tamessir Dia, Outtara, Gérard Santoni, and Mor Faye. 48

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In his practice, Shonibare was at pains to stress that his work was a critique of, and challenge to, seemingly indelible or fixed notions of Africa and African art. Furthermore, following the establishment of his practice, Shonibare was not inclined to exhibit in Nigeria, the country he grew up in, from one decade to the next. Nevertheless, Shonibare was a clear beneficiary of the new, post-Venice 1990 status quo, in which precious few biennales and other international mega-exhibitions were considered complete without the presence of one, several, or larger numbers of practitioners deemed in some way or another to represent or connect with ‘Africa’. Steve McQueen was another who profited from the ways in which Black artists were increasingly embraced by the biennale circuit during the course of the 1990s.51 Shonibare’s headway was aided by another particularly fortuitous sequence of events – the meteoric coming into view of the so-called yBa (young British artists) generation who have in many ways dominated all curatorial narratives of British art practice from the mid-1990s onwards. Such was the new hegemony which the yBa grouping represented, that by the mid-1990s they were, in the words of Michael Bracewell, “well on their way to becoming the new establishment of British art.”52 Having studied at Goldsmiths College,53 the undisputed hothouse of the yBa generation, and graduating from there in the early 1990s, Shonibare was well placed to be identified with these artists and to be noticed, in time, by both influential and impressionable curators, gallery directors, critics, and Within the catalogue – and, indeed, elsewhere – some of these artists’ names appear in several variants. 51 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 having been included in Documenta 10 (Kassel 21 June–28 September 1997) curated by Catherine David, Steve McQueen’s work was also included in Documenta 11, curated by Okwui Enwezor, 8 June–15 September 2002. 52 Michael Bracewell, “Growing Up in Public: The Turner Prize and the Media 1984–2006,” in The Turner Prize and British Art (Tate Gallery, 2007): 80. 53 Shonibare’s education was Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 1984–89 and Goldsmiths College, London, 1989–91. Brilliant! New Art From London, which was shown at Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, 22 October 1995–7 January 1996 and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 17 February–14 April 1996, was one of a number of exhibitions that reflected the hegemony of Goldsmiths College in the yBa grouping. Out of the twenty-two artists in the exhibition, fifteen were graduates of Goldsmiths College.

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collectors, from far and wide. Ofili (though not a Goldsmiths graduate) and McQueen (another Goldsmiths graduate) were likewise beneficiaries of the unprecedented levels of curatorial and other types of attention paid to the yBa generation that included the likes of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Sam Taylor–Wood. Although Emin was not included in The British Art Show 4,54 it was this yBa body of practitioners who had so dominated the exhibition, making it one of the first high-profile shows to signal the arrival of this new grouping of artists. And it was his exclusion from this exhibition that had apparently so disappointed Shonibare. Asked in a life-style interview for the Guardian in 2009 what the low point in his life was thus far, Shonibare answered: “Not being included in [the national touring exhibition] British Art Show 4 in 1995. That really hurt.”55 And so it was that the period in which Shonibare’s practice came into greater view coincided with the beginnings of contemporary African artists being incorporated into high-profile exhibitions, and a precocious new body of artists, the yBa grouping, was taking centre stage in Britain and elsewhere and reaping substantial and often quite fabulous rewards. The work that Shonibare exhibited in the Barclays Young Artist Award 1992 was groundbreaking. (He had, the previous year, shown an earlier version of the work at Goldsmiths College). Elsbeth Court’s review provided the most substantial appraisal of Shonibare’s “Installation” in the Barclays Young Artist Award exhibition at the Serpentine: On adjacent walls Shonibare composed an asymmetrical array of four-sided color field objects prepared from textiles stretched over a frame, like the traditional canvas, and painted. Stunning in appearance and significance, Installation is a watershed for contemporary African art.56

In her review, Court distinguished herself as a particular admirer of this work by Shonibare. Other critics submitted more muted (and certainly much briefer) comment on “Installation.” The Guardian’s Tim’s Hilton offered this weary assessment: Yinka Shonibare (born in London) shows paintings that are made from African fabrics, but even this explicit Africanness is sacrificed to the prevailing 54

The British Art Show 4 toured to venues in Manchester, Edinburgh, and Cardiff, between November 1995 and July 1996. 55 Laura Barnett, “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist,” 25. 56 Elsbeth Court, “Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award,” 79.

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mood of the exhibition – which is of laid-back postgraduate knowingness, valuing sophistication more than commitment. Art-smart cool carries the day.57

William Feaver perceived the significance of the notion of “cultural feedback” in his equally fleeting references to Shonibare’s work in the Barclays exhibition. Samples of textiles such as used to be produced in Lancashire for the West African market are stretched up by Yinka Shonibare to form the fronts or sides of otherwise blank paintings. The concern is with cultural debasement, cultural trickle-down and cultural feedback. A point well made.58

This sense of “Installation”’s being “a point well made” was stressed in the review of the exhibition by Sarah Kent, the art critic for Time Out magazine. Kent had emerged as a sometime admirer of the work of Black artists, though, surprisingly perhaps, her language seemed at times heavyhanded. Her review of “Installation” was no exception. After addressing the other artists in the Barclays Young Artist Award exhibition, Kent concluded thus: Yinka Shonibare is a black artist – a group that, in the West, has also been without a voice. He creates a dialogue between minimalist abstraction and the brightly coloured designs of African fabrics. The cloth is stretched as though it were canvas and used as the support for swathes of dense pigment – high art meets ethnic design. Numerous modern artists have been inspired by ethnic art, but this is a dialogue of a different kind – between Shonibare and himself, between his Western experience (he was born and brought up here and studied in London art schools) and his distant roots. Without being in any way didactic, the paintings raise questions concerning the relationships between high and applied art and between the first and third worlds. More importantly perhaps, they also address the issue of belonging versus alienation: highly intelligent work.59

Although the biographical inaccuracies that were sometimes attached to Shonibare had not yet become commonplace, Kent was somehow able to

57

Tim Hilton, “Art school cool that is glad to be grey,” The Guardian (12 February

1992): 36. 58

William Feaver, “Mistress of the vessels,” Observer (16 February 1992): 57. “Art Preview, Young at art. Sarah Kent On the Barclays Award,” Time Out (12–19 February 1992): 36. 59

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declare confidently that Shonibare was “brought up” in the U K , when the country of his upbringing was in fact Nigeria. After “Installation,” one of Shonibare’s next works was Double Dutch,60 which consisted of several rows of small rectangular paintings. These were executed on the fronts or the sides of the canvases, though the latter were, in turn, stretched pieces of faux-African fabric. The fabric (which like tartan, had a fascinating, complex, not widely known, and frequently misunderstood history) acted as a leitmotif of Shonibare’s own existence and identity; indeed, the exhibition’s title, alluding to the Dutch wax-printed cotton that the artist buys 'in specialist retail outlets, located predominantly in close proximity to London’s communities of African residents, has punning implications relating to cultural identity. This was irreverent, brassy work: referencing the modernist grid, it was a critique of modernism and wider art histories, even as it simultaneously acted as a means by which Shonibare could find a way into these same narratives, and, in effect, create a space for himself in art history. The canvases were mounted on a wall that was a shocking shade of bright pink, thereby driving a coach and horses through the sacrosanctity of the white cube. The work was also an exuberant investigation into the process of painting, in which the paint on the fronts or the sides of the canvases was applied in luscious, generous quantities to create shapes, patterns, and symbols that were playfully evocative of a great many different things. This was brilliant, intelligent, and highly original work that continued, in broad terms, his earlier painterly preoccupations. These considerations centred on a questioning of the pernicious and seemingly indelible notion of the ‘authentic’ in African art. For many decades, African art, in a variety of forms, was simultaneously judged, burdened, and valued by notions of authenticity. With his cross-cultural background, Shonibare was ideally placed to critique the limitations and, indeed, absurdities of the ways in which an entire continent’s art forms were subjected to what were often wholly spurious notions of the authentic. Particularly troubling was the manner in which such notions tended to disregard the many aspects in which Africa and its many states were as much a part of the late-twentieth century as any other continent or country; Africa was persistently perceived and located purely in terms of its ancient cultures. Shonibare, British /Nigerian, bridled at the distortions and prejudices about Africa and its art, particularly the expectations 60

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

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about the kinds of work he ought to be producing as an art student and young artist. Moving on from his distinctive acrylic paintings, which mocked and questioned the notion of the authentic and the presumption that Africa had few if any links with modernity or postmodernity, Shonibare turned to exploring the language of painting and its interplay with his earlier and ongoing concerns. Kobena Mercer noted, in particularly adulatory tones: Poised between two cultures and enjoying every minute of it, Yinka Shonibare produces a playful and inquisitive art out of ironies that arise when the postmodern and the postcolonial collide. Since graduation he has fused scepticism, modesty and wit in a desire to reinvent painting as a point of public dialogue and visual pleasure. The result is work such as Installation (1992), comprised of some 50 panels in which stretched canvas has been replaced by brightly coloured African fabric, each piece bearing references to colour-field painting either frontally or on the edges of the frame. In this disarmingly simple move, he spins the equations of modernist primitivism right off their axis.61

This passage comes from one of the most important pieces of writing on Shonibare’s practice. The article, which appeared in 1995, stressed Shonibare’s novel use of supposedly African fabric, in work that was, at the time, new, different, and unexpected. Mercer laid out the reasons why Shonibare’s use of faux-African fabric was such a perfect vehicle for critiquing perceived identities and subverting dominant cultural pathologies about Africa and African people: Popular in West Africa since the 60s when their jazzy colours captured postindependence verve, the Dutch wax-print actually originated in Indonesia. The batik techniques were later industrialised by Dutch colonisers and manufactured in Holland. The British copied, then monopolised the process, with factories in Manchester employing Asian workers and English designers to produce goods for exports to West African markets. Alluding to this ambiguous import–export history […] Double Dutch [the name of one of Shonibare’s earliest works using ‘African’ fabric] teases out the way in which, far from being intrinsic to an origin, meanings are stitched into an artefact by the circuits of translation and exchange through which it travels.62

61

Kobena Mercer, “Art That is Ethnic in Inverted Commas,” Frieze 25 (November– December 1995): 39. 62 Mercer, “Art That is Ethnic in Inverted Commas,” 40.

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Since Mercer offered this reading, it has assumed mantra-like status and has been repeated and repackaged in numerous exhibition reviews, magazine features, catalogue essays, and other texts. Shonibare’s style after the early to mid-1990s became widely recognizable. With the exception of few pieces – primarily photography projects – this work evinced a growing reliance on faux-African fabric. As his production grew more familiar, his sales, exhibition opportunities, and other commissions multiplied. Similarly, his exhibition catalogues became more grandiose in scale and legion in quantity, though the texts they contained hardly ever matched Mercer’s crafted readings of Shonibare’s work in the Frieze article of the mid-1990s.63 Indeed, the bulk of catalogue essays on Shonibare’s work was repetitive and sometimes played fast and loose with historical accuracy. In her catalogue essay for the artist’s exhibition Double Dress in Jerusalem (2002), Suzanne Landau mentioned Shonibare’s “first solo show in London in 1994.”64 His first solo exhibition had actually taken place in London some five years earlier. Similarly, Thelma Golden, in her catalogue introduction to Shonibare’s exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, erroneously gave Nigeria as Shonibare’s country of birth.65 Ever-increasing numbers of galleries, museums, and collectors the 63

“Art That is Ethnic in Inverted Commas,” 38–41. Suzanne Landau, “Yinka Shonibare’s Garden of Pleasure,” in Double Dress (exh. cat., Israel Museum; Jerusalem: Kal Press, 2002): 9. 65 In her catalogue essay, Thelma Golden, the exhibition’s organizer, wrote: “Born in Nigeria and a resident of London, Yinka Shonibare has brilliantly dismantled the myths of Africanism, even as he has cleverly – and beautifully – exploited its appeal.” Yinka Shonibare (exh. cat., 24 January–31 March 2002; New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2002): 8. The biographical inaccuracy was repeated in the “Artist’s Biography” in the accompanying catalogue (43). Apropos innacuracy, there are ways in which the titling of a number of Shonibare’s exhibitions, pieces of work, and catalogues has, inadvertently perhaps, created the occasional confusion. Shonibare had a small solo exhibition, called Double Dutch, at Centre 181 Gallery in London, in 1994. That same exhibition was also a piece of work in several group shows (the small canvases, in grid formation, of faux-African fabric, mounted on a pink background). Added to this, one of Shonibare's major exhibitions and attendant catalogues (coming out of the Netherlands in 2004) was titled Double Dutch. For good measure, the artist’s major exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham was titled Dressing Down, while his exhibition at the Israel Museum in 2002 was titled Double Dress. Double this, double that, dress this, dressing that, solo exhibition, group exhibition, catalogue. . . . Apart from the intriguing onomastic implications of 64

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world over wanted something of what Shonibare had to offer. And to this end, they were aided and abetted by a seemingly ever-increasing number of the world’s curators, critics, writers, art historians, and journalists, whose repetitive writings on Shonibare barely moved beyond the mildly fawning to the sycophantic. Shonibare was able to secure as essayists big hitters such as John Picton and Manthia Diawara, though much of what they wrote amounted to little more than advertising copy. In one of the countless catalogue texts on Shonibare, Onyema Offoedu–Okeke could begin his essay with the sentence “Owing to Shonibare’s brilliance, attention has been drawn to his haunting displays of a profound idealized vision, a flight of fancy that includes his updated travesty of a photo-iconography as well as his paradoxical ‘waxscapes’.”66 Quite possibly, if a significant number of Shonibare’s commentators had demonstrated at least a passing familiarity with the long-established cultural dualities that were a pronounced aspect of twentieth-century Africa, they might have approached Shonibare’s use of faux-African fabric with greater acumen. Surprisingly, given Court’s interests, her review of “Installation” at the Serpentine included the following references to the artist’s family: Shonibare describes their family style as dualistic. At home and in private they dress and speak Yoruba, while at school and work they dress Western and speak English. Theirs is a comfortable dualism, not a torment of confused identities.67

But the sentiment is, fundamentally, commonplace and not unique to Shonibare. This “comfortable dualism”68 is replicated, with obvious linguistic variations, in millions of households across Africa and Asia and is, in a genuine sense, unremarkable. Similarly, it is well-nigh impossible to identify or imagine which sorts of household, in Africa or elsewhere, might be reflective of a somewhat mythic “torment of confused identities.” Nearly a decade later, Shonibare was still himself endorsing his supposed noteworthy duality,

these titles (see, for example, p. 117 above), it is perhaps no surprise that Shonibare should fall victim to a number of biographical inaccuracies in a variety of texts relating to his practice. 66 Onyema Offoedu–Okeke, “The Head Stream That Never Runs Dry,” in Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch, 108. 67 Elsbeth Court, “Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award.” 80. 68 Court, “Yinka Shonibare: Finalist, Barclays Young Artist Award.” 80.

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though this time the focus of his attention was dress, rather than language: “My father would actually come back from work and get rid of the suits and [put on] agbada….”69 During the 1990s, identity had come to be regarded not as a fixed entity with clearly definable characteristics, but more as an ever-fluctuating and imprecise condition of hybridity. Concurrently with the ongoing and by now established questioning of fixed notions of identity – racial, ethnic, national, cultural, sexual, etc. – Shonibare’s work appeared increasingly fixed in its parameters. Having hit on the use of African fabric in the most novel, humorous, and intelligent of ways, Shonibare thereafter seemed destined to mine this use in ways that hardly ever achieved or exceeded the dynamism of his work of the mid-1990s. Indeed, the work produced often fell significantly short of the vigour of his early work. Nevertheless, the adulation he received grew ever more pronounced and he secured career success after career success. Within a decade and a half of Shonibare’s showing in the Barclays Young Artist Award exhibition of 1992,70 he had achieved stratospheric success, fame, recognition, and adulation. He was one of a number of artists of the yBa generation who, aided by pickled creatures, an unmade bed, copious amounts of elephant dung, and metre upon metre of faux-African fabric, had become media darlings and household names. The extent of the press coverage that McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare secured was unprecedented in the history of Black-British art. As the new century moved towards the close of its first decade, this press coverage, in such publications as Time magazine, Vogue, Dazed & Confused,71 and numerous other magazines and newspapers, be69

John Picton, “Laughing at Ourselves,” in Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch, 46. 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 (exh. cat.). 71 Chris Ofili appeared in the already mentioned short Vogue feature by Louisa Buck, “Living Colour: Chris Ofili’s vivid paintings reveal the psychedelic city experience” and Yinka Shonibare appeared in the likewise already cited Time feature “Decaptivating” by Richard Lacayo. Steve McQueen appeared in a feature in Dazed & Confused magazine, the cover of which declared: “Steve McQueen on the year’s most fearless film [Hunger]”; Octavia Morris, “Steve McQueen: Louder Than Bombs,” Dazed & Confused 67 (November 2008): 154–57. Ofili had also appeared in Arena, Dazed & Confused, GQ, etc. 70

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came almost routine. By this time, Shonibare had featured in a significant number of life-style features in a range of magazines. To some extent, the features presupposed an understanding of, or familiarity with, Shonibare’s practice, thereby leaving him free to nonchalantly discuss developments or setbacks in his personal life, and the relentless round of activities and engagements that so much success had brought. In July 2008, Shonibare was the subject of an interview feature in the Daily Telegraph Review.72 Historically, the Telegraph, with the exception of Black Turner Prize-winners, was not a paper generally associated with recognition of Black artists. The paper’s coverage of Black artists’ exhibitions of the 1980s and 1990s had been, at best, sparse. By contrast, the Guardian’s coverage was substantial and dated back to the very early 1980s.73 But in a sign of changed times and an ever-increasing celebrity status accorded to artists such as Shonibare, the Telegraph had chosen Shonibare as its superbusy celebrity type for its regular week-in-the-life-of piece. The column was reflective of the zeitgeist: i.e. (in this instance) an apparently determined, if passing, curiosity on the part of large numbers of people, about what the ‘famous’ (or, at least, those having had gradations of celebrity bestowed upon them) get up to in their work and private lives. Wholly in keeping with the times, there seemed to be no shortage of celebrity types, minor and otherwise, willing to oblige in sharing, with assorted audiences and readerships, tidbits about the angst, disappointments or successes of their personal lives, diagnoses and prognoses of whatever medical conditions they might have, and various signifiers of their highly successful, glamorous, and fulfilled lives. Such small features were increasingly popular items in certain newspapers and magazines, and, broadly speaking, alluded to the notion that, for the

72

Jon Swaine, “My Week: Yinka Shonibare, Artist,” Daily Telegraph Review (12 July 2008): 5. — As discussed in the previous chapter, in 2005 he was awarded an M B E – Member of the Order of the British Empire – in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for services to art. Upon receipt of his M B E , Shonibare promptly began to use, indeed, apparently insisted on, M B E as a suffix to his name whenever it appeared in publicity relating to his visual art projects. In this instance, however, his name appeared sans what had by this time become its usual suffix. 73 For example, Irene McManus, “Black Art an’ Done: An Exhibition of Work by Young Black Artists, Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Andrew Hazel, Ian Palmer, Keith Piper, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 9–27 June 1981,” The Guardian (17 June 1981): 10.

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subject in question, any publicity was good publicity. And in the Telegraph Review of 12 July 2008, it was Shonibare’s turn. Thursday, day one of his five-day week, provides a substantial indication of the general nature and tone of the column. It is worth quoting “Thursday” in full. I feel like I’m living a Greek tragedy. My work, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, was selected for the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square and I’m absolutely delighted. However, I’ve discovered that I’ve got a stomach ulcer and Maxa, my girlfriend of five years, is leaving me. One of the works that got me nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004 was an exuberant painting to celebrate our love, that I named after Maxa. Today, amid all the turmoil, I was trying to prepare for a huge retrospective of my work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in September.74

In Shonibare’s diary piece, celebrations of his own ongoing art-world successes were casually mixed with other references that might well, in previous ages, have been kept between oneself and one’s doctor, or oneself and one’s close friends. After all, a defining characteristic of the present-day ‘celebrity’ is his or her willingness and ability to share with a largely anonymous public the details of his or her life, whatever those details might be. (One of Shonibare’s contemporaries, Tracey Emin, had used the public’s fascination with celebrities or other people’s lives, bordering on prurience, to maximum effect in her work “My Bed,” which drew huge crowds when it was exhibited at the Turner Prize exhibition of 1999.75) Along with a select number of other artists, including Isaac Julien and Steve McQueen, Shonibare was given space in features such as this to bandy around, in studiously off-hand yet equally insistent terms, references to his ever-greater success, including Fourth Plinths and “huge”76 retrospectives Down Under.77 Within half a year of this Telegraph Review piece, the Guardian, in late January 2009, carried a “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare,

74

Jon Swaine, “My Week: Yinka Shonibare Artist,” 5. Emin’s “My Bed” is discussed later in this chapter. 76 Jon Swaine, “My Week: Yinka Shonibare Artist,” 5. 77 The “huge retrospective” Shonibare referred to was Yinka Shonibare M B E , which originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 24 September 2008–1 February 2009. It toured to Brooklyn Museum, New York, 26 June–20 September 2009 and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D C , 11 November–7 March 2010. 75

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artist” piece.78 In keeping with such features, it hinged on the idea that readers – casual or otherwise – might be interested in answers to such questions as In the movie of your life, who plays you? What one song would feature on the soundtrack to your life? What’s your favourite film? The quotation from Shonibare used to introduce the piece was “I used to think about art above everything. To all the ladies out there – I’ve changed.”79 Just over two years later, in April 2011, the Guardian again featured Shonibare in a similar Q&A, this time in its Guardian Weekend magazine.80 The general tenor was similar, Shonibare being asked such questions as ‘When were you happiest?’, ‘What do you most dislike about your appearance?’, and ‘What is your favourite book?’. By now, though, in response to the question ‘Who would play you in a film of your life?’, Shonibare now ventured: “Maybe Lady Gaga?” (In 2009, Will Smith had been his choice.) Shonibare was, as mentioned, not alone in appearing in features such as this. A Guardian Weekend magazine of October 2005 contained another such piece; this time the filmmaker Isaac Julien was its focus. The usual mix of devices to signify a highly successful, accomplished, and well-connected life peppered the piece. The first paragraph set the tone. Saturday 9am, I’m recovering from my after-show dinner party at Yauatcha in Soho and perhaps too many drinks to celebrate my opening at the Victoria Miro gallery. I would prefer to stay horizontal in bed for the weekend. Of course the phone rings at 9.30am. It’s Colin MacCabe – who recently tore up his Labour party card – who says in a rather hasty but jovial tone that we have a meeting this morning that is pivotal to discussing a Derek Jarman documentary we are making.81

With an ever-increasing number of catalogues to his name, and exhibitions and awards under his belt, Shonibare could do no wrong. Feted as an African artist whose practice critiqued perceptions of Africa, Shonibare was simultaneously framed as being symbolic of a brighter, happier, and more colourful Britain. Along with a number of other artists, Shonibare was commissioned to provide the artwork for the pocket-sized foldout map of the London Under-

78

Laura Barnett, “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist.” Barnett, “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist.” 80 Rosanna Greenstreet, “Yinka Shonibare: Q&A,” Guardian Weekend (30 April 2011): 8. 81 Isaac Julien, “Isaac Julien in London,” Guardian Weekend (22 October 2005): 9. 79

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ground. Used extensively by tourists and other visitors to London, his design – “Global Underground Map” – was wholly in keeping with the ways in which those running London wished it to be perceived. During the two decades over which Shonibare established his practice and presence, difference had ceased to be some sort of oppositional state and had become instead a barometer of inclusivity. In keeping with this, London was now to be acknowledged and celebrated for its diversity. Shonibare, and others, were there to oblige. From the Transport For London website: Platform for Art is pleased to announce that internationally acclaimed artist Yinka Shonibare M B E has designed the latest cover of the London Underground pocket Tube map. The work is the fourth in a series of art works commissioned by Platform for Art. London Underground has a long established tradition of working with artists of the highest calibre and since 2000 its Platform for Art programme has been continuing this tradition through many projects around the network. Yinka Shonibare has produced a map of the world which has been hand drawn using the colours of the Tube map to reflect the diversity of London and the users of London Underground. The countries of the world have been given a subtle shift of identity by implying new relationships between them based on the colours of the tube lines. The landmasses of the world have been divided into a patchwork by superimposing an invisible grid similar to those created by the lines of latitude and longitude which appear on maps. The resulting grid has been filled in with a random patchwork composed of the colours of the tube lines. This “global patchwork” also makes reference to the works using printed textiles for which the artist is renowned. A map, whether of the world, or the Tube network, is a simplified schematic diagram. The map used by the artist is based on the Peters projection (1974) which portrays each country according to its true surface area. Traditional world maps have often been extremely distorted, showing Europe, North America and parts of Asia as much larger than they really are, reflecting the agendas of the commissioners of the maps, the times in which they were produced and the state of the world at the time of their creation. The colouring of maps has also been based on politics – using different colours to identify countries under the same administration. Yinka Shonibare’s Global Underground Map is the artist’s vision of London – and London Underground and its users – as a microcosm of the world.

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London is a city defined by and celebrated for its identity as a truly multicultural and diverse city.82

Concurrent with Shonibare’s stock rising, an intriguing young artist – not yet in his thirties – crowned a successful year with a coveted Turner Prize nomination. As such, Chris Ofili was the first British-born Black artist to be nominated. Indeed, Ofili went to on win the Turner Prize, thereby signalling the triumphant arrival of a bold, new, media-savvy, talent whose work was characterized in large part by (and, indeed, primarily noticed for) its distinctive and liberal use of balls of elephant dung. As Julian Stallabrass observed, He achieved prominence at a genuinely young age, only six years out of art school when, in 1998, he won the Turner Prize and in the same year had a solo show at one of London’s foremost venues, the Serpentine Gallery.83

Stallabrass mentioned other Ofili successes before noting that “his work arrived swiftly at the official centre of the British art world, and may indeed be seen as a manifestation of the [then] British state’s new self-image.”84 As mentioned earlier, McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare were somewhat fortuitous beneficiaries of the unprecedented levels of curatorial and other attention paid to the yBa generation that included the likes of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Sam Taylor–Wood. By the mid-1990s, a new generation of young artists were rapidly acquiring celebrity status, alongside their ever-greater levels of critical acclaim. A year before his Turner Prize triumph, Ofili was one of several artists (Barry Reigate, Gary Hume, Gavin Turk, and Pascal Harvey being the others), who appeared in a fashion spread in the Sunday Times Magazine.85 Titled “Paint it Black,” the feature was introduced as “In a world where formaldehyde is as routine as gouache, these artists still stand out as black sheep. We put them in wolf’s clothing. Photographs by Kim Andreolli.” In the feature, “Ofili wears merino wool top, £220, by Copperwheat Blundell at Liberty, Regent St, London W1 and Brother to Brother, 202 West Street, Sheffield. Jeans, artist’s own. Stool, stylist’s own.”86 But factors other than an 82

Shonibare’s map was available between June and December 2006: “Art on the Underground,” Transport for London, http://art.tfl.gov.uk/projects/detail/1343/ (accessed 3 April 2011). 83 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 108. 84 Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 108. 85 Anon., “Paint it Black,” The Sunday Times Magazine (2 October 1997): 90–94. 86 Anon., “Paint it Black,” 92.

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ascendant culture of celebrity embracing the newly emerged yBa grouping were at play in Ofili’s success. As Stallabrass speculated, The prodigious success of Ofili is, however, a sign of shifts in the art-world view of black art, one connected with a change in government […] and with larger and deeper changes in the global art world as a whole.87

Seen from many different angles, there could be no question that the late 1990s was Ofili’s time. Rachel Newsome, in a feature on Ofili published in November 1998, on the eve of his Turner Prize triumph, summed up the artist’s relevance and timely emergence thus: “it’s a late ’90s thing.”88 In his review of Ofili’s 1998 touring exhibition, Richard Dyer briskly reminded (or made the reader aware) of the artist’s rapid rise to success and good fortune: Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1993 with an M A in painting, Ofili has been courted by the upper echelons of the art establishment – Victoria Miro, Charles Saatchi, the Serpentine Gallery – and starting even while still at college he was a prize winner in the Whitworth Young Contemporaries, an exhibitor in the B P Portrait award and later in the prestigious John Moores Liverpool Exhibition.89

Ofili’s Turner Prize success was noted with some style by the London-based broadsheets. Two of them, the Times and the Telegraph, both ran front-page cartoons by their resident cartoonists on Wednesday 2 December 1998, the day after the Turner Prize winner was announced. The Times’ cartoon, by (Jonathan) Pugh, featured a couple in the Turner Prize gallery, complete with a recognizably Ofili painting, propped up on his inevitable balls of elephant dung. The man, holding a Chris Ofili catalogue, says to his female companion: “It’s amazing how the smell seems to follow you around the room.” The Telegraph cartoon, by Matt (Pritchett), featured two zoo elephants in an enclosure. Their keeper passes by in the background. The elephants are looking at a notice which reads ‘E L E P H A N T D U N G A R T W I N S T U R N E R P R I Z E ’. Says one elephant to the other: “Ridiculous! My six year-old son could have done that!” But broadsheet acknowledgement of Ofili was not limited to a couple of front-page cartoons, albeit groundbreaking. Other coverage broke further 87

Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 118–19. Rachel Newsome, “Afro Daze,” Dazed & Confused 48 (November 1998): 76. 89 Richard Dyer, “Chris Ofili,” Wasafiri 29 (Spring 1999): 79. 88

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significant new ground in the level and type of media attention accorded a Black artist. Page 12 of the aforementioned Daily Telegraph featured a report on the Turner Prize winner, titled “Poetry in Motions Wins Turner Prize.”

F I G U R E 15 Matt cartoon on Chris Ofili, Daily Telegraph (2 December 1998)  Telegraph Media Group Limited

It carried a small photograph of the artist and an altogether more substantial installation view of his painting “The Adventures of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars.”90 On the front page of the Independent for 2 December 1998, several stories – “Brown is snubbed in E U tax row,” “‘Dis90

Nigel Reynolds, “Poetry in Motions Wins Turner Prize,” Daily Telegraph (2 December 1998): 12.

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tressed’ Pinochet moves out of hospital,” and “Mandelson warns bosses on ‘fat cat’ rises” – all vied for attention as they framed the real front-page news, which was that “Portrait in Elephant Dung wins Turner Prize.” (The press and media tended to play fast and loose with its descriptions of Ofili’s paintings, frequently describing him as painting with elephant dung, rather than the more correct description of incorporating elephant dung into his paintings.) Of central visual importance to the story – and, indeed, to the whole front page – was a reproduction of Ofili’s timely and emotive painting “No Woman No Cry,” of a woman taken to approximate Mrs Doreen Lawrence.91 In April of 1993, the eighteen-year-old student Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in a vicious and unprovoked attack that was widely regarded as a racist murder.92 While a number of suspects were arrested and charges brought, thus far no convictions have been secured for this death, and allegations persisted that the London police were ultimately indifferent to racist violence against Black people – worse, that incompetence and racism may have played a part in the lack of convictions. One of the first acts of the New Labour government was Jack Straw’s dramatic announcement in late July 1997 that, as Home Secretary, he was commissioning an inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence and the perceived inadequacies of the subsequent investigation and trials.93 The report, published in February 1999, was clearly a response to the palpable mood of outrage and sense of injustice at Lawrence’s death and the attendant failure of the police and judicial system – thus far – to secure satisfactory prosecutions. With its damning verdict of police forces such as the Metropolitan Police’s being affected by a culture of ‘institutional racism’, the Macpherson Report94 was seen as evidence that, under New Labour, Black victims of crime, including racial violence, would be 91

Chris Ofili, “No Woman No Cry” (1998; mixed media on canvas 243.8 x 182.8 cm, Tate Gallery, purchased 1999). 92 For a substantial account of the Stephen Lawrence affair, see Brian Cathcart, The Case of Stephen Lawrence (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000). 93 Straw’s announcement of an inquiry was in large measure “in order particularly to identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes.” Cathcart, The Case of Stephen Lawrence, 311. 94 The Macpherson Report, named after its author, Sir William Macpherson, is dealt with extensively in Cathcart, The Case of Stephen Lawrence. See also the entry “MacPherson Report” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 281– 82.

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taken seriously and that the police would work to eradicate racism from their ranks. Notwithstanding the importance of the report, its findings, and its recommendations, the public mood (articulated within sections of the press and media, and elsewhere) took the form of outrage at the wanton violence perpetrated against someone framed as a decent, upstanding, hardworking young man, and sympathy for the Lawrence family, particularly the teenager’s parents. Doreen and Neville Lawrence were regarded as dignified people who, though burdened with an unimaginable grief, carried themselves in a way that was inspirational. Like their son, they were perceived as decent people, who wanted nothing more and nothing less than justice for their beloved son. No racist murders had in the past generated this level of sympathy. Indeed, in comparison to the murder of Stephen Lawrence, previous racist murders had more or less passed unremarked by Fleet Street and society at large. Peter Fryer reported: “Between 1976 and 1981, 31 black people in Britain had been murdered by racists.”95 Fryer proceeded to list a sorry and tragic roll-call of a number of these victims, including “Gurdip Singh Chaggar, aged 18, stabbed to death in Southall by a gang of white youths” and: In Walthamstow, Mrs Parveen Khan and her three children were burnt to death when petrol was poured through their letter-box and set alight at three in the morning. And for every black person murdered, scores of others were attacked, beaten, kicked unconscious.96

Much of the media and the wider society had appeared apparently indifferent to the deaths of no fewer than thirteen Black youngsters at the beginning of the 1980s. But in the case of Stephen Lawrence at least, things were different and there was a palpable sense of society-wide sympathy for Lawrence’s parents and respect for their stoicism. Writing in early 1999, Trevor Phillips alluded to the significance of Stephen Lawrence and the potency of his image: His name has become a byword for martyrdom, and for his family’s courage under fire. Increasingly, the faces of his parents have become familiar through newspapers and television. […] his story is now part of the lexicon

95

Peter Fryer, “The New Generation: Resistance and Rebellion,” in Fryer, Staying Power, 395. 96 Peter Fryer, “The New Generation: Resistance and Rebellion,” 396.

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of antiracist protest, guaranteed to evoke a sympathetic response in virtually any audience.97

When Chris Ofili was shortlisted for the Turner Prize exhibition of 1998, held at Tate Britain (late October 1998 – early January 1999), he became the first British-born Black artist to be so honoured. The other shortlisted artists – Tacita Dean, Cathy de Monchaux, and Sam Taylor–Wood – were also of the yBa generation that had come, and indeed would continue, to dominate Tuner Prize shortlists.98 The award was, in due course, made to Ofili, who had been shortlisted “for the inventiveness, exuberance, humour and technical richness of his painting, with its breadth of cultural reference, as revealed in his solo exhibition at Southampton City Art Gallery and in Sensation at the Royal Academy, London.”99 Ofili went on to win the Turner Prize and in this endeavour his painting “No Woman No Cry” (which was the star of his display) helped him. The song from which Ofili borrowed his title appeared on a Bob Marley & The Wailers studio album from 1974, Natty Dread.100 It was, though, the live version, from a concert recording released the following year, that marked the song out as an iconic, emotional, highly charged work in the annals of reggae music. On the 1975 Live! album,101 the crowd erupts appreciatively when hearing the opening chords of the song, and join in word for word as Bob Marley sings this song of comfort, perseverance, and triumph over the adversity that was the Jamaican sufferers’ lot. Describing the common bonds of day-to-day existence that united and strengthened a particular domestic community of humble Jamaicans, the song goes on to declare, or insist, that “everything’s gonna be alright… everything’s gonna be alright.…” It was not difficult to be moved by the song, and the British playwright Barrie Keefe used the lyrics in his memorable play of 1979, Sus.102 In the play, a young Black man is arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife. Upon being 97

Trevor Phillips, “Icon For a Sceptical Age,” The Observer (10 January 1999): 12. See The Turner Prize 1998 (exh. cat.; London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998). 99 The Turner Prize 1998 (exh. cat.; London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998). 100 “No Woman No Cry” (lyrics by V. Ford), Bob Marley & the Wailers, Natty Dread (Island Records, 1974). 101 “No Woman No Cry” (lyrics by V. Ford), Bob Marley & The Wailers, Live! (Island Records, 1975). 102 For more on Sus, see the entry “Sus Law” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, edited by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 473–74. 98

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obliged to empty his pockets in the police-station interview room, he is found to be in possession of a letter from his wife that had been sent to him from Jamaica some time previously. The letter contains the words of the song and are read out, albeit in an incredulous and scornful manner, by one of the two detectives intent on pursuing what they feel to be a clear-cut murder charge. Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” was a sentimental portrait of a tearful woman, widely taken to be Mrs Lawrence, or a woman the viewer can surmise might be a representation of Mrs Lawrence. The theatricality of the elephant dung with which Ofili had catapulted to stardom was present in the painting – in the form of a pendant worn by the woman, and as two props on which the painting (and, indeed, many of his paintings which use the material) rested. But, sentimentality and a perhaps predictable or inevitable use of elephant dung aside, the painting was widely admired, and it came as no surprise when the Tate purchased it in 1999. As Virginia Button noted in her history of The Turner Prize, “No Woman No Cry” “was widely admired by the press.”103 The woman in Ofili’s portrait appeared behind a decorative, latticework-type grid – not a harsh grid that trapped her, but an ornamental patterning that reflected the figure’s gentle humanity. With her hair plaited, and her eyes gently closed in sorrow, the painting was perhaps a timely embodiment of sympathy felt for Mrs Lawrence and the high esteem in which she and her husband were held. The woman in Ofili’s painting cries gentle tears, and in each droplet those who cared to look closely enough could see a portrait of the murdered, the martyred, Stephen Lawrence. Reflecting as it did something of the nation’s sympathy, it was difficult to imagine Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” not winning 1998’s Turner Prize, once Ofili had been shortlisted. The work had its detractors, however. Stallabrass, for one, commented that the work “makes a curious contribution”104 and that “it is unclear, to say the least, what Ofili’s work adds to that righteous chorus [of protestation at the brutality of Stephen Lawrence’s death and the subsequent clamour for justice] except to place himself on the side of the angels.”105 Writing several years after Ofili’s Turner Prize triumph, Jonathan Jones stated:

103

Virginia Button, The Turner Prize (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999): 142. Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 116. 105 Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 116. 104

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When Ofili was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, he chose to exhibit a painting mourning Stephen Lawrence, called No Woman No Cry. I can’t think of any of his contemporaries who could have done this without seeming phoney, and yet with him it is natural, forceful, authoritative.106

Jones does not identify those artists he might feel to be Ofili’s “contemporaries.” Thus, as with many comments about the proximity of artists such as Ofili to other practitioners, Jones’s judgment was ultimately superficial and the references undeveloped. In Jones’s feature on Ofili, the artist was quoted as saying: “The image that would always come up in my mind about Stephen Lawrence was the image of his mother crying. But the painting is not a portrait of Doreen Lawrence. It’s a meditation on No Woman No Cry, which was written, by coincidence, the same year that Stephen Lawrence was born. It still hurts when you see somebody crying, and you feel that you have to ask what’s wrong or if you can do something to help.”107

Referring to this, Jones had written: “There’s a simple human response he sets out to prompt in this painting of a woman crying.”108 It was perhaps such incorrigibly saccharine, sentimental, and politically useless statements that obliged Stallabrass to write that Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” did little “except to place himself on the side of the angels.”109 Referring to the painting in 2010, Ofili said: “I thought it might say something. Not change anything, but maybe say something.”110 But this sentiment was left unelaborated by Ofili. Like Stallabrass, Niru Ratnam also offered a withering appraisal of Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry.” Although there was little to nothing in Ofili or his practice to signify “the streets,” Ratnam suspected that There is also the nagging feeling that the Lawrence murder is being used in the rise of a young artist to public acclaim, and, conversely, as a shorthand way of reminding the audience that Ofili is not going to forget the streets as he becomes more celebrated.111

106

Jonathan Jones, “Paradise Reclaimed,” Guardian Weekend (15 June 2002): 21. Jones, “Paradise Reclaimed,” 21. 108 “Paradise Reclaimed,” 21. 109 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 116. 110 Gary Younge, “A bright new wave.” 27 111 Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 158–59. 107

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Along with the possible exploitation of a personal tragedy and a societal outrage, Ratnam perceived political timidity, as well as a troubling inadequacy and inappropriateness in Ofili’s painting that utilized images of the murdered Black Londoner. In Ratnam’s view, the tears shed by the woman, within each of which was a portrait of Stephen Lawrence, was an unconvincing device. “The series of tiny photographs are Ofili’s first attempt to deal with a social issue head-on and their size perhaps reflects a certain amount of nervousness in so doing.”112 Had Ratnam’s text been written a decade or so later, he might have added, for good measure, that “No Woman No Cry” was Ofili’s first and, to date, last “attempt to deal with a social issue head-on.” That Ratnam sensed a certain ‘nervousness’ on Ofili’s part might not be surprising. Ofili had sought to disabuse people of the notion that he was engaged in any sort of social commentary, no matter how sanitized or tenuous. Ofili had “repeatedly insisted” that “he is “not on some P C mission to save the world.”113 This may have reflected a measured reading of the art world on Ofili’s part. In particular, Ofili may well have been mindful of the art world’s by now pronounced ambivalence towards whatever it perceived to be ‘political correctness’. By the late 1990s there was little if any appetite in the art world for work that was seen as being too socially strident in tone. As Ratnam observed, For whilst addressing racism and discrimination was a key strategy for the earlier generation of black artists, it has become far less frequent as hybridity theory has developed.114

Ratnam’s essay had examined Ofili’s work through what the author perceived and argued to be “the limits of hybridity.” In Ratnam’s view, “No Woman No Cry” was a wholly inappropriate vehicle through which to comment on the murder of Stephen Lawrence: “Irony contingency and ambiguity have little place in the case of a racist murder.”115 Incidentally, Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” was not the only evidence of an intersection, perhaps inevitable, between the visual arts and the Stephen Lawrence affair. Brian Cathcart reported that Lawrence “had ambitions to be an architect and was working part of the time at school and part at Woolwich

112

Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 156. Louisa Buck, “Living Colour,” 125. 114 Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 155. 115 “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 158. 113

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College in pursuit of the qualifications he needed to get into university.”116 As well as Lawrence’s face adorning banners and posters, related to the campaign for justice for the murdered teenager, artists’ representations of Lawrence included Sokari Douglas Camp’s “Cross We Bear” (1999).117 In 2000, the Stephen Lawrence Gallery opened at the University of Greenwich.118 Elsewhere, the Arts Council itself, in what was then the latest consultation document on ‘cultural diversity’, hinted at the importance of one of the legacies of the Stephen Lawrence affair when it noted: “The arts cannot shut its eyes to the strictures of the Stephen Lawrence Report or the legal demands of the new Race Relations (Amendments) Act.”119 Ofili was to be again drawn into Stephen Lawrence’s orbit (or, Stephen Lawrence was to be again drawn into Chris Ofili’s orbit) when Ofili designed the etched windows that adorned the Stephen Lawrence Centre, a building project opened in 2008,

116

Brian Cathcart, “Murder,” in The Case of Stephen Lawrence (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999): 5. 117 Sokari Douglas Camp, “Cross We Bear” (steel, glass, acetate, 90’s air, 70 x 11 x 54 cm, private collection). 118 The website of the University of Greenwich has the following entry on the Stephen Lawrence Gallery: The University of Greenwich founded the Stephen Lawrence Gallery in 2000 following the publication of the Macpherson report into the police handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder enquiry. The gallery was the initiative of Paul Stigant, then dean of the Woolwich faculty at the University of Greenwich, working in close partnership with Stephen’s mother, Doreen Lawrence, who had been a student at the University in 1993, when Stephen was murdered in a racist attack. The Woolwich Campus was the first home of the gallery, where its establishment was assisted by a group of enthusiastic local supporters. One of this group, Kelly O’Reilly, became the first curator, taking the gallery forward to its new site at Maritime Greenwich. While the gallery was set up to remember Stephen Lawrence, the aim has been to take a positive message forward in doing so, by promoting a diverse approach to the representation of visual cultures. — http://www.gre.ac.uk/pr/slg/history (accessed 3 April 2011). 119 [The correct name for the “Stephen Lawrence report” was the Macpherson Report.] Framework for Change: Moves towards a new Cultural Diversity Action Plan (consultation document), The Arts Council of England, 2001: 1. Quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 19.

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very much in the mix of ventures launched in the period of the new millennium and referred to in chapter 2 of this study.120 Like Shonibare before him, Ofili eschewed the occasional didacticism that was not uncommon in the practice of certain Black-British artists. Apparently caricaturing the comprehensive breadth of Black artists’ practice (in which work that referenced explicit social narratives was a pronounced, but by no means major component), Ofili (as mentioned earlier) claimed, A lot of black art that came before was set up to critique the system. I thought that was boring. Basically, you would have to be right all the time. And I was not interested in being right all the time. I wanted to be sincere, and outrageous and friendly and rude and experimental and conventional.121

Notwithstanding Ofili’s assertion that those who articulated, through their practice, Black grievances, Black aspirations, and Black experiences could not “be right all the time,” and had produced “boring” work, Ofili had, in perhaps the most mannered of ways, placed the Black image, in a variety of contrived and pronounced forms, at the heart of his practice. It was this that made Ofili such a fiendishly enigmatic painter. His paintings of the time were crammed with explicit references to Black popular culture, Black music, Black fashion, Black literature, Black people, Black men, Black women, and Black sexuality. Niru Ratnam noted: “everything in his work is a found object of black culture.”122 And yet, these paintings stood absolutely outside of all 120

In her feature article on the mixed fortunes of building projects such as the Stephen Lawrence Centre, Rosie Millard observed: Down the road in Deptford, whoops, another blip on the David Adjaye C V and the sunny Millennium roster, namely the £10 million Stephen Lawrence Centre, which Adjaye built with some hopelessly impractical arty windows (with etchings from Chris Ofili). Cost to the Millennium Fund? £4.2 million. Repeatedly smashed, its glass façade has proved so difficult to replace and insure, that for a long time it was covered in boards. — Millard, “Money for nothing,” 14–15. 121 Gary Younge, “A bright new wave.” 27. 122 Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 155. Perhaps unsurprisingly, such arguably skewed constructions of Blackness were conceivably reflected in Ofili’s comment, at the time of his Turner Prize victory, that “I just hope that when black people look at me they don’t see someone superhuman. They see themselves.” Raekha Prasad, “An exciting splash of colour,” The Guardian (5 December 1998), Saturday Review: 4.

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manifestations of the Black image, as referenced, or brought forth, by generation after generation of Black-British artists. Other painters before Ofili, such as Eugene Palmer, had sought to sidestep didacticism and produce paintings that raised questions rather than provided answers, through an elliptical or oblique use of the Black figure.123 There was, though, in Ofili’s work, precious little raising of questions or providing of answers. Instead, the prevalence, the dominance of “found object[s] of black culture”124 ensured an acute intellectual and emotional disconnect in which painting technique was everything and much of the supposedly ‘Black’ subject-matter became a distraction or an irrelevance. The enigma that was Ofili puzzled Coco Fusco, who suggested: Give all the ruckus [the general tone of much of Ofili’s press coverage] I could certainly understand why Ofili would coyly proffer in interview after interview that he was primarily concerned with “beauty”. But the other paradoxes I found a bit more disheartening and problematic, such as why Ofili would, on the one hand, embrace Black popular cultural icons, borrow from a slew of Black artists or draw on Afrocentric material culture, but still take regular pot shots at unnamed Black British artists by insisting that he (unlike them) was not making “politically correct art.”125

Despite the marked, supposedly playful, and somewhat mannered nature of the found imagery and the pick-and-mix approach to Black popular culture that characterized Ofili’s work, its strongest and most dominant aspect was in many ways not the content itself, but the paintings’ luxurious, indulgent, decorative nature. These were beautiful, crafted, layered affairs in which the somewhat gimmicky elephant dung acted as a foil for what were clearly painstakingly assembled mixed media paintings. Stallabrass described something of Ofili’s technique: Ofili started making quasi-abstract paintings of a very complex, decorative nature, composed of many layers. Typically his paintings will contain, from bottom layer to top, under-painting in sweet colours, collage material from magazines, glitter, drips and slashes of resin, and finally dot painting and dung.126

123

See fn 39, p. 111 above. Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 155. 125 Coco Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom,” 42. 126 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 109. 124

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Predictably, perhaps, the Evening Standard art critic, Brian Sewell, was far from impressed: If anything is to be said for these pictures it is only that all the damned dots and spots are mind-numbing triumphs of idiot industry, and their concentrated tedium is in no way relieved by the random application of pachydermal turds.127

In Ofili’s early paintings, technique was everything and content, such as it was, ultimately counted for little or nothing, beyond its supposed playfulness. In this respect, “No Woman No Cry,” notwithstanding its tendency to mawkishness, was something of an exception, in that it brought together something approaching more substantial content and medium. Only Ofili’s earliest, nonfigurative pictures (which had no references to the sexual organs or other body parts that characterized many of Ofili’s ‘dung’ paintings) such as “Painting With Shit on It,” were as successful.128 Perhaps mindful of the pathological tendency to conflate the figurative Black image, irrespective of its form, with agendas of protest and racial uplift, Ofili was apparently keen, anxious even, to disabuse audiences of the idea that there might be some sort of pronounced social agenda in his work. As pointed out earlier, Louisa Buck, writing a brief feature on Ofili for Vogue magazine at the time of the artist’s Turner Prize nomination, noted that the twenty-nine-year-old “repeatedly insists that he is ‘not on some P C mission to save the world’.”129 Ofili was considerably insulated against the perception that he was no more than, or just, a Black artist. Black artists had come to be 127

Brian Sewell, “Bottom of the *hit parade,” Evening Standard (8 October 1998), Arts: 28–29. Sewell had developed a considerable and fearsome reputation as a sometimes severe and unforgiving critic, whose no-holds-barred demolition of certain exhibitions frequently stood in marked contrast to more favourable reviews of the same shows that appeared in other areas of the (art) press. Several years after Sewell trashed The Other Story, the exhibition’s curator, Rasheed Araeen, was still smarting: “When Brian Sewell reviewed The Other Story exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, 1989–90, which pointed out the gaps in the official history of British art, we were told that Sewell was a right wing journalist and we should therefore not pay too much attention to him.” Araeen, “Gravity & [Dis] Grace,” exhibition review, Third Text 22 (Spring 1993): 97. 128 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). 129 Louisa Buck, “Living Colour,” 125.

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regarded as reduced beings with limited horizons and limited practices. At the time of his Turner Prize victory, a representative from his London gallery stated: “‘ I don’t think Chris wants to class himself as a black artist, as if that’s all he is,’ says Clare Rowe at Victoria Miro, the gallery representing Ofili.”130 In contrast to the generation of artists that had immediately preceded him, Ofili’s route to prominence came not through Black artists’ group exhibitions but through exhibiting alongside artists whose practice reflected yBa sensibilities. Like McQueen’s and Shonibare’s, Ofili’s meteoric rise was aided by his being identified with the yBa generation, who came to dominate all curatorial narratives governing British art practice from the mid-1990s onwards. Cocaine Orgasm was typical of the exhibition company Ofili was keeping in the mid-1990s.131 Curated by the B A N K art group (and shown at Bankspace in 1995, the year in which Ofili was included in The British Art Show 4), the exhibition guide for Cocaine Orgasm listed the artists as follows: Tim Allen, Liz Arnold, B A N K , Lolly Batty, Dave Beech, Simon Bill, David Burrows, John Cussans/Ranu Mukhergee, Stephen Glynn, Matthew Higgs, Gerard Hemsworth, Soren Martinsen, Simon Martin/ Anna Mossman, Marcus Muntean /Adi Rosenblum, Chris Ofili, Janette Parris, Michael Stubbs, John Stezaker, Jessica Voorsanger, Rebecca Warren, Max Wigram, and Andrew Williamson. Opportunities for Black artists to exhibit in such decidedly mixed exhibitions were scarce during the 1980s, so, whether by preference or by circumstance, virtually all Black artists of the 1980s featured in ‘Black’ group exhibitions, either from time to time or on a regular and consistent basis. Exhibitions such as Room at the Top, Depicting History: For Today, Critical Realism, and Art History: Artists Look at Contemporary Britain were rare exceptions, in which Black artists of the 1980s were able to exhibit alongside their white counterparts.132 By the mid- to late 1990s, the Black group exhibi130

Raekha Prasad, “An exciting splash of colour,” 4. Cocaine Orgasm, Bankspace, London, 24 November–24 December 1995. 132 In Room at the Top (Nicola Jacobs Gallery, 6 February–9 March 1985), Sonia Boyce exhibited alongside artists such as Paul Richards and Adrian Wiszniewski; in Critical Realism: Britain in the 1980s Through the Work of 28 Artists, A Nottingham Castle Touring Exhibition, 1987, Sonia Boyce, Sutapa Biswas, Tam Joseph and Shanti Thomas exhibited alongside artists such as Stuart Brisley, Paul Graham, John Yeadon, and Ken Currie; in Depicting History: For Today (Mappin Art Gallery, 6 November– 12 December 1987, and Leeds City Art Gallery, 14 April–29 May 1988, before being 131

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tion had become something of an anachronism. The difficulty that many Black artists had was that the end of the Black group show pretty much signalled the end of these artists’ exhibition opportunities. The baby had well and truly been thrown out with the bath water. But McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare represented a new type of Black artist who, having been given the chance, thrived in mixed exhibitions, or in exhibitions in which they were the only Black artist, or among the very few, selected. In the curatorial route taken to stardom, however, Ofili differed from McQueen and Shonibare in at least one respect. Shonibare had taken part in several Black group exhibitions, from the late 1980s through to the mid1990s. These were Black Art: New Directions at Stoke on Trent Museum and Art Gallery,133 Interrogating Identity, an exhibition of transatlantic dialogues taking place in the U S A and featuring Black artists from both sides of the Atlantic, Transforming the Crown,134 another American initiative, this one aim-

toured to Rochdale Art Gallery; For exhibition details, see fn 88 above, pp. 95–96); and in Art History: Artists Look at Contemporary Britain (A South Bank Centre touring exhibition, 1987), Keith Piper exhibited alongside artists such as Helen Chadwick, Peter de Francia, Paul Graham, and R.B. Kitaj. 133 Black Art: New Directions, Stoke on Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, 18 February–27 March 1989. Chila Kumari Burman, Anthony Daley, Amanda Holiday, Sharon Lutchman, Amrit Row, Yinka Shonibare, Dionne Sparks, and Maud Sulter. 134 Transforming the Crown: African, Asian, and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966– 1996. Catalogue for an exhibition presented by The Caribbean Cultural Center, New York. The exhibition was shown across three venues. 14 October 1997–15 March 1998, The Studio Museum in Harlem; 15 October 1997–15 March 1998, The Bronx Museum of the Arts; 16 October 1997–15 March 1998, Picturing England: The Photographic Narratives of Vanley Burke, a component of Transforming the Crown, The Caribbean Cultural Center. All venues in New York City or Bronx, U S A . 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. It brought together a large number of artists, all of whom had connections to the U K , either by birth, or by residence, either permanent or temporary. It 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 de Souza, Godfried Donkor, Nina Edge, Uzo Egonu, Rotimi Fani–Kayode, Denzil Forrester, Francis, Joy Gregory, Sunil

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ing at presenting a grand historical sweep of Black-British artists’ practice, and, finally, Eclectic Flavour,135 at Light Work, Syracuse University, New York. McQueen, for his part, had exhibited in what was only the second Black artists’ group exhibition to take place at the I C A (and the first in its main galleries), a show called Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, in 1995.136 There were to be no such exhibitions for Ofili, thereby denying gallery-going audiences the direct opportunity to compare his use of paint and the Black image with the work of other Black artists. From the beginning of his career, Ofili gave the impression of being an artist with a clear and deliberate idea of the sorts of artistic company he wanted to keep. Commenting on the E L E P H A N T S H I T advert that Ofili placed in Frieze in May 1993,137 Coco Fusco noted that he “vacillated between using his own name […] and the phrase ‘Elephant Shit,’ opting in the end for the latter. He did this, it seems, as a form of wish fulfilment, a way of putting himself on the level of more famous, white artists.”138 Fusco then quoted Ofili as saying: “When you flick through the adverts pages and you see these big names – Richard Long, Brice Marden, duh duh duh. These big names kind of popping out at you. And I always thought I was a little bit like oh, god it was just sort of like big names. It looks good and I’d like to see Chris Ofili on the page, 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. 135 Eclectic Flavour, Light Work, Syracuse, New York, 15 January–15 March 1998; the exhibition featured Joy Gregory, Roshini Kempadoo, Addela Khan, Franklyn Rodgers, and Yinka Shonibare. See Light Work Contact Sheet 95. 136 Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, I C A , London, An I C A / I N I V A season, 12 May–16 July 1995. Curated by David A. Bailey and Catherine Ugwu. Lyle Ashton Harris, Sonia Boyce, Nina Edge, Ronald Fraser–Munro, Mario Gardner, Edward George and Trevor Mathison, Renée Green, Isaac Julien, Keith Khan, Marcus Kuiland–Nazario, Marc Latamie, Susan Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Sarbjit Samra, and Carmelita Tropicana. 137 Frieze 10 (May 1993): 41. 138 Coco Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom,” 45.

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but I also wanted to say E L E P H A N T S H I T . So I placed an ad that just said 139 E L E P H A N T S H I T .”

By the mid-1990s there were many young artists hoping for a break, to be spotted, to be made famous. Such pools of artists had existed through (art) history, both distant and more recent. What made the late-twentieth-century young hopefuls different from their predecessors was the degree to which process, and industry, seemed to figure less and less in their general approach to art-making, or at least, in much of the art-making that was brought to the public’s attention. In decades gone by, clearly demonstrable technical proficiency and skill were prerequisites to be taken seriously as an artist. As Tony Godfrey noted, For those of us who went to the fourth British Art Show in 1995 and who could remember the first British Art Show in 1979 it was extraordinary to think not only how much the art had changed, but how differently the exhibition was organized, and how dissimilar the artists seemed to be. Five years on and the fifth British Art Show reveals still further changes. There were no balloons or videos in 1979: almost every work was a painting or sculpture. By 1995 it was difficult to define the majority of works as either painting or sculpture.140

Commenting on the transformation of the appearance of the show’s exhibitors from buttoned-down, strait-laced artists of the 1970s to the fresh-faced, fashionable, and light-hearted artists of the 1990s, Godfrey remarked: The artists in the British Art Show 1 belonged to the generation that had grown up during and just after the Second World War and had emerged from art schools when the influence of American-style modernism was at its peak. To be an artist was a vocation, a serious, po-faced business.141

In comparison, the 1990s generation of artists who appeared in the British Art Show 4 were “more glamorous, younger, more knowing, more ironic.”142 Many Black-British artists still clung to, and indeed, valued, process and skill within their practice, thereby further alienating them from an art world 139

Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom,” 45. Tony Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000,” in The British Art Show 5 (exh. cat.; London: National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre, 2000): 20. 141 Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000,” 20. 142 “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000,” 20. 140

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that found itself mesmerized by the yBa generation, for whom process and skill were often an irrelevance. For the generation of artists who had grown up to eschew skill, process, and the by now decidedly old-fashioned labels of ‘painter’, ‘sculptor’, or ‘printmaker’, the challenge was how to get oneself noticed as standing out from a largely indistinguishable mass of similarly trained artists. To be successful, an artist needed an angle, a hook, a gimmick of some sort. Stallabrass, in his book High Art Lite, quoted Martin Maloney, “laying down the conditions of success for young artists: ‘If you haven’t got a clear product, then it’s more difficult’.”143 For Shonibare, the clear product was the use of faux-African fabric, an association Shonibare has maintained, with the sporadic exception of photography projects such as the one undertaken in collaboration with Joy Gregory,144 or the Diary of a Victorian Dandy series.145 The inevitability with which Shonibare utilized his faux-African fabric brought to mind Mercer’s observation of 2003 that in a monocultural value system where the achievement of one signature style is prized above all as a sign of artistic originality, the practice of stylistic variation is regarded as a deficit that detracts from the artist’s authorial identity.146

For Damien Hirst, sharks in formaldehyde and other pickled creatures had worked wonderfully in the task of setting out his art-world stall. For Tracey Emin, seemingly explicit references to her personal life within her practice were the caricatures with which she became fruitfully identified.147 Hew

143

Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 207. Shonibare’s work in Eclectic Flavour (Syracuse NY: Light Work, 15 January–15 March 1998) was a collaboration with Joy Gregory. See Light Work Contact Sheet 95. 145 Diary of a Victorian Dandy was an I N I V A -sponsored series of photographs, inspired by the imagined nineteenth-century life-style of an elegant young Black society gentleman. Shonibare assumed the guise of the gentleman, supported by a cast of actors in supporting roles, within the photographs, of servants, fawning friends, and other characters. The photographs were reproduced on posters that were placed in a number of London underground stations, in 1998. Diary of a Victorian Dandy (1998; five framed c-type prints, 183 x 228.6 cm each; edition of 3. 146 Kobena Mercer, “Frank Bowling’s Map Paintings,” in Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, ed. Gilane Tawadros & Sarah Campbell (London: I N I V A , 2003): 143–44. 147 See discussions of Emin’s work “My Bed” later in this chapter. 144

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Locke had his decorative reworkings of images of the Royal Family.148 For Ofili, his marker of “artistic originality” or his clear product, the thing that got him noticed, was not so much the industry and technical wizardry of his painting style (referred to by Stallabrass as “laborious and complex creations”) as his use of elephant dung – not just one or two balls of it, but copious amounts of the stuff. As Stallabrass bluntly put it, “Shit was Ofili’s logo, and he did what he could to brand both himself and the product he had created.”149 Scatalogically inclined elements of the press delighted in the opportunity to refer, in vulgar terms, to “shit” being “Ofili’s logo.” One gallery listing, at the time of Ofili’s Serpentine exhibition, was “Shit, shit and more shit. Ofili glides effortlessly with his Afro-paintings and amusing takes on popular black culture.”150 Godfrey Worsdale noted in his catalogue essay for Ofili’s important 1998 exhibition (the one for which he secured his Turner Prize nomination): The general mythological construction of Chris Ofili’s identity has been brought about by a colluding media and is based in large part on the widely reported anecdote which tells of his first trip to Africa and his discovery there of elephant dung. The artist joked once that the whole story had been made up.151

Made-up or not, the story was, for a number of years, repeated ad infinitum, albeit with slightly differing twists, and, like Shonibare’s message on the complexity of faux-African batik, came to assume mantra-like proportions. Although Ofili was by no means the first artist to use dung, nor, indeed, the first artist to use elephant dung, his apocryphal story had widespread appeal, particularly to journalists. In the previously mentioned short feature on Ofili that appeared in Vogue magazine, Louisa Buck repeated the anecdote, with certainty and conviction: It was on a British Council trip to Zimbabwe while he was still a student at the Royal College of Art that this Manchester-born son of Nigerian parents first came upon the substance. In an exasperated attempt to make his black148

See Hew Locke’s exhibition catalogue for his show at New Art Gallery, Walsall,

29 April–26 June 2005, which included a significant number of his works featuring

prominent or senior figures associated with the Royal Family. 149 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 108. 150 “Galleries,” The Guardian Guide (17–23 October 1998): 74. 151 Godfrey Worsdale, “The Stereo Type,” in Chris Ofili (exh. cat.; Southampton City Art Gallery & London: Serpentine Gallery, 1998): 1.

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English-urban paintings express all the intensity of nature with a capital N, he threw some dung at the canvas and liked what he saw. Back home in England he gets his raw material from London Zoo and uses it on flamboyant, technicolour paintings that could only have come out of the inner city.152

F I G U R E 16 Chris Ofili photograph by Chris Laurens  Telegraph Media Group Limited

Observers of Ofili’s work could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that Ofili was working his way through the historical portfolio of the American artist David Hammons.153 Hammons has been a major figure in contemporary

152

Louisa Buck, “Living Colour: Chris Ofili’s vivid paintings reveal the psychedelic city experience,” Vogue (January 1999): 125. 153 For a substantial introduction to Hammons’ work, see David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble (exh. cat.; New York: Institute for Contemporary Art, P.S. 1 Museum,

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American art for a number of decades. His early work included some of the most visually charged images of the 1960s and 1970s, convincingly reflecting the social and political turbulence of the period. In time, Hammons moved on to conceptual art, producing some of the most witty, intelligent, and provocative work by any artist of his generation. Hammons was a master of the Duchampian gesture, and his work often appeared quirky, but this was invariably a foil for what were deeply penetrating, perceptive, and caustic images that often commented on the vagaries and anomalies of race in America. Something of an art-world maverick, Hammons nevertheless consistently produced work of startling originality, utilizing all manner of found objects and readymades to produce performance pieces or assemblage sculpture and installations, both gallery- and non-gallery-based. A significant amount of Ofili’s practice had the appearance of copying some of Hammons’ pieces and performances, employing the form but lacking the devastating intellectual content that made Hammons’ work so successful. An insistent questioning lay at the heart of Hammons’ practice, seeking to oblige the viewer or the audience to critically reconsider exchanges, transactions, and pathologies that were seldom thus questioned. In Hammons’ 1983 performance work “Bliz-aard Ball Sale,” the artist situated himself in the midst of New York street traders in order to sell snowballs which were presented and priced according to size. In a society in which the assigning of monetary value and, indeed, monetary exchange was what gave both commodities and people a perception of value or worth, this was piercing work by Hammons. “Bliz-aard Ball Sale” simultaneously acted as a parody of the insidiousness of capitalism and monetarism, the often facile nature of things that get bought and sold – including in art galleries – and the increasing fetishization of convenience and availability as signifiers of enhanced lifestyle. “Bliz-aard Ball Sale” was typical of Hammons’ ability to use the simplest of vehicles to communicate complex and layered ideas. A decade later, Ofili mounted what he called his Shit Sale, first in Berlin in 1993 and subsequently in Brick Lane, London. As Ofili recounted the event, “I laid down a cloth with seven to 10 pieces of dung on it, and put out a sign that said E L E 154 P H A N T S H I T .” 1991). See also Coco Fusco & Christian Haye, “Wreaking havoc on the signified: the art of David Hammons,” Frieze 22 (May 1995): 34–41. 154

Chris Ofili, in an interview by Marcelo Spinelli (London, 23 March 1995), in Brilliant! New Art From London, 67.

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Critics and commentators tended to make only the briefest and most muted of references to the connections between Ofili and Hammons’ work. Rachel Newsome opened a 1998 feature on Ofili with a passing reference to the artist’s having been “Educated on modernism, David Hammons, Jean–Michel Basquiat, William Blake and The Bible.”155 Gen Doy, for example, was able to posit nothing stronger than “Although the U S artist David Hammons had made a series of sculptures of elephant dung in the 1980s, Ofili [was] apparently unaware of this”156 (Hammons’ use of elephant dung in fact dated back to the 1970s, and, in an interview conducted in 1995, Ofili made it clear that not only was he aware of Hammons’ work, but he was ‘sampling’ it.) As Stallabrass commented, .

In Shit Sale (1993), his market stall performances, Ofili says he was ‘sampling’ David Hammons’s similar sale of snowballs and (aside from the issue of influence and self-conscious copying) the use of that word, drawn from rap and dance music, is surely significant.157

Worsdale’s essay, mentioned above, contained the following: Much of Ofili’s work, in his desire to conjoin or translate symbols of nation and culture, is in conception, comparable with the interventions of the American artist David Hammons. His street side Bliz-aard Ball Sale, 1983, where Hammons offered to sell snow balls to an unsuspecting public directly inspired Ofili’s Shit Sale. One of the most resourceful artists, Hammons also centrally situates contemporary black culture in his practice.158

“Amongst visual artists [Hammons] is reasonably located as the most important influence” on what Worsdale calls “Ofili’s ideological position,”159 which Worsdale categorized, by quoting Hammons, as being “all about making sure that the black viewer had a reflection of himself in the work.”160 In

155

Rachel Newsome, “Afro Daze,” 76. Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture, 50. 157 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 113. Ofili’s candid admission to sampling Hammons’ work came in the interview by Marcelo Spinelli (London, 23 March 1995), 67. 158 Godfrey Worsdale, “The Stereo Type,” 4. 159 Worsdale, “The Stereo Type,” 4. 160 “The Stereo Type,” 4. Worsdale footnoted this with: “David Hammons interviewed by Kellie Jones, Discourses: Conversations in Post-Modern Art and Culture (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, Mass and London. M I T Press), 1990, pp. 209–21.” 156

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these references, Worsdale, it could be argued, simultaneously denigrated Hammons and elevated Ofili. There was, after all, precious little in Ofili’s work of this period that in any way sought to make sure that the Black viewer glimpsed a reflection of himself. Notwithstanding his technical mastery, the focus and, indeed, the gist of Ofili’s work seemed to fixate on the superficial, the surface, rather than seeking any genuine or even tacit engagement. Even the balls of elephant dung in his Shit Sale, in contrast to Hammons’ earlier endeavour, were not for sale, rendering Ofili’s ‘sale’ little more than a curious spectacle. It is, though, Ofili’s use of elephant dung that most mines, with no acknowledgement whatsoever, the practice of David Hammons. Hammons’ “Elephant Dung Sculptures” of 1978 were described by Tom Finkelpearl as follows: The elephant dung sculptures stress his African American interest in Africa. To make them, he collects enormous droppings from the circus when it comes to New York. The droppings are then painted with African American colors or shaped into humorous configuations, symbolizing a detached relationship with the legendary African beast.161

Finkelpearl subsequently comments that “the elephant droppings are transformed into beautiful, humorous, politically charged objects.”162 Although the influence, or the copying, was arguably blatant, sympathetic commentators on Ofili’s practice such as Worsdale could speak only of Hammons as “an artist with whom one would associate Chris Ofili.”163 Rather than the potentially counter-productive act of citing Hammons as a major arthistorical influence, Ofili preferred to spread the word that his use of dung began in Africa when, dissatisfied with the paintings he was making there, he picked up some dried cow dung and stuck it on one of his canvases. When he returned to London he took some elephant dung with him and began to include it in his paintings as a counterpoint to his increasingly decorative surfaces.164

161

Tom Finkelpearl, “On the Ideology of Dirt,” in David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble (exh. cat.; New York: Institute for Contemporary Art, P.S. 1 Museum, 1991): 85. 162 Finkelpearl, “On the Ideology of Dirt,” 85. 163 Godfrey Worsdale, “The Stereo Type,” 5. 164 Lynn Macritchie, “Ofili’s Glittering Icons,” Art in America (January 2000): 97.

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The closest that Ofili came to citing Hammons as a major art-historical influence was: For me, Pop art is political in its attempt to be both of the self and the world, as in hip-hop. But I think the term shouldn't only be used to describe Warhol. In that sense, David Hammons is a Pop artist, as were Jean–Michel Basquiat and William Blake. Hammons has been working with existing formats for some time, such as his Marcus Garveyjelly beans and boxes of Harlem dirt; you can relate those to Warhol’s soup cans or Brillo boxes. If you think of Hammons in terms of music, he's managed to go from blues, to jazz, to hiphop. Blues looks inward, jazz turns its back on the audience, but hip-hop speaks directly to it. So perhaps “My Pop” is “My Hip-Hop.”165

Almost without exception, those who reviewed or commented on Ofili’s practice tended to do so without regard for, or reference to, Hammons or any other Black artists such as the American painters Robert Colescott and Michael Ray Charles, with whom fruitful comparisons, about the challenges of recycling or alluding to historically problematic Black imagery, could perhaps be made. As mentioned earlier, Coco Fusco had identified a perhaps curious reticence on Ofili’s part to advance, when interviewed, readings of Black artists’ practice that went significantly beyond a certain superficiality and dismissal. Tellingly, this reticence chimed with a corresponding wilful taciturnity on the part of Ofili’s admirers. Fusco touched on the reductive pathology of ‘political correctness’, as well as the apparently insistent quarantining of Ofili’s art, by most art critics and journalists, in the following terms: The current neoformalist backlash in art criticism that reduces all questions of the relationship between Black art and identity politics to “political correctness” forecloses the possibility of contextualizing Ofili’s practice as part of a history of aesthetic inquiry by Black artists into blackness’s relation to modernity and to modernism. With the exception of an occasional cursory reference to Ofili’s indebtedness to David Hammons, who made elephant dung sculptures in the 70s, conducted a street sale (of snowballs rather than shit) as art in the early 80s, and who has spent thirty years elaborating a pun-filled conceptualist riff on Black creativity and its relation with dirt and other abject substances, many of the critics and curators supporting Ofili’s work detach his artistic project from its rootedness in actual Black artistic discourses.166

165

Chris Ofili: “My Pop,” as told to Donna De Salvo, Artforum International (October 2004): 58. 166 Coco Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom,” 45.

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Instead, Ofili seemed to function, for a number of said reviewers or commentators almost as an introduction to, and as Year Zero for, Black artists. The patently absurd assertion by Adrian Searle, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, that “Until the 90s, there were hardly any black students at British art colleges,”167 is a case in point. While only a detailed and comprehensive study would establish patterns of British art-school enrolment for students from African, Caribbean or Asian backgrounds, it is nevertheless correct to say that Black art students have had a notable and noticeable presence in the country’s art schools for decades. The substantial amount of exhibition activity generated in Britain during the 1980s was in large measure the work of Black art students or Black art-school graduates. In one of the footnotes to her reappraisal of The Other Story exhibition, Jean Fisher made mention of the art-school training of an earlier generation of Black artists who had come to Britain in the postwar years, from various parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia: A few examples of where The Other Story participants studied: Aubrey Williams (born 1926 Guyana), St Martin’s School of Art; Donald Locke (born 1930, Guyana), Bath Academy of Art and Edinburgh University; Uzo Egonu (born 1931, Nigeria), Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts; Frank Bowling (born 1936, Guyana), Royal College of Art; Avtarjeet Dhanjal (born 1939, Punjab), St Martin’s School of Art.168

Searle was an effusive admirer of Ofili for a number of years, but his admiration did not translate into an acknowledgement of, or particular respect for, the wider history of Black artists in Britain. More than a decade before Searle made his references to the tally of Black art students being boosted by Ofili, Searle had made a similar outlandish claim about Ofili’s ability to boost Black art-gallery audiences. “Chris Ofili has proved popular with a black audience which, it is often assumed, feels alienated by contemporary art.”169 A decade after his “Shit Sale,” Ofili again ‘sampled’ a Hammons work; this time Hammons’ U S flag, rendered in red, black, and green, the colours of the flag of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and 167

Adrian Searle, “Chris Ofili heads into the shadows,” 21. Jean Fisher, “The Other Story and the Past Imperfect,” Tate Papers 12 (Autumn 2009), https://www.tateetc.com/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/09autumn/fisher.shtm (accessed 3 April 2011). Uncertain website. 169 Adrian Searle, “Review,” The Guardian (2 December 1998): 3, quoted in Virginia Button, The Turner Prize (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999): 142. 168

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African Communities League, which was particularly active in the U S A and other parts of the world during the early-twentieth century. Hammons’ “African American Flag” was shown in the U K as part of a Kettle’s Yard Cambridge touring exhibition in 1990.170 Ofili’s own red, black, and green “Union Black,” as he called it, was flown at the British Pavilion during the 2003 Venice Biennale, at which Ofili represented Britain. Here, too, Ofili seemed to take his cue directly from Hammons. Some years earlier, re-imagined constructions of nation and nationality were prominent in Hammons’ flag, as it flew over the imperial architecture of the Salzburger Kunstverein in 1995. A review of Hammons’ exhibition at the venue opened thus: David Hammons’ African-American version of the ‘Stars and Stripes’ – a green, black, and red flag – billowed over the portal of the Salzburger Kunstverein, lending the building the air of an embassy.171

In a conversation for Audio Arts magazine, Ofili commented on the symbolism of his flag, while refraining from citing his flag’s rather obvious predecessor: It’s called the Union Black. It’s a flag that describes what I am, which is of African heritage but born and raised in Britain. The Union Jack was used as a kind representation of white power and a kind of anti anything that isn’t white in Britain. Red, black and green, the colour scheme that was put together by Marcus Garvi [sic] in the twenties, red represented the blood of Africans that was spilt over green land, and black represented the skin. So the Union Black was basically a synthesis of the Union Jack flag with the red, black and green colour scheme.172

As was the case for the most successful of the yBa coterie, in what seemed like no time at all Ofili had acquired a tangible celebrity status, the trappings

170 Re-Writing History, featuring David Hammons, Alfredo Jaar, Sarkis, Francesc Torres, a touring exhibition curated by Anna Harding and Charles Esche and originating at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 1990. Hammons’ flag is now in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, catalogued as: “African-American Flag, David Hammons (American, born 1943), 1990. Dyed cotton, 142.2 x 223.5 cm.” 171 Christian Kravagna, “David Hammons: Salzburger Kunstverein / Christine König Galerie,” Artforum International (January 1996): 93. 172 http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/audioarts/cd4_7_transcript.htm (accessed 3 April 2011).

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of which included a documentary on him broadcast on television,173 a medium which had previously done little to nothing in the way of substantial focus on a Black-British artist. As with other artists alongside him, some of Ofili’s press and media coverage presupposed an understanding of, or familiarity with, Ofili’s practice, thereby enabling other aspects of his life to be brought to public attention. The Guardian (for which Ofili admirers, the art critics Jonathan Jones and Adrian Searle, wrote) was an enthusiastic supporter of Ofili, providing consistent coverage on him and his work over an extended period of time. Going beyond his art practice, the Guardian’s Weekend magazine of 25 November 2000 included a life-style and interior decoration feature that focused, in part, on Ofili’s London home, which had been given an architectural makeover.174 Within two years of leaving Goldsmiths College as Steven McQueen,175 Steve McQueen was in a group exhibition at the I C A , then one of London’s 173

Chris Ofili, dir., Sarah Wason, co-producer Augustus Casely–Hayford (L W T Programme, U K 1998). Channel 4 screened Sampled, described as “Three hours on British talents who are said to personify nineties cool, starting with artist Chris Ofili” (The Guardian Guide [19–25 September 1998]: 86). 174 Jane Withers, “Within These Walls,” Guardian Weekend (25 November 2000): 59–66. Throughout the piece, and indeed, on the cover of the magazine, Ofili’s name was consistently mis-spelt as Offili, an error for which the magazine apologized, in a subsequent issue of Guardian Weekend. The Guardian Weekend magazine went on to produce substantial features on Ofili in two 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 Saturday feature, written by Jonathan Jones, was titled “Paradise Reclaimed,” Guardian Weekend (15 June 2002): 18–23, 95. The second, by Gary Younge, was a Saturday feature titled “A bright new wave,” with the follow-up text “Been There Dung That – Why did Chris Ofili turn his back on art? And why make a comeback now?” Guardian Weekend (16 January 2010): 24–27. 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: Charlotte Higgins, “In retrospect, Turner prize winner Ofili has gone from urban jungle to Caribbean vision,” The Guardian (26 January 2010): 7. For good measure, the Guardian G2 supplement of the same issue included a comment piece on Ofili, written by the 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 (26 January 2010), G2: 19–21. 175 Goldsmiths B.A. Fine Art Nineteen 93 catalogue.

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most prestigious visual-arts venues.176 Offering a perhaps surprisingly ‘racialized’ framing of McQueen and his work, Richard Cork introduced British Art Show 4 audiences to the young filmmaker’s work. With his comments about “the notion of a threatening black aggressor,” the text arguably revealed more about Cork himself than about McQueen’s practice: Steve McQueen explores his fragmented preoccupations as a young black artist through the medium of film. His work recently appeared in an international exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts called Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire. The show took its cue from the writings of the Martinique-born Frantz Fanon whose book, Black Skins, White Masks, 1952, proved a widely influential study of colonialism and its traumatic psychological legacy. Like Fanon, McQueen refuses to accept stereotyped attitudes. ‘Look, a Negro! . . . Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!’ wrote Fanon, dissecting the insidious blend of voyeurism and terror which so fanned colonial prejudice. McQueen’s Bear, 1993 plays with the notion of a threatening black aggressor, but soon replaces it with a far more stimulating alternative.177

By 1997, McQueen’s career was already being described as “formidable,”178 and with good reason. He had already been included in a number of important exhibitions and had shown work in a number of prestigious galleries, and greater success clearly lay ahead. Remarkably, McQueen’s career was launched on the back of barely a half-hour’s worth of 16mm film and video projects. But such was the singular and arresting quality of McQueen’s work, that curators, gallery directors, and art critics all took notice of it. In a piece written towards the end of 1997 for a New York arts publication, Michael Rush, clearly impressed, wrote: Steve McQueen, a twenty-eight-year-old Black British media artist, has already forged a formidable career with less than thirty minutes worth of video and films. This year alone he has had solo exhibitions at documenta X, the Johannesburg Biennale, the Stedelijk Museum, Marian Goodman Gallery, and now at the estimable Projects Room at MoMA.179 176

Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, I C A , London, An I C A / I N I V A season, 12 May–16 July 1995. Curated by David A. Bailey and Catherine Ugwu. 177 Richard Cork, “Injury Time,” in The British Art Show 4 (exh. cat.; London: National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre, 1995): 30. 178 Michael Rush, “Deadpan Appropriation,” Review (15 December 1997): 1. 179 Rush, “Deadpan Appropriation,” 1.

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In the rest of the feature, Rush proceeded to answer his own question, “Why all the fuss?”180 Time and time again, critics found themselves voicing surprise at the speed with which McQueen established himself. An Artforum review, again of late 1997, began: I liked Steve McQueen’s first New York show, and then I found that he has an exhibition history rather fatter than either the thin number of years he has been working or the slender body of art he has made.181

Glowing reviews and press adulation followed McQueen from his earliest work onwards. In little more than a decade and a half of his graduating from Goldsmiths, Art Review magazine summarized McQueen’s singular achievements, which included representing Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale: “The only person on the planet to have been awarded both the Turner Prize and the Camera d’Or (for best first feature at the Cannes film festival).”182 The magazine ran a feature on the artist, whose portraits appeared on the cover of the issue in question. Perhaps not surprisingly – and perhaps with good reason – the cover introduced McQueen as “The Most Relevant Artist in Britain.” The Art Review’s simple but emphatic judgment mirrored a similar verdict on Chris Ofili offered by the Telegraph Magazine, which had introduced a feature on Ofili that declared him to be the Chosen One.183 Shonibare had his faux-African fabric, Ofili had his elephant dung. What got McQueen noticed was his evident seriousness and the depth of his practice and vision. His film work acted as something of an antidote to the knowing, ironic, supposedly self-deprecating, postmodern frivolity and froth that was, even then, starting to grate and wear a little thin in some of the work of the yBa generation. McQueen’s films, such as his 1995 works Bear and Five Easy Pieces and his 1997 work Deadpan, came as a blessed relief to those looking for substance. As Chris Townsend noted, The best artists of the new generation are distinguished by a seriousness and by a thoughtfulness about their work that has not been a significant feature of British art for many years. (The decision to award the 1999 Turner Prize to

180 181

Rush, “Deadpan Appropriation,” 1. David Frankel, “Openings: Steve McQueen,” Artforum 36.3 (November 1997):

102. 182

“Feature: Steve McQueen,” Art Review (Summer 2009): 74 Richard Dorment, “The chosen one,” Telegraph Magazine (14 June 20003: 40–45. 183

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Steve McQueen for his self-reflexive videos suggests an early manifestation of this return to art as a serious topic, where concentrated attention is paid to the content and rhetorical forms of the art work, rather than to excess publicity or media interest in the artist.).184

McQueen’s characterization as a ‘serious’ artist may have been a device to differentiate him from the other Black Turner Prize winner of the period, Chris Ofili. The body of paintings for which Ofili had secured his nomination included titles such as “Popcorn Tits,” “Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars,” and “Seven Bitches Tossing Their Pussies Before the Divine Dung.” Such titles reflected a contrived and grating hilarity which contrasted markedly and, some might say, poorly with McQueen’s framing as an assiduous and visionary technician, not given to frivolity and mirth. Notwithstanding the arguably clumsy ways in which Cork had earlier framed McQueen’s practice, having linked it to “the notion of a threatening black aggressor,”185 it appeared that McQueen had found the Holy Grail for which many Black artists had searched since time immemorial. The thing that large numbers of Black artists had earnestly pursued or sought after was what one might call a largely non-racial reading of the Black image. In a world in which the white image stood for the general and the Black image stood for the racially or ethnically or culturally specific, McQueen’s work seemed to challenge this debilitating and constraining pathology. McQueen seemed able to use, or construct, the Black image in ways that, while not exactly transcending race, or difference, were able to wrest it free of the limited range of readings that historically seemed to plague Blackness. To be sure, it was difficult to characterize or caricature McQueen’s work according to explicitly racial narratives, even though the Black image (or perhaps, more correctly, images of Black people) was often central to the crafted, filmic narratives and sequences of his earlier work. McQueen may have been Black and a filmmaker, but he most assuredly was not a ‘Black filmmaker’ in the widely perceived sense of the label. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Others before him may have been Black, and artists, but, almost irrespective of their practice or their intentions, they would, whether they liked it or not, invariably find themselves caricatured or categorized as Black artists. McQueen seemed able to break that coupling of the words ‘Black’ and ‘artist’, even as his camera lens at this time had the Black image as its unswerving focus. In 184 185

Chris Townsend, New Art From London (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006): 18. Richard Cork, “Injury Time,” 30.

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this sense, McQueen was one of a very small number of “gifted artists of colour”186 that England, and the world beyond, was now ready for. Earlier generations of Black artists who utilized the Black image in a range of social narratives had developed mechanisms for dealing with art-world indifference or creating platforms of visibility for their work. These included Black exhibitions and other self-initiated visual-arts projects. As time went by, a number of these Black artists found sporadic exposure through projects and initiatives that had explicit racial-uplift or anti-racist agendas. But other Black artists, whose practice eschewed pronounced or didactic Black symbolism, also fell victim to the art-world pathology of detecting racial narratives – in artist or in art – where such narratives did not necessarily exist. Most damning of all, generations of Black painters whose practice was characterized by notably non-figurative elements similarly found themselves kept at arm’s length by an art world largely unconvinced by or uninterested in their practice. Then along came the 1990s, and along came McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare. Of the three, it is perhaps McQueen who has been most feted for the quality of his work, its vision and its depth. Rush was not alone in observing that McQueen was “an assured craftsman for whom simple, often straight-on, bold camera shots can enact an entire scenario in less than five minutes,”187 and that “McQueen’s characters to date are powerful, living sculptures, at once enigmatic, erotic, and solitary.”188 It was clear that McQueen was a new type of Black artist, one for whom the substantial exhibitions and other recognition just kept stacking up. Significantly, as mentioned earlier, McQueen became (in 1999) the first BlackBritish artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London.189 Nearly a decade and a half earlier, Lubaina Himid had occupied the I C A concourse gallery (in effect, corridor walls) and an upper

186

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Frank Bowling alleges that he was told, upon enquiring as to why he had apparently been overlooked for inclusion in an important London group exhibition in the early 1960s, “England is not yet ready for a gifted artist of colour.” 187 Michael Rush, “Deadpan Appropriation,” 1. 188 Rush, “Deadpan Appropriation,” 5. 189 Steve McQueen (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 30 January–21 March 1999). The exhibition also showed at the Kunsthalle, Zürich, 12 June–15 August 1999. It was for this exhibition that McQueen was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999.

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room with her Thin Black Line exhibition.190 This was a critically well-received show that nevertheless took place in something of a marginal and marginalized space, albeit at a prestigious central London venue. A decade on, and David A. Bailey, working with Catherine Ugwu, presented Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference & Desire in the main gallery spaces of the I C A . This was the first time in the venue’s history that it had given itself over to such an exhibition, featuring as it did Caribbean-born, Black-British, and AfricanAmerican practitioners. This was the exhibition referenced by Richard Cork in his British Art Show 4 notes on Steve McQueen. Within a couple of years of Mirage, McQueen made a triumphant return to the I C A , occupying its gallery spaces with a widely celebrated exhibition. It was this exhibition, and his show of the same year at the Kunsthalle, Zürich that gained McQueen his Turner Prize nomination and subsequent award.191 In securing his perhaps improbable Turner Prize victory, McQueen may well have been aided by a backlash against Tracey Emin’s infamous bed. Emin’s work “My Bed” was a re-creation of her unmade and untidied bed, during what the artist had cited as a difficult period in her life. Audiences were not spared (indeed, were gratuitously served up) stained sheets, unlaundered panties, and unvarnished evidence of copious bed-bound cigarette and alcohol consumption. When the work was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, alongside contributions by Steve McQueen, Steven Pippin, and Jane and Louise Wilson, it seemed as if that bed was all the media, oscillating between being appalled and fascinated in equal measure, could write about. Evocative of the confessional culture that seemed in the ascendancy, “My Bed” both solicited and required a certain amount of prurience on the part of gallery audiences, beyond which it seemed difficult for these audiences and art critics to move. In this context, the other Turner Prize submissions (while being overlooked or ignored by audiences that couldn’t get enough of Emin’s bed, or at least wanted to see for themselves what all the fuss was about) looked decidedly serious or earnest. It was in some ways no surprise when judges chose not to reward what had come to be regarded as a mannered attempt to court controversy and indulge prurience. Instead, these judges opted for gravitas and industry, in the form of McQueen. But £20,000, or some such sum, aside, Emin was, arguably, the clear winner. It was her work, or her failure to win the Turner Prize, that framed the 190 191

See fn 56, p. xlii above. The Turner Prize 1999 (exh. cat.; London: Tate Publishing, 1999).

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headlines following the announcement of McQueen as the winner. “Video artist turfs Turner favourite out of bed,”192 “McQueen’s victory turns focus away from controversy of Tracey Emin’s bed,”193 “Turner Prize stays out of Tracey’s bed,” and, in other editions of the same paper “No Turner, but Tracey’s already cleaned up,”194 “Steve McQueen beats that bed to win Turner,”195 and “Turner Prize for second favourite,”196 “A vote against sensationalism, Britart and public opinion,”197 etc. Such were the headlines that framed McQueen as a runner-up who managed to beat the presumed and odds-on favourite. As the Independent noted, “victory for McQueen represents victory for the serious, the sensible, the responsible.”198 Overlooking, or setting to one side, the argument that McQueen, having graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1993, was and always had been, to some extent, associated with the yBa grouping, the Independent continued that McQueen’s victory was “a vote against sensationalism and the Young British Artist phenomenon.”199 In unnecessarily lurid tones, Fiachra Gibbons began her Guardian Arts piece not with McQueen, the Turner Prize winner, but with the following: Tracey Emin has not won the Turner Prize. My Bed, the single divan adorned with her menstrual knickers and several rather unsavoury stains, may have drawn record crowds and the world’s media to the Tate gallery but it did not impress the judges enough. They plumbed for Steve McQueen – deeply serious, sometimes obtuse…200

Gibbons added: 192 Nigel Reynolds, “Video artist turfs Turner favourite out of bed,” Daily Telegraph (1 December 1999): 11. 193 Adrian Searle, “McQueen’s victory turns focus away from controversy of Tracey Emin’s bed,” The Guardian (1 December 1999): 15. 194 Dalya Alberge, “Turner Prize stays out of Tracey’s bed / No Turner, but Tracey’s already cleaned up,” The Times (1 December 1999): 5. 195 David Lister, “Steve McQueen beats that bed to win Turner,” The Independent (1 December 1999): 1. 196 “Turner Prize for second favourite,” The Herald (1 December 1999): 10. 197 Tom Lubbock, “A vote against sensationalism, Britart and public opinion,” The Independent (1 December 1999): 5. 198 Lubbock, “A vote against sensationalism.” 199 Lubbock, “A vote against sensationalism.” 200 Fiachra Gibbons, “Deadpan McQueen takes the Turner,” The Guardian (1 December 1999): 1.

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Emin, who made no secret of her desire to win, can console herself with the fact that the surreal circus her work sparked […] gained her publicity which the £21,000 prize money would never buy.201

In a gesture that resounded with a degree of pathos extended to the also-rans, Gibbons concluded her sizeable account with the afterthought, “The other shortlisted artists were Steve Pippin and the twins Jane and Louise Wilson.”202 The best part of a decade later, the Turner Prize of 1999 was still being discussed in terms of Emin, rather than McQueen. Emin’s not winning the Turner was considered more of a story than the winning of the prize itself,

F I G U R E 17 Goddard cartoon on Tracey Emin, Private Eye (15–21 November 1999)  Clive Goddard

by McQueen. A magazine feature of 2007 included short pieces on each of the prize’s winners to date. The section on McQueen was introduced thus: This was the Turner prize remembered for the artist who didn’t win: Tracey Emin. The public and press reaction to her notorious bed, with its soiled sheets and bloody knickers, was delight and horror in equal measure. The headline in the Mirror was “Turnoff Prize,” but Emin boasted of making 201 202

Gibbons, “Deadpan McQueen takes the Turner.” “Deadpan McQueen takes the Turner.”

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enough money to pack up and retire. The prize in fact went to the art world’s favourite, Steve McQueen.203

One of McQueen’s most revealing interviews so far was one conducted by Patricia Bickers, the editor of Art Monthly, towards the end of 1996.204 In McQueen’s many interviews for magazines and newspapers, he frequently came across as prickly. True to type, a certain defensiveness seemed to characterize his exchanges with Bickers. In the Art Monthly transcript, McQueen at times sounded both dismissive of his earlier involvement in the Mirage exhibition and defensive about any suggestion that he might in any way represent a coupling of the words ‘Black’ and ‘artist’. Bickers’ assertions about or musings on the ways in which McQueen’s work can be read seemed reasonable and perceptive. But in his somewhat defensive retorts or responses, McQueen revealed himself to be particularly sensitive to readings of himself or his practice that, as he might see it, were too quick to accentuate a racial element or other ideas of which he was intolerant or dismissive. Referring to one of McQueen’s pieces, Just Above My Head, Bickers suggests: “Most obviously it deals with questions of visibility. The fact that you are black and that you are both the artist and the subject of the film, inevitably gives it an extra edge.”205 McQueen’s response is: When I walk into the street or go to the toilet, I don’t think of myself as being black. Of course other people think of me as being black when I walk into a pub. Obviously being black is part of me, like being a woman is part of you. I just want to make work. People try to contain things by putting them into categories. I don’t.206

Elsewhere in the interview, Bickers seeks to invoke Rasheed Araeen and his collection of texts published the mid-1980s, Making Myself Visible, as a

203

Charlotte Higgins, “Who’s Shocking Now,” Guardian Weekend (8 September

2007): 30. 204

Patricia Bickers, interview with Steve McQueen, Art Monthly 202 (December 1996–January 1997), repr. in Talking Art: Interviews with Artists Since 1976, ed. Patricia Bickers & Andrew Wilson, foreword by Iwona Blazwick (New York: Art Monthly / Ridinghouse, 2007): 505–11. 205 Patricia Bickers, interview with Steve McQueen, in Talking Art, ed. Bickers & Wilson, 509. 206 Patricia Bickers, interview with Steve McQueen, in Talking Art, ed. Bickers & Wilson, 509.

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means of reading issues of visibility in McQueen’s practice.207 Notwithstanding her perhaps troubling use of the pronoun “we,” Bickers posits: For an older generation of black and female artists, visibility was a fundamental issue. […] In Just Above My Head […] we gasp as your head disappears out of the bottom of the frame, briefly lost from view, precisely because we are able to identify with the subject regardless of race, colour, or gender.208

In a passing comment that comes closest to McQueen’s acknowledging the struggles of earlier generations of Black artists in Britain, he responds: “I’m in the position I am because of what other people have done and I’m grateful, for sure.”209 Such a sentiment stood in marked contrast to that expressed some years later by Chris Ofili, who, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, had written off as “boring” much of what previous generations of Black artists had been producing, added to which, Ofili saw their work as reflecting or embodying a dubious self-righteousness: “A lot of black art that came before was set up to critique the system. I thought that was boring. Basically, you would have to be right all the time.”210 After this grudging expression of gratitude, McQueen nevertheless proceeded to distance himself from Bickers’ line of thought and any pronounced racial narratives that might be contained therein. “I am black, yes, I’m British as well, But as Miles Davis said ‘So what?’” 211 McQueen’s palpable coolness towards the idea that proximity could be established between himself and other Black-British artists stood in marked contrast to a quite breathless enthusiasm that a younger McQueen – 207

Rasheed Araeen, Making Myself Visible (London: Kala Press, 1984). Patricia Bickers, interview with Steve McQueen, in Talking Art, ed. Bickers & Wilson, 510. The troubling use of pronouns such as ‘we’ or ‘you’ was a consistent characteristic of press coverage relating to artists such as McQueen and Ofili, and revealed no end of troubling assumptions about art, galleries, audiences, and readerships. Typical in this regard was the final sentence of a feature on Chris Ofili that appeared in Modern Painters 11.3 (Autumn 1998): 41–42. The piece, written by Martin Maloney and titled “Dung & Glitter,” ended with “Be warned; the ‘black experience’ you crave might not be as authentic as you think!” 209 Patricia Bickers, interview with Steve McQueen, in Talking Art, ed. Bickers & Wilson, 510. 210 Gary Younge, “A bright new wave,” Guardian Weekend (16 January 2010): 27. 211 Patricia Bickers, interview with Steve McQueen, in Talking Art, ed. Bickers & Wilson, 510. McQueen is alluding to the supremely austere, shoulder-shrugging opening track on Miles Davis’s classic 1959 album Kind of Blue. 208

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then a student at Goldsmiths – expressed for the work of Claudette Johnson. Johnson, a contemporary of Sonia Boyce, was known and admired for her large, empathetic, and engaging portraits of Black women, frequently executed in charcoal or oil pastel. Johnson had an exhibition at the Black-Art Gallery in 1992212 and it was this body of work, visited and reviewed by McQueen, which had no hint of the perhaps studious ambivalence to the notion of the Black artist that seemed to characterize a number of McQueen’s subsequent interviews. Furthermore, McQueen’s feature on Johnson appeared in a ‘grassroots’ community newspaper, African Peoples Review, which described itself as “A Monthly Journal of Reviews of Publications and the Creative Arts of Peoples of African Descent.” McQueen wrote: On walking into the Black Art Gallery in Finsbury Park, London, I was amazed to see images of black women staring at me from all angles – some looking at me, some through me, and some past me. This reminded me of a photograph of my grandfather on the wall of my grandmother’s house when I was a child. Whenever I tried to hide from the glance of my grandfather’s gaze, it always found me! The works one sees in the exhibition, In this Skin, are overwhelmingly arresting. They invite, and envelope the viewer to mediate in the enquiring and exploratory space of Johnson’s immensely imaginative and absorbing mind. Claudette Johnson’s tools are more than just paper and charcoal. What she does is to bring out the soul, sensuality, dignity, and spirituality of the black woman as she crafts away on drawing board, and far beyond….213

Towards the end of the piece – part of which was an interview McQueen conducted with Johnson – McQueen wrote: Claudette Johnson’s art is rooted in her African heritage. Her talent is as powerful as it is obvious. We can only guess with delightful anticipation what Johnson has in stock for us all when next her works are exhibited.214

Within five years, though, seemingly seeking to categorize issues such as race and nationality as “crap,” McQueen asserted that a tangible and credible

212

In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson, the Black-Art Gallery, 27 May–

11 July 1992. 213 Steven McQueen, “In This Skin: featuring Claudette Johnson,” African Peoples Review (August 1992): 5. 214 McQueen, “In This Skin: featuring Claudette Johnson,” 5.

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desire, widely shared, was that of wanting “people to think beyond race.”215 Given that a number of Black artists of the 1980s and thereafter had sought, through their practice, to encourage or, indeed, compel viewers and audiences to think about, and confront, issues of race, McQueen’s comment constituted a veritable volte-face. In this altered political and cultural order, audiences were required to think beyond, and not about race: “Just like everyone else I want people to think beyond race, nationality and all that kind of crap.”216 In “Oh My God!” (a three-way conversation), McQueen stated bluntly: The only reason I did Mirage was because no one would give me a show other than an all black show. Now I’m in a situation where (I am not saying I can choose) but I don’t have to do shows I don’t want to.217

Three years later, despite multiple successes, McQueen still seemed anxious to deflect the notion that his skin colour might be anything more than incidental to his practice. In a substantial interview with the Guardian’s Sabine Durrant, she noted: “He is often described as a black artist, which irritates him. ‘I’m not interested in this, this, this, or this,’ he says, pointing to his skin, his nose, his lips, his hair,”218 before once again evoking Miles Davis. In previous decades, newspaper or magazine features on Black artists (which were, without exception, decidedly modest affairs compared to the press secured by McQueen et al.) tended to be earnest and worthy in their tone. The artist’s racial identity and/or the artist’s practice were discussed in high-minded and meritorious terms. But by the mid- to late 1990s, newspapers such as the Guardian had by and large dispensed with such approaches and had adopted, instead, the approach and structure of the cele215

Steve McQueen, “Oh My God! Some notes from a conversation with Iwona Blazwick, Jaki Irvine and Steve McQueen,” Make 74 (February–March 1997): 7. 216 McQueen, “Oh My God! Some notes from a conversation with Iwona Blazwick, Jaki Irvine and Steve McQueen.” 217 McQueen, “Oh My God! Some notes from a conversation with Iwona Blazwick, Jaki Irvine and Steve McQueen.” McQueen’s references to “race, nationality and all that kind of crap” brought to mind the sentiment expressed by Lenny Henry, and reported by his biographer: “ ‘ I don’t want to be thought of as a black comedian. I’m a British comedian who happens to be black,’ he was quoted as saying. ‘I don’t go on about the hardships of being black and all that rubbish. I’m proud to be black – but I’m also proud to be British’.” Jonathan Margolis, Lenny Henry: A Biography, 66–67. 218 “The Sabine Durrant Interview: Steve McQueen: Driven to Abstraction,” The Guardian (22 November 1999): 5.

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brity interview in their features on artists. As mentioned earlier, such an approach presupposed an understanding of, or familiarity with, the artist’s practice on the part of the readership, thereby enabling other aspects of the artist’s life to be brought to the fore. Thus, in Durrant’s interview we learn that McQueen can, when at home in Amsterdam, “walk down the street in [his] flipflops without anybody caring.”219 Durrant also lets the reader know that McQueen “tries to avoid international travel because it mucks up his digestive system.”220 McQueen’s arguably disparaging comments on his participation in Mirage revealed not only the dominant, troubling pathologies of race as regards ‘Black’ exhibitions but also the extent to which the Black exhibition had fallen into seemingly irreversible disrepute. The all-Black exhibition signified ghettoization, marginality, and the sub-standard. ‘Black’ exhibitions were for artists with no other options. On the other hand, the ‘all-white’ exhibition, though perhaps equally revealing of racial pathologies, signified the mainstream and the standard by which all other exhibitions were to be judged. The art world had perhaps pulled off the most audacious and unlikely of confidence tricks: constructing the ‘white’ exhibition, not as something from which Black artists were excluded, but as something that set the standard to which individual Black artists must aspire to meet if they were to significantly avoid looking marginalized. Seeking out, or accepting, the company of other Black artists now marked a Black artist as peripheral and backward-looking. On the other hand, seeking out, or aspiring to, the company of white artists marked Black artists as aspirational, serious about their career, and in control. McQueen’s statement that “Now I’m in a situation where (I am not saying I can choose) but I don’t have to do shows I don’t want to” reflected a freedom from race by association.221 Such a strategy and, indeed, such a mind-set lay beyond the reach of all but a small number of Black artists of the previous generation. With the release of his critically acclaimed debut feature film Hunger in 2008, McQueen was finally able to secure press coverage that broke free of all references to his being Black. In reading the press attention secured by Black-British artists over the decades, various racial pathologies are, at dif219

“The Sabine Durrant Interview,” 4. “The Sabine Durrant Interview,” 5. 221 Steve McQueen, “Oh My God! Some notes from a conversation with Iwona Blazwick, Jaki Irvine and Steve McQueen.” 220

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ferent times, clearly discernible. Artists of the pre- and postwar generations, from countries of the Empire or Commonwealth, were invariably regarded

F I G U R E 18 Steve McQueen photograph by Martin Pope  Telegraph Media Group Limited

as not British, and thus occasionally found themselves and their work being appraised outside of, or away from, the larger body of white British artists. Artists such as Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling were the recipients of important exhibition opportunities in the early to mid-1960s,222 and, episodes of art-world indifference and blunt exclusion aside, their work was 222 For example, both of these artists had several important exhibitions at Grabowski Gallery in London in the early 1960s, including Frank Bowling and Derek Boshier, Image in Revolt, 5 October–3 November, 1962; Aubrey Williams, 3–24 January, 1963.

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politely or enthusiastically received. Although the reception these artists secured was, on occasion, said to take the form of “critical acclaim,”223 it is noteworthy that one of the most significant comments that their work attracted was the unattributed remark referred to by Araeen and used at the start of this chapter: “England is not yet ready for a gifted artist of colour.”224 When a new generation of Black artists emerged and became active in the early to mid-1980s, their work was, almost without exception, caricatured as ‘angry’.225 While a great deal of work from this period reflected a range of explicitly social and political narratives, Black artists’ practice of the 1980s was by no means exclusively so. Nevertheless, when facing a Black image, (or, indeed, images created by a Black artist), the white critic invariably, inevitably, reached for the adjective ‘angry’ as a means of describing the artists and their work. In part born of laziness, the pathology by which Black artists’ work, by motivation, content, or display, was described as ‘angry’ was an enduring one. Making mention of Keith Piper’s work from 1981, “13 Killed,” about the victims of the New Cross Massacre, briefly discussed in the previous chapter, Julian Stallabrass wrote: “Piper’s message is clear and angry”226 – this nearly a decade and a half after Waldemar Januszczak had titled his Guardian review of Himid’s Thin Black Line exhibition “Anger at hand”227 and had repeatedly made references to ‘anger’ and the artists’ being ‘angry’. Such responses were typical. With the Black image (and, indeed, at times, pretty much any and everything served up by Black artists) being caricatured as ‘angry’, the work of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare, and its

223

As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, Bowling was in the early 1960s said to have “received critical acclaim from almost every art critic of note and there was tremendous enthusiasm for his work.” 224 Rasheed Araeen, “In the Citadel of Modernism,” in The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain (exh. cat.; London: Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre, 1989): 40. 225 For further discussion of this ‘angry’ label, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986,” esp. “The First Exhibitions, the Earliest Responses,” 108–109, and “Waldemar Januszczak, ‘anger’, ‘angry’, and ‘Anger at Hand’,” 222–25. 226 Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 116. 227 Waldemar Januszczak, “Anger at Hand: Waldemar Januszczak on the barely controlled fury of The Thin Black Line,” The Guardian (27 November 1985), Arts Section: 23.

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reception, broke important new ground. Each of these artists was, in his own way, by and large able to distance himself from the ‘angry’ label. The qualifier in the previous sentence – ‘by and large’ – is an important one. The front page of the Independent of 15 July 2008 trailed a feature on Steve McQueen, in that day’s “Extra” supplement, as “Steve McQueen: Britart’s angriest young man”.228 The feature itself was introduced with a preamble, followed by “Hannah Duguid meets an angry young man.”229 A distinction should perhaps be drawn between the types of ‘anger’ said to have characterized Black artists and their practice in the 1980s, and McQueen’s apparent ‘anger’, which the media cast as altogether more righteous. McQueen’s ‘anger’ related to a palpable frustration, on the artist’s part, at what he perceived as prevarication and timidity by the government in its apparent reluctance to substantially honour the British service personnel who had died in one of Britain’s recent theatres of war, Iraq. McQueen had, through his Queen and Country project, wanted to commemorate each of the dead soldiers on Royal Mail postage stamps.230 ‘Righteous’ anger aside, in its simplest and crudest form the dissociation of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare from the ‘angry’ label owed much to the sentiment that there was little to nothing contained in these artists’ work to which white audiences, critics, curators, and, perhaps most importantly of all, collectors, could object or find accusatory. Screaming Jay Hawkins, in a gesture of irony that was at turns both playful and caustic, had titled one of his records Black Music for White People.231 There was a clearly discernible sense in which Ofili et al. were serving up Black Art for White People. As Stallabrass opined, the Black models in Ofili’s work were not “people who 228

The Independent (15 July 2008): 1 Hannah Duguid, “McQueen and Country,” The Independent (15 July 2008): 14 230 Queen and Country, a project by Steve McQueen, was a work that sought to acknowledge the military losses suffered by the British army in Iraq, between March 2003 and February 2009. The artist used photographs of each of the soldiers to make commemorative postage stamps, one stamp for each soldier. A poignant, sensitive work, Queen and Country successfully reflected something of not only the country’s widespread ambivalence about the Iraq war, but also the country’s corresponding desire to respectfully acknowledge the loss of British military personnel. Significantly, the publication relating to the project was “dedicated to all victims of the Iraq War.” 231 Screaming Jay Hawkins, Black Music for White People (Demon Records, under licence from Bizarre Records, 1991). 229

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look capable of thought or discourse, action or development,”232 but were instead satirical “white stereotypes about blacks […] now pressed into service in an ambivalent celebration of black culture and identity.”233 Stallabrass and other commentators were of the view that Ofili’s Blackness differed markedly from previous manifestations of Blackness in earlier generations of artists. Niru Ratnam concluded that Ofili’s “ ‘blackness’ is a constructed, contingent identity” which drew on a “black cultural world which exists in books, magazines, tourist destinations and vinyl.”234 This was perhaps a mannered and contrived Blackness that exploited the ways in which white people regarded and engaged with Black people. No previous generation of Black artists had offered up fare of this nature to consumers.235 Despite the formidable weight of history, and the ongoing challenges, difficulties, and torments faced by so many Black people, and despite the range of ways in which Black artists engaged with the world around them, white critics frequently posited that Black artists were ‘making an issue’ of race. It was the ability of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare to sidestep such debilitating and disengaged readings that earned them bouquets, and few brickbats, from white critics. The leaden weight of ‘political correctness’ had pressed down on Black artists of the 1980s. Political correctness was a fiendishly imprecise term, but whatever it was, it had, to varying degrees, been assigned to Black artists. But Ofili et al. were in no way associated with the term. As Ratnam noted, “Lisa Corrion celebrates Ofili’s lack of political correctness.”236 The ‘safe’ and supposedly non-confrontational aspect of McQueen’s work had Robert Storr purring: The fact that McQueen does not make an obvious issue of his race – or that of his predominantly white art world public – is a mark of confident take-it232

Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 116. Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 118. 234 Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” New Left Review 235 (May–June 1999): 156–57. 235 A number of Black artists had apparently expressed to Coco Fusco, in confidence, the somewhat blunt view that “Ofili was attracting attention just because he gave whites the kind of nasty, depraved image of Blacks they loved to see” (Fusco, “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom,” 41). 236 Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 159. Ratnam was referring to Corin’s essay on Ofili in the catalogue for his Southampton City Art Gallery / Serpentine Gallery exhibition of 1998. 233

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or-leave-it self-acceptance and of an explicitly political sophistication, which assumes that assertion rather than protest, intelligently structured poetics rather than structuralist ‘critique’ may be, at this moment, the best means for impairing new or difference-defining information.237

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Robert Storr, Going Places, Steve McQueen (exh. cat.; London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1999): 12.

4

Coming in From the Cold: Some Black Artists Are Embraced

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Making an exhibition on the basis of racial origin is not something that comes easy to the art world.1

W

by Black artists purchased primarily for the Arts Council Collection, there was little during the 1980s to signify a noteworthy ‘institutional’ embrace of Black artists. There were important exhibitions in mainstream galleries, of which From Two Worlds (1986) was one of the most notable examples, but such shows – relatively few in actual number – were largely counterbalanced by the highly significant and in many ways far greater amount of visual-arts activity generated by Black artists and arts groups themselves, away from established and mainstream galleries. Straddling these two types of venue, Black artists’ work was something different from the usual gallery fare, and signified the ongoing development of a cultural identity that existed as a counter to the dominant culture. Away from the visual arts, there was much within the political arena – or what some might call the real world – to maintain a somewhat fractious and mutually antipathetic relationship between Black people and the state’s agencies. The ‘riots’ of Bristol in 1980 and those that occurred in other parts of the country, most notably Brixton, in 1981 had dominated the terms of reference for Black 1

ITH THE EXCEPTION OF A HANDFUL OF WORKS

Joanna Drew & Andrew Dempsey, “Foreword and acknowledgements” to The Other Story (exh. cat.; London: Hayward Gallery, 1989): 5. Commenting on what might be described as an unintended irony in Drew and Dempsey’s comments, Richard Hylton noted: “Perhaps unsurprisingly, Drew and Dempsey refused to consider or acknowledge that it was precisely because the art world did, in routinely privileging white artists and excluding Black artists, tend to make exhibitions “on the basis of racial origin” (Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 82).

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people’s presence in Britain.2 And by the mid-1980s things were, in some ways, going from bad to worse. On Saturday, 28 September 1985, Mrs Cherry Groce, a Black woman, was shot and paralysed during a police raid on her home in London. Groce was allegedly shot in her bed, by a member of a team of armed police officers who were looking for her son. Another, divergent account has it that a team of armed officers went to the home of Mrs Cherry Groce in Brixton, south London, to arrest her son, Michael, who was wanted for [allegations of] armed robbery. In fact, Michael Groce, no longer lived there. The officers smashed down the door with a sledge-hammer and then an inspector rushed in shouting ‘armed police’. He put his finger to the trigger. Mrs Groce says the officer suddenly rushed at her, pointing a gun at her. She tried to run back but he shot her. She is now paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.3

On Sunday, 6 October 1985, just over a week after Mrs Groce sustained her horrific injuries, another Black woman, Mrs Cynthia Jarrett, died of a heart attack during a police search of her Tottenham home. (Again, it was allegations against her son that lay at the centre of this police action.) During these mid-decade years, there were many other such occurrences that ultimately projected the Black-British presence as somewhat fractious or ill at ease. It was during the ‘rioting’ on the Broadwater Farm estate, sparked by news of Mrs Jarrett’s death, that P C Blakelock was isolated from his fellow police officers and set upon and killed by what was commonly referred to by the media as a ‘mob’.4 Elsewhere in the world, the persistence of apartheid in South Africa maintained a strong sense of righteous indignation on the part of Black people and others. In keeping with the times, there was much about Black artists’ practice during the 1980s that inculcated and declared multiple senses of opposition, alienation, and protest. It was during this pivotal decade that much highly effective and penetrating work, commenting on a wide range of ongoing social concerns, was pro2

For a discussion of these ‘riots’, see Martin Kettle & Lucy Hodges, Uprising!: The Police, the People and the Riots in Britain’s Cities (London: Macmillan, 1982). 3 The Times (16 January 1987), quoted in Policing Against Black People (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1987): 26. Mrs Cherry Groce died in 2011. 4 On these ‘riots’, see David Rose, A Climate of Fear (London: Bloomsbury, 1992), and the entry “Broadwater Farm riots” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford: Oxford U P , 2007): 71–72.

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duced by a number of Black artists. Broadwater Farm was an area of north London that was not much more than a mile or so away from the home of the artist Tam Joseph. It was perhaps his geographical proximity to the scene of these bloody events of October 1985 that prompted Joseph to respond to the bloody events by painting, in the same year, “The Sky at Night,”5 a work of astonishing clarity, gravity, and sophistication. The painting was a depiction of the riot underway on Broadwater Farm, after dusk. It featured as its central component a daunting block of flats, at the base of, and in front of which, scattered groups of rioters hurled occasional petrol bombs at assembled ranks of riot police. A dramatic and ominous cleavage, in the form of a lift shaft or stairwell, separates the two wings of the block of flats, conveniently creating or reinforcing the two sides of the conflict or stand-off. At the base of one side of the building stand the police. Facing them, at the base of the other side of the building, stand the onlookers, among whom the police’s tormentors are presumably mingling. Despite the drama of the scene depicted, “The Sky at Night” is a quiet, almost understated painting. Although Broadwater Farm is depicted, the block of flats shown could be almost anywhere in the country, or could be located in other parts of the world, in cities scarred by bloated income inequality and urban deprivation. The architecture depicted is reminiscent of ‘the projects’ – the high-density, inner-city, state-subsidized public housing that is home to so many of the U S A ’s poorer Black, Hispanic, and other low-income families. On a smaller scale perhaps, the equivalent dwellings in Jamaica, reflective of state attempts to provide accommodation for its poorer citizens, were referred to, or known as, government housing schemes (or “government yard,” as Bob Marley & The Wailers had sung in their emotional classic of the mid-1970s, “No Woman No Cry”6). Elsewhere in the world, in the cities of France, such high-density housing – this time traditionally located on the outskirts – is known as la banlieue.7 Housing

5

Tam Joseph, “The Sky at Night” (acrylic on canvas, 134 x 235 cm, 1985, collection of the artist). 6 Bob Marley & The Wailers, “No Woman No Cry” (written by V. Ford), on Natty Dread (Island Records, 1974). 7 Tam Joseph was not the only artist interested in these fractured and fractious urban environments. Mohamed Bourouissa, an Algerian-born photographer, has recently emerged as an image-maker whose locations draw heavily on la banlieue. Magali Jauffret, commenting on Bourouissa, noted that he was an artist “who has chosen to work

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estate, council estate, project, housing scheme, banlieue… in all instances, from Glasgow to Paris, Kingston to London, the government housing strategy has often been to erect oftentimes charmless brutalist boxes in which those with few housing options are forced to live literally on top of one another. Not only did hapless residents have to live cheek by jowl in such housing, there were few amenities, such as good schools, good shops, good health-care, libraries, parks or gardens in close proximity to these ‘concrete jungles’. The British reggae group Aswad expressed profound empathy for hapless ghetto-dwellers in their 1982 song “African Children,” who were “living in a concrete situation,” in “a ghetto in the sky” … All of the nations are living in these tenements Crying and applying to the council for assistance Now the tribulation it is so sad Now the environment it is so bad High rise concrete no backyard for the children to play…8

Previously, the Wailers had bemoaned the formidable constraints of the “concrete jungle,”9 and it was this sense of Fanon’s ‘wretched of the earth’ being corralled into urban ghettoes that so exercised Joseph. The nocturnal nature of the scene depicted had the eerie effect of muting the sense of inner-city unrest. None of the figures in the painting appeared particularly animated. Both the groups of policemen and those intent on driving them out appeared almost lethargic, as if darkness or nightfall has slowed them down. Given the media’s caricaturing of the ‘mob’, most people in “The Sky at Night” appear to be bystanders and, to all intents and purposes, observers of what is happening in their midst. Lights are on in a number of the flats, illuminating in silhouette those who also are spectators or witnesses. The groups of police officers are dramatically depicted with fires – the results of petrol bombs – burning close by, and in front of, them and their riots shields. The light from the fires throw a number of the police officers into sharp and eerie relief, their dark outlines dramatically silhouetted by the flames. Rather than a

on France’s ghetto-like suburbs”; Jauffret, “Mohamed Bourouissa – Périphéries: The Suburbs as Visual Object,” tr. C. Penwarden, Portfolio 46 (November 2007): (np). 8 Aswad, “African Children” (written by Aswad), on New Chapter (C B S Records, 1981). 9 Bob Marley & The Wailers, “Concrete Jungle” (written by Bob Marley), on Catch A Fire (Island Records, 1973).

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scene of bloodlust, destruction, and mayhem, in its particularly restrained way, “The Sky at Night” shows a community of exhausted and weary people, a few of whom, under cover of darkness and a familiarity with the cutthroughs and walkways of the estate, are seeking to do battle with the police who have come into their midst.

F I G U R E 19 Tam Joseph, “The Sky at Night” (1985, acrylic on canvas, 134 x 235 cm) Collection of the artist  Tam Joseph

In the wake of the ‘riots’ at the beginning of the decade, social deprivation and poor housing among Black people had emerged as two of the underlying factors of the disturbances. Here, in dramatic fashion, Joseph presented the viewer with both the cause and the effect, the action and the reaction. With its reliance on the modernist grid, “The Sky at Night” was, perhaps more than anything else, a comment on the failure of postwar urban planning. Highdensity tower blocks and equivalent low-rise housing were supposed to provide a brave new solution to both chronic housing shortages and a need to move people out of dilapidated and inferior housing built some considerable time previously. But estates such as Broadwater Farm, though conceived as idyllic and desirable places to live, now stood as near-conclusive evidence of the limitations, failures, and, indeed, consequences of bad housing, particularly when unemployment and experiences of police brutality and harassment were added to the mix.

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The title given to the piece has great significance, reminiscent as it is of the long-running astronomy programme on B B C television, famously fronted by Sir Patrick Moore. First aired well over half a century ago, The Sky at Night was a comforting throwback to how television used to be, how life used to be, how society used to be, before all of these things became ever more mixed up and frenetic as the century wore on. In this respect, the B B C ’s The Sky at Night was at the polar opposite, in more ways than one, to Joseph’s painting of the same name. Moore, the holder of political views associated with farright policies, was, at the end of the 1970s, involved in an organization known as the United Country Party, which, like the National Front,10 “favoured stricter immigration laws.”11 The creation of the United Country Party “was announced on 13 February 1979 by Edmund Iremonger and the television astronomer Patrick Moore, who were near neighbours in Selsey, West Sussex.”12 A short-lived venture, the United Country Party merged with another “small right-wing political group” known as the New Britain Party, which, like its predecessor, campaigned to curb, halt, or reverse immigration, at a time when immigration was particularly synonymous with people from the Commonwealth countries such as India, Pakistan, and the countries of Africa and the Caribbean: “The party’s policy was extreme conservatism and its candidates campaigned for the return of capital punishment and a halt to immigration (supporting voluntary repatriation for immigrants).”13 Joseph’s reference to The Sky at Night represented not only urban skirmishes after nightfall in north London, but also the anti-immigrant sentiments that were expressed by Patrick Moore at a time of particular racial violence meted out to Black people in Britain. And yet, aspects of the B B C ’s The Sky at Night are indeed present in Joseph’s painting of the same name. Above and behind the block of flats, the night sky, complete with twinkling stars, is clearly visible. 10

“National Front politics were far-right, nationalistic, and racist. The party advocated forced repatriation of all black and Asian immigrants, and any white spouse of an immigrant.” “National Front,” in David Boothroyd, The Politico’s Guide to the History of British Political Parties (London: Politico’s, 2001): 187. 11 “United Country Party,” in Boothroyd, The Politico’s Guide to the History of British Political Parties, 325. 12 “United Country Party,” in Boothroyd, The Politico’s Guide to the History of British Political Parties, 325. 13 “New Britain Party,” in Boothroyd, The Politico’s Guide to the History of British Political Parties, 207.

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During the 1980s, one of the most compelling works to comment on the grievous harm done to Mrs Groce, Mrs Jarrett, and a host of other Black people was Keith Piper and Donald Rodney’s particularly successful collaboration “The Next Turn of the Screw.”14 Like Piper’s own “13 Killed”15 (which sought to pay homage to the thirteen victims of the New Cross massacre, referred to in chapter 2), “The Next Turn of the Screw” was in effect an elegy to lives lost or damaged in acts of great violence, allegedly at the hands of what were for many Black people the most visible signifiers of the state, the police. The work took the form of an installation, painted and built in the gallery area of Chelsea School of Art, located at the time on Manresa Road.

F I G U R E 20 Donald Rodney photograph  Pogus Caesar, O O M Gallery

14

Keith Piper & Donald Rodney, The Devil’s Feast, Chelsea School of Art, Zarina Bhimji, Chila Burman, Jennifer Comrie, Allan de Souza, and Keith Piper and Donald Rodney, 27 April–8 May 1987. For a review of the exhibition, see Eddie Chambers, “Problematic Space,” Race Today 17.5 (June–July 1987): 27. 15 Keith Piper “13 Killed” (mixed media, 1981, dimensions not available).

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In addition to the wall-based aspects of the piece, a makeshift shed-like structure was also erected as part of the installation, on the corresponding outside wall of the gallery. This work was part of a larger group show, titled The Devil’s Feast, that featured work by Zarina Bhimji, Chila Burman, Jennifer Comrie, Allan de Souza, and Keith Piper and Donald Rodney, the exhibition taking place in April and May of 1987. In some ways, the catalyst for the piece was yet another Black ‘death by misadventure’ or ‘open verdict’, as suspicious demises were sometimes ruled. Clinton McCurbin, a young Black man, died while being arrested and subdued by the police, in Wolverhampton town centre, in February of 1987. The location of the death, the clothes shop Next, was what was alluded to in the makeshift hut erected as part of Piper and Rodney’s installation. But McCurbin’s violent death was only one of the most recent of a number of similar tragedies, such as the maiming of Mrs Groce and the death of Mrs Jarrett. Like others, Piper and Rodney were determined that these deaths would not go unremarked. To this end, they set about creating a work of profound empathy. “The Next Turn of the Screw” featured, in part, painted portraits of six unfortunate people, each of whom was a victim of alleged police brutality. The unhappy roll-call included, chronologically, Colin Roach, Jackie Beverley, the aforementioned Cherry Groce and Cynthia Jarrett, Trevor Monerville, and. finally, Clinton McCurbin. What was remarkable about “The Next Turn of the Screw” was that the artists had to collect and rely on decidedly scrappy source material, in the form of images of the injured or the dead. The nature of these archival images threw into sharp relief the violence that blighted these lives. Colin Roach is shown smiling, the portraits of Jackie Beverley and Trevor Monerville are incomplete – evidence of the ways in which their likenesses were sourced from photographs in which the person isolated and illustrated by Piper and Rodney was not necessarily the intended sole focus of the photographer, and may in fact have been in the background or, in some other way, a peripheral or fractional aspect of the photograph. By far the most poignant image is that of Cherry Groce. The only image of her that was circulated in the media in the aftermath of her injuries was lifted from a wedding photograph. The cropped photograph, taken several decades earlier, showed Mrs Groce wearing her bridal finery. No other pictures of the hapless victim – recent or otherwise – were available. Beneath each portrait the artists had, almost by way of an epitaph, written a brief description of the violence that befell each of the six. The partiality of the visual source material and its atten-

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dant degrees of pathos poignantly reflected the fragmented and damaged nature of these victims’ lives. “The Next Turn of the Screw” was ‘history’ as cultural memory, history as remembrance. To profound and deeply sobering effect, the artists used archival images to create something that was in itself an archival document. The piece was only ever shown as part of The Devil’s Feast and, when the show closed, was dismantled and the six portraits, which had been applied directly onto the gallery wall, were painted over. Work such as “The Sky at Night” and “The Next Turn of the Screw” reflected many Black artists’ embrace of, and pronounced attachment to, social comment underpinned by opposition to, and disaffection with, society and its treatment of Black people. Importantly, the visual-arts infrastructure was generally regarded as being part of an alienated apparatus of state that neither understood nor respected Black people. But within fifteen years or so, all that had changed and Black artists were, to all intents and purposes, considered to have been taken up by a museum and gallery system and indeed, in some respects, a political establishment now keen to demonstrate its diversity credentials. Crucially, over the same period, significant aspects of Black artists’ practice itself changed, with social narratives typical of the 1980s giving way to other narratives and decidedly different sensibilities. No single institution represented the perceived ongoing alienation of Black artists and large numbers of Black people in general from the mainstream more than the Tate. Commenting on the perception of the Tate as an institution from which a great many people seemed alienated, Gilane Tawadros suggested: “The issue is not about blackness, but Britishness. […] National institutions are mirrors of national values. The National Gallery and the Tate don’t reflect Britain as it is.”16 In 1996, the Black Audio Film Collective made an uneven work that took as its subject Donald Rodney.17 The film was in many ways a typical Black Audio Film Collective product. In the film, part documentary, part surreal, dream-like sequences, one of the more lucid moments involved Rodney speaking about a work he was proposing to make. This consisted of a scale model of the Tate Gallery (which in later years came to be known as Tate Britain) made from white sugar cubes. Though the work itself was never made, we can perhaps visualize it and, certainly, we can 16

Raekha Prasad, “An exciting splash of colour,” 4. Black Audio Film Collective, Three Songs on Pain, Light and Time, dir. Edward George & Trevor Mathison (Arts Council of England, U K 1995; 25 min.). 17

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appreciate the significance of the idea and the ways in which it animates, with startling originality and simplicity, issues of history, identity, and exclusion. Sir Henry Tate (described in a recent Tate Britain publication as “one of Britain’s foremost industrialists.”18) was a nineteenth-century English sugar refiner and merchant. A philanthropist, towards the end of his life Tate donated his art collection to the nation, stipulating that it should be appropriately displayed. Tate is said to have contributed some £80,000 (a sum which, by the mid-1980s, was equivalent to several million pounds) towards the construction of such a gallery; shortly before he died, the National Gallery of British Art, which popularly bears Tate’s name, opened in the summer of 1897. Sugar merchants such as Tate (and the Scottish industrialist Abram Lyle, with whose rival company Tate’s merged to become Tate & Lyle in 1921) were implicated in, and benefitted from, the wretched, exploitative, and brutal means by which sugar cane was grown and harvested in the islands and countries of the Caribbean. Along with cotton and tobacco, no single commodity of the days of slavery so represented slavery’s barbarism as much as sugar. In one of his many books on the British dimension of the slave trade and slavery, James Walvin noted: Few slaves were spared the rigours of labour on sugar plantations. The old and the young, the sick and the marginal, all were marshalled into suitable jobs for their age and condition. On a sugar property, the enslaved people endured the harshest of conditions, especially in the crop time between the new year and midsummer, when they were exposed to sun, heat, tropical downpours – all good for sugar, but hard on the labour force […]. Sugar cultivation was the most gruelling of labours, a fact reflected in the demography of sugar slavery. Human suffering was at its worst on the sugar plantations: life expectancy, infant mortality, low fertility and sickness formed part of the persistent pattern indicating that sugar slaves fared worse than slaves in other industries and occupations.19

Henry Tate was born into a world in which the systems and mechanisms of slavery, particularly as applied to the cultivation of sugar cane, were still very much in place throughout the British Caribbean and elsewhere, though the trade itself was in the process of being abolished at the time of his birth. As a sugar refiner and merchant of the Victorian era, Tate was very much a bene18

Martin Myrone, Tate Britain (London: Tate Publishing, 2001): np. James Walvin, The Trader, The Owner, The Slave: Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery (London: Vintage, 2007): 125. 19

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ficiary of the economic realities of slavery’s legacies: a largely compliant workforce who could find no other labour, and an industrial system that continued to reap huge profits for industrialists, as well as feeding Europe’s increasingly sweet tooth. In one of his many pieces on the painter Aubrey Williams, Guy Brett alluded to the pernicious and formidable stranglehold that the sugar industry had on countries of the Caribbean, and the quite explicit alliance between the sugar industry and colonialism. When Aubrey Williams was born and grew up in Guyana it was still a British colony. The whole economy was dominated by the sugar industry and one company – Booker McConnell & Co. – owned everything, effectively running the country as an extension of the British government.20

In 1960, Williams executed a graphic and bloody painting recalling the 1763 Berbice Slave Rebellion. The painting, “Revolt,” depicted an unshackled slave – Accara, one of the rebellion’s leaders – cutlass in hand, wreaking terrible revenge on his and the other slaves’ tormentors. An important aspect of the painting is the symbolism of the sugar-cane stalks that stand in a corner of the painting, near the scene of carnage. Thus, in his painting, Williams captures sugar-cane production as emblematic of the slaves’ wretched condition. As the novelist, playwright, and poet Jan Carew observed, “The gold Guiana yielded was to come mainly from sugar and slavery.”21 At a stroke, with his sugar-cube scale-model idea, Rodney animated not only the ugly realities of the sugar industry and its history but also the ways in which exploitation was at the financial and cultural base of one of the nation’s greatest institutions of art appreciation. Furthermore, in the minds of many, the Tate was characterized, perhaps more than anything else, as an institution from which Black artists were perpetually excluded, thereby reflecting other societal ills, as perceived and charged by a great many Black people. Keith Piper had poignantly alluded to the symbolism of Tate and sugar in his compelling mixed-media narrative of the mid-1980s, “The Seven Rages of

20

Guy Brett, “The Art of Aubrey Williams,” in Guyana Dreaming: The Art of Aubrey Williams, ed. Anne Walmsley (Coventry: Dangaroo, 1990): 98. 21 Jan Carew, “Revolt,” Tropica (December 1960): 4. An article on the Aubrey Williams painting “Revolt,” referencing the 1763 slave uprising in British Guiana, and the painting’s reception.

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Man”22 (the title riffing off the seven ages of man, in the celebrated monologue from William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It). Piper’s grand, expansive work featured seven busts, each a partial cast of his own head, and each set against a montage of images and text. Piper took the viewer through seven stages of his existence as an African man, beginning with a recollection of life in the precolonial days of Africa’s great ancient kingdoms. The narrative then progressed to a section recalling the brutality and horror of the slave trade. Piper’s second and third sections recalled the barbarity of the Middle Passage, life on the plantation, and the days of slavery. A fourth panel showed Piper as a young Caribbean immigrant to Britain, calling to mind the dapper-suited young men who, having arrived as West Indian migrants, full of confidence in their ability to make good lives for themselves in the ‘mother country’, often found themselves on the receiving end of the host community’s racism and discrimination. The fifth panel – depicting Piper as a conscious ‘youtman’ – recalled the ‘riots’ of the early 1980s and the ways in which they had such a pronounced influence on the social and political agenda that ‘the great insurrection’ set by and for young Black Britain. The sixth panel laid out some of the parameters of struggle and agendas for militancy that Piper considered must be undertaken if a politically brighter day was to dawn. The seventh and final panel of Piper’s history anticipated a bright, liberated future for a united, socialist continent of Africa, at one and at peace with the sons and daughters of its diaspora, whose struggles for advancement in Britain had similarly been rewarded. The enslaved African in Piper’s second panel was shown manacled by his neck, a few links of chain dangling earthwards. Stencilled (or, more accurately perhaps, branded) onto the chest of Piper’s second incarnation, as a captured African bound for hell, were the words ‘P R O P E R T Y O F T A T E & L Y L E ’. Thus, the longstanding links between sugar and slavery were further illuminated. As Walvin had commented, Of all the Africans transported, perhaps 70 per cent were destined for the sugar economies of Brazil and the Caribbean. By the mid-eighteenth century the Western world consumed sugar on an enormous scale. And the more sugar the colonies produced, the more Africans they required as slaves […]. The slave populations […] grew because of the importations of new Afri22 Keith Piper, “Seven Rages of Man” (mixed media, c.1985). The work was exhibited in Depicting History: For Today, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 6 November–12 December 1987. For exhibition details, see fn 89 above, p. 87.

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cans. It was a circular pattern. New plantations were settled, especially in Jamaica and, most dramatic of all, in the French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti after 1804), and those plantations needed ever more Africans.23

In this grand, panoramic work, Piper ‘remembered’ being a slave, ‘remembered’ the Middle Passage and being transported on the slave ship, ‘remembered’ working on the plantation. This was much more than empathy; this was almost direct memory of earlier existences, as well as steadfast hopes and expectations, based on struggle, for a brighter tomorrow. Tate & Lyle was one of the largest producers of sugar in the Caribbean, and one of the largest distributors of the commodity in the U K , with a history that stretches, inevitably, albeit indirectly, back into the days of slavery. In the mid-twentieth century, Tate & Lyle’s Jamaican sugar operation was known locally as Wisco – the West Indies Sugar Company, the dominant player in the industry in Jamaica.24 For good measure, it might be added that Wisco was caught up in the labour unrest and strikes that took place in Jamaica in 1938, and marked such an important episode in that country’s quest for dignity of the labouring masses and subsequent demands for nationhood.25 In a simple but profound way, Piper visually linked present‐day consumerism with the most brutal legacies and experiences of slavery, as well as post-slavery industrial abuses of labour on sugar plantations. Something as supposedly innocuous as buying a bag of sugar in a supermarket, or using a sachet of sugar with one’s cup of coffee or tea – these things are forcefully and visually linked with slavery, the slave trade, and exploitation of labour. Furthermore, Piper’s work made none-too-subtle references to the Tate Gallery and the ways in which the Gallery came into existence in large part through the endeavours of Sir Henry Tate, sugar merchant and, as mentioned, one half of the original Tate and Lyle. As reflected in this work and that envisaged by Donald Rodney, it could be said that one of the great cornerstones of British art owed its existence to slavery. And the Tate was an institution that had traditionally excluded, or failed to recognize, Black artists. So, in Piper’s work, layer upon layer of meaning were added to his remembrance of the days of slavery. In this instance, some of that layered meaning took the form of

23

James Walvin, The Trader, The Owner, the Slave, 33. Mona Macmillan, The Land of Look Behind: A Study of Jamaica (London: Faber & Faber, 1957): 129. 25 Macmillan, The Land of Look Behind, 129. 24

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accusations of marginalization and discrimination being levelled at the Tate Gallery for its apparent treatment of Black artists. Along with its seeming failure or inability to recognize Black artists, other charges were, during the 1980s and early to mid-1990s, made against the Tate. Such grievances were that it resisted the acquisition of work by Black artists for its collection, and failed to develop Black audiences, being indifferent to the notion that audiences might exist in some sort of cultural or ethnic plurality. Similarly, save for catering staff, guards, caretakers, and security staff, the Tate had the appearance of not being inclined to employ Black people or otherwise seek their services as curators, librarians, archivists and so on. In time, the formidable perception of the Tate as a bastion and declaration of white and British colonial and cultural supremacy was in some respects to change markedly and the Tate, along with other important arts institutions, would become a sort of home away from home for certain Black artists such as Hew Locke, Chris Ofili, and Yinka Shonibare, and even Rodney himself, although his inclusion was to be posthumous. Perhaps the most conspicuous ways in which the Tate sought to embrace or tentatively acknowledge the new generation of British-born Black artists were through widening the range of its acquisitions and through its selection of artists to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize,26 the high-profile award hosted annually at Tate Britain. Reflecting her many successes during the 1980s, the Tate had acquired two of Sonia Boyce’s wall pieces in the middle years of the decade.27 Boyce’s work was acquired in 1987, the year in which the Tate Gallery purchased Frank Bowling’s “Spread Out Ron Kitaj” (which was apparently the first work by a living Black-British artist to be acquired by the Tate).28 Victor Davson, the executive director of Aljira, passed telling comment on the Tate’s reluctance to acknowledge Bowling:

26

For a history of the Turner Prize, see Virginia Button, The Turner Prize (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999). See also The Turner Prize and British Art (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2007). 27 “Missionary Position II” (1985, watercolour, pastel and crayon on paper, 123.8 x 183 cm), and “From Tarzan to Rambo: English Born ‘Native’ Considers her Relationship to the Constructed/Self Image and her Roots in Reconstruction” (1987, photograph and mixed media on paper, 124 x 359 cm); both works purchased 1987. 28 Frank Bowling, “Spread Out Ron Kitaj” (sometimes written as “Spreadout Ron Kitaj”; 1984–86; 228.6 x 284.4 cm), http://frankbowling.com/biography. “Spread Out

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In the past, neglect of his work has been a source of deep frustration: It took me a hell of a long time to get the Tate Gallery to buy his work.” In fact, of the group of successful artists that came out of the Royal College of Art in 1962, his work was the last to be bought.29

Sporadic purchases of other artists’ work were to follow, such as the Tate’s acquisition of art works by Rasheed Araeen in the mid-1990s and again, more recently, during the first decade of the twenty-first century.30 It was, however, to take some years for this piecemeal attention to translate into a Black presence in the history of the Turner Prize. The Turner Prize was founded by a group of supporters of the Tate Gallery known as the Patrons of New Art. Formed in the early 1980s, with the mission to assist with the purchasing of new acquisitions for the Tate Gallery’s collection, and to widen interest in contemporary art, each year, one of the group is a jurist who helps select the Turner Prize winner. The prize was named after the artist William Turner. The Turner Prize, like The British Art Show, is ostensibly a barometer of contemporary art practice in Britain. Though its procedures were decidedly opaque, it is nonetheless a high-profile, prestigious award. It was established at the same moment in which Black artists were making their mainstream debut in the Mappin Art Gallery’s Into the Open31 exhibition, in 1984. Concurrent with this exhibition – the first of its kind in a municipal gallery – all manner of visual-arts activity involving new Black-British artists was taking place across the country. None of this considerable amount of activity was, Ron Kitaj” is viewable at http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=1376 &searchid=9420&roomid=3236&tabview=image (accessed 3 April 2011). 29 Victor Davson, “Foreword,” in Bending the Grid: An Ongoing Series (exh. cat.; Newark N J : Aljira: A Center for the Arts, 2003): vii. 30 “3Y + 3B” (1969, wood, paint and metal, display dimensions: 182.8 x 243.8 x 14 cm, sculpture, purchased 2007); “Rang Baranga” (1969, wood and paint, 182 x 61 x 46 cm, sculpture, presented by Tate Members 2007); “Zero to Infinity” (1968–2007, wood and paint object, each 50 x 50 x 50 cm, sculpture, purchased 2009). The Tate frankly admitted to its own tardiness, in collecting work by Black British artists, when it stated: “Most of the works on display [in its 2011/12 presentation, Thin Black Line(s)] have been lent by the Arts Council and from artists’ private collections. They [the Arts Council] and local museums were more proactive [during the 1980s] than national museums such as Tate in collecting these works.” http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet /CollectionDisplays?venueid=1&roomid=7237 (accessed 29 August 2011). 31 Into the Open: New Paintings, Prints and Sculptures by Contemporary Black Artists, selected by Pogus Caesar and Lubaina Himid. For details, see fn 56 above, p. xli.

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however, enough to get Black artists noticed as possible Turner Prize nominees in the early years of the award. Given the nominators’ escalating proclivity for younger, newer, and supposedly ‘controversial’ artists, it may be significant that none of the generation of Black artists to emerge in 1980s Britain, such as Keith Piper, was ever shortlisted for the prize. (In the early days of the Turner Prize, it was open to all those working in the visual arts, and not just practitioners themselves.) The artists who tended to be selected in the prize’s earliest days were perhaps more in the manner of Royal Academicians rather than younger, more contemporary artists. Accordingly, artists such as Terry Atkinson, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Ian Hamilton Finley, Gilbert & George, Howard Hodgkin, Richard Long, Malcolm Morley, and John Walker were the sort being proposed for additional recognition. In keeping with dominant art-historical narratives, the being, and the practice, of white males was unquestionably considered to represent the finest aspects of art. Although, from the early years of the Turner Prize, women were being selected as jurists, there was a conspicuous absence of women artists on the shortlists themselves. Within a few years, however, that was to change; by the late 1980s women artists were regularly making the shortlist and, indeed, were occasionally winning the prize, such as Rachel Whiteread in 1993 and Gillian Wearing in 1997. Women artists were thus able to make inroads into the Turner Prize, as shortlisted practitioners and winners. Indeed, the first and only all-women shortlist – to date – was announced in 1997. The Turner Prize debut of British-born Black artists was a lot longer in coming. None of the Black counterparts to the Turner Prize’s early nominees, veteran artists such as Aubrey Williams, Frank Bowling, and Uzo Egonu, ever made it onto the Turner Prize shortlists of the mid-1980s, though by 1991 artists such as the Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor and the Laos-born sculptor Vong Phaophanit were being shortlisted. Indeed, in 1991 it was Kapoor who won the prize, the first non-British-born artist to do so. The first Black-British artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize was Chris Ofili, in 1998, the year after New Labour, with its promises of delivering equity and promoting diversity, came to power. Given its emphatically white-male beginnings, it was perhaps implausible that the all-women shortlist of 1997 could ever happen. Similarly implausible were the prospects of British-born Black artists winning the prize for two years in succession. This, however, was what happened when Steve McQueen won the Turner Prize in 1999, the year after Chris Ofili. Although there were to be no more Black-British winners of the Turner Prize, for the next decade

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or more at least, British artists of African and Asian origin – such as Zarina Bhimji, Runa Islam, Isaac Julien, and Yinka Shonibare – regularly showed up in Turner shortlists from the late 1990s onwards. All-white shortlists are now incidental or unremarkable instances, when once they were the norm. Keen to declare itself a national institution that respected diversity, a new edition of the Tate’s own history of the Turner Prize featured, on its cover, Chris Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry,” widely interpreted as both a commemoration of the murdered Black teenage Londoner, Stephen Lawrence, and a sympathetic portrayal of his grieving mother, Mrs Doreen Lawrence.32 One of the major difficulties in assessing or critiquing the extent to which the Tate has sought to acknowledge Black artists is a distinct reticence on the part of official Tate narratives and Tate spokespeople to acknowledge its alleged historical discriminatory or perhaps exclusionary tendencies. In 1992, the Independent newspaper reported that Although the Tate Gallery collection does have a few works by “artists of colour,” a spokeswoman said: “We don’t discriminate positively and we don’t discriminate negatively. Our choice is not based on colour.”33

The Tate’s reluctance to discuss the ways in which issues of race affected its programming and other activities was reflected in a corresponding reticence on the part of white art critics. Writing in 1999, the day after Steve McQueen won the Turner Prize, Adrian Searle claimed: That McQueen is the second black British artist to win the prize – Chris Ofili won last year – is of no significance, except to say that they both belong to the generation which has provided the largest number of black and Asian students to make their way through art college in post-colonial Britain.34

As mentioned in chapter 3, Searle had also claimed that “Until the 90s, there were hardly any black students at British art colleges.”35 Searle offered no statistical or even anecdotal evidence for his claim, and, certainly, only a detailed and comprehensive study could reliably establish patterns of British art32

Virginia Button, The Turner Prize (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999). Dalya Alberge, “ ‘ Artists of colour’ gallery redraws the cultural map,” The Independent (25 August 1992): 3. 34 Adrian Searle, “Artist finds poetry in motion: McQueen’s victory turns focus away from controversy of Tracey Emin’s bed,” The Guardian (1 December 1999): 7. 35 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 (26 January 2010), G2: 21. 33

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school enrolment for students from African, Caribbean or Asian backgrounds. And while the Tate has been happy, on its website and in its Turner Prizerelated publications, to wax lyrical about the history of “Mediums and Materials” in the Turner Prize,36 or what it called “The Gender Debate,”37 it has not been forthcoming about the ways in which Black artists have or have not figured in the history of the Turner Prize. In this regard, the Tate reflected Searle’s judgment that the Blackness of back-to-back winners of the Turner Prize “is of no significance.”38 On “Mediums and Materials” we can learn that, of the winners, 18 percent have been nominated for painting, 32 percent for sculptures/installations, 27 percent for mixed media/other, 14 percent for film/ video installations, and so on. Similarly, we can learn that “Some of the most unexpected art materials used in the Turner Prize have included rice [Vong Phaophanit], a bisected cow [Damien Hirst], elephant dung [Chris Ofili], an unmade bed [Tracey Emin],” etc. Or that four painters have won: Malcolm Morley (1984), Howard Hodgkin (1985), Chris Ofili (1998), and Tomma Abts (2006). We can even learn minutiae such as the fact that Wolfgang Tillmans was the first artist working solely with photography to win the prize in 2000, that 1994 was the first year an artist working with video was shortlisted, and that, since then, film or video-based work was shown every year (except in 2000), 2004 being the only year – thus far – when all of the artists shortlisted showed film or video work.39 Moving on to “The Gender Debate,” we learn from the Tate that 24 percent of presenters, 39 percent of jurors (excluding Directors), and 13 percent of the winners have been women. We also learn that Helen Chadwick and Thérèse Oulton were the first two female artists nominated (1987), that only three women have ever won the prize, that 1997 has so far been the only year in which an all-female shortlist was announced, and that there has been an allmale shortlist five times (1984, 1985, 1986, 1996, 2001).40 Unfortunately, this candour does not extend to racial or ethnic considerations of the history of the Turner Prize – for example, that (as mentioned earlier) Anish Kapoor, who won the prize in 1991, was the first non-British-born artist to do so. Or 36

“Twenty years of The Turner Prize: 1984–2004,” http://www.tate.org.uk/britain /turnerprize/history/essay.shtm (accessed 3 April 2011). 37 “Twenty years of The Turner Prize: 1984–2004.” 38 Adrian Searle, “Artist finds poetry in motion,” 7. 39 “Twenty years of The Turner Prize: 1984–2004.” 40 “Twenty years of The Turner Prize: 1984–2004.”

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that the first Black-British artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize was Chris Ofili, in 1998. The forthrightness with which considerations of gender were discussed in official Tate narratives about the Turner Prize contrasted markedly with an apparent refusal or inability to discuss racial aspects of the prize. In this regard, Richard Cork opined: Inexplicably, the 1996 shortlist turned out to be an all-male affair. Since the twenty-six artists chosen for The British Art Show included sixteen women, I was shocked by the Turner line-up. Why had none of the women making such an impressive contribution to the vitality of British art been deemed worthy of the prize? The jury’s selection gave the exhibition a narrow, retrograde air, stiflingly akin to the bad old days when women artists so often endured a state of near-invisibility.41

Similarly, save for the most timid of references to Britain being a “society that, broadly speaking, welcomes foreigners,” ideas about the ways in which race might have impacted on the Turner Prize and British art are wholly absent from an official Tate anthology that purported to discuss The Turner Prize and British Art.42 In a larger Tate volume about the history of the Turner Prize, the sole reference to racial aspects, the most that could be said of Ofili by the writer, was that “he also happened to be black.”43 Away from the Turner Prize, there were other significant ways in which the Tate sought to embrace or acknowledge certain Black artists, over and above the acquisition of a limited number of Black artists’ work for the Tate Collection. Perhaps the most visible form this acknowledgment took was in the realm of the decorative: i.e. at certain times, some Black artists were invited to decorate the frontage of the formidable Tate building and the statuary atop the building, and to engage in other projects of adornment. Yinka Shoni41

Richard Cork, “Preface” to Button, The Turner Prize, 12. It was Nicholas Serota, the Tate’s Director, who wrote in the “Foreword” to The Turner Prize and British Art: In Britain we live in a society that, broadly speaking, welcomes newcomers. Opening doors to economic and political migrants as well as our art schools to students from across the world has been beneficial to the visual arts in this country. New art flourishes where different streams of consciousness meet. Paris in the early years of the twentieth century, Berlin in the 1920s and New York during and immediately after the Second World War provided such meeting points. London, it can be argued, is now such a centre. (9) 43 Virginia Button, The Turner Prize, 142. 42

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bare figured prominently in these endeavours. By the early 1990s, as outlined in the previous chapter, Shonibare had begun to incorporate faux-African fabric into his paintings, leading him, in time, to abandon painting altogether and to concentrate more on photography and on sculptural pieces that utilized what was to become, in short order, his trademark, faux-African batik fabric, now described ad infinitum as a material associated particularly with West African national costumes. It has a curious history, born out of nineteenth-century economic practices. The designs originate in Indonesia, and the textiles are actually manufactured in Holland and England.44

Shonibare had seized on a startlingly original, singular, and engaging visual with which to continue his questioning of the ‘authentic’. Similarly, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the fabric was a leitmotif of Shonibare’s own existence and identity, in which all was not as it might seem, and realities of identity were a great deal more complex, intriguing, and surprising than prejudices, assumptions, and lazy thinking allowed for. The Tate found itself charmed by Shonibare’s stock in trade and commissioned him to decorate the central statue of Britannia, the dominant figure, flanked by a lion and a unicorn, gracing the roof above the pediment of Tate Britain. As mentioned, the Tate was envisaged as the National Gallery of British Art, so the late-Victorian statuary atop the building, employing the most pronounced symbols of Britain and its Empire, were intended to reflect the gallery’s mission and ongoing focus on British art. In October 2001 Shonibare dressed the central figure of Britannia in copious strips of his fauxAfrican fabric.45 The mighty Britannia, ancient imperial symbol, dominating the pediment of this grand and imposing building, found herself being given 44

Press release, “Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2001 by Yinka Shonibare” (7 December 2001). 45 The Guardian reported: To mark [the reopening of Tate Britain, by the Prince of Wales, in late October 2001] artist Yinka Shonibare was invited to costume the statue of Britannia dominating the original facade. He chose to reflect the colonial antecedents of a gallery founded on the Tate and Lyle sugar fortune, and has dressed her in streaming banners of brilliant “African” textiles – manufactured in Holland and England for export to Africa but bought at Brixton market in south London. — http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/oct/30/arts.monarchy (accessed 13 September 2011).

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what by now could be recognized as the Shonibare treatment. The metaphor was a compelling one. The edifice, the body politic, the very notion of Britain, graphically covered in African fabric that wasn’t really African, but yet, in other ways, most assuredly was. The piece’s analogies to a multicultural, or culturally diverse, Britain could not have been clearer. Shonibare’s dressing of Britannia also functioned as a statement of intent – that British art stood poised to be forevermore transformed not just by the practices of artists such as Shonibare but, just as important, by the resolve of the Tate to transform itself into an institution which valued diversity. A little while later, in December 2001, Shonibare was back at the Tate, this time decorating the gallery’s Christmas tree and making the Tate’s official Christmas card.46 The Tate tradition of each year inviting an artist to decorate its Christmas tree began in the late 1980s, Bill Woodrow being the first artist to be so commissioned. Since that time, artists such as Shirazeh Houshiary, Cathy de Monchaux, Cornelia Parker, and Catherine Yass had undertaken Christmas-tree commissions. A number of these artists had been on, or would go on to make, the Tate’s Turner Prize shortlist. Shonibare was no exception. Predictably, his idea involved the inevitable ‘African’ batik: Shonibare has wrapped 102 cane branches in densely shredded batik, in a variety of bold colours. The tree’s trunk and base were made of untreated iron. The base was constructed so that the roots of the tree spread out on the ground, forming a sinuous pattern. A fluorescent tube was suspended through the centre of the trunk giving off intermittent light through holes in the ironwork. Shonibare’s tree continued his exploration of national identity and tradition through the use of batik.47

Several years later, in 2004, another Black artist’s work adorned the façade of the Tate Gallery. On this occasion, it was Hew Locke and his sizable mixed-media work “King Creole.”48 Perhaps evocative of an overly decorated skull and crossbones, the work, which for a short while was hung between the two central columns of the Tate’s façade, continued Locke’s insistent investigations into the iconography of the state. On this occasion, the otherwise mundane image utilized was the familiar portcullis design with chains royally crowned, which appears on the reverse of the Bank of Eng-

46

Press release, “Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2001 by Yinka Shonibare.” Press release, “Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2001 by Yinka Shonibare.” 48 http://www.hewlocke.net/coatsofarms.html (accessed 3 April 2011). 47

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land’s one-penny piece (a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I I appearing on the obverse). Of the work (not the artist’s most successful), Locke wrote: I think of ‘King Creole’ as a giant funeral wreath the sort you might see at the funeral of ‘The Don’ in a 1970’s mafia film. It is wreathed not with living flowers, but with artificial, dead blooms – King Creole is King Death. The design is based on an original Pugin design for the House of Commons’ coat of arms, as seen on the back of every penny. A voodoo-esque version of this national icon, it refers to the buccaneering, piratical attitudes that have existed in British history, as well as the often vicious cut and thrust of ‘debate’ in the House, and of the real wars that can result. Tinsel blood stains the bottom edge of the portcullis. Plastic chrysanthemums are entwined with English roses and cannabis leaves. ‘King Creole’ partakes of the New Orleans and West Indian Carnival traditions which historically have commented on local and international politics. The downfall of Saddam reminded me of the death of ‘The Don’, and the cannabis refers to the ‘Legalise it’ campaign.49

More recently, the Tate again sought to declare itself to be an institution that valued diversity, and did so in the most dramatic of ways. During Chris Ofili’s mid-career retrospective, it flew his “Union Black,” a red-black-andgreen version of the Union Flag from its flagpole atop the building, located at a short distance behind the statue of Britannia that Shonibare had draped nearly a decade earlier. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the flag had made its debut a number of years earlier at the Venice Biennale of 2003, at which Ofili had represented Britain. The Tate’s strategies of inclusiveness were none too subtle. Commenting on institutional machinations, Richard Hylton noted “Publicly funded galleries, particularly major art institutions, have grown accustomed to making particular gestures towards diversity. This is arguably unsurprising given the influence of New Labour’s inclusive political agenda coupled with the Arts Council’s cultural diversity edicts.”50 The difficulty with these gestures, particularly those such as the adorning of Britannia or the flying of the Union Flag in the colours of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, is that they appeared theatrical, overdone, and mannered. A more serious problem, however, was the fact that these actions ultimately looked benevolent – repeated gestures or declarations of liberal posturing that masked, or 49 50

http://www.hewlocke.net/coatsofarms.html (accessed 3 April 2011). Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 130.

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left intact, much of what had historically kept Black artists out of the Tate. In the absence of direct agitation from Black artists themselves and in the face of concerted governmental edicts, it could be that the only tool, or course of action, at the disposal of such major arts institutions as the Tate were ultimately benevolent gestures towards diversity. Crucially, in these initiatives involving Locke, Ofili, Shonibare and others, difference was characterized not as an oppositional or alienated state, as was perhaps the case in the work of Joseph, Piper, and Rodney referred to earlier, but as a bright and colourful component and signifier of multicultural inclusiveness.

F I G U R E 21 Chris Ofili, “Union Black”  Theophile Escargot

When the artist Donald Rodney died in early 1998, he left behind only a relatively small proportion of his expansive and highly important oeuvre produced over nearly two decades. Prominent among this extant material was the artist’s personal archive with his beloved sketchbooks. The latter contained not only drawings, sketches, doodles, notes, and ideas for work, but were also full of clippings of newspaper articles that interested him. In this regard, he found the Sun to be an invaluable source of material, as much as, if not more so than, the Guardian or any other newspaper or magazine. Oftentimes from

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his hospital bed, or from his home, in which he was house-bound due to long periods of ill-health, Rodney would comb his newspapers not just for stories or articles on Black people but, more importantly, would scour these newspapers for indications of the ways in which ‘race’ was treated. A wide range of articles and news stories tickled, exercised, and intrigued him. For example, he was interested in how Mike Tyson, one of the towering sports personalities of the 1980s and 1990s, was consistently caricatured and vilified in sections of the mass media as a near sub-human beast and incorrigible delinquent. Likewise, he was preoccupied by the ways in which certain newspapers caricatured young Black males as inherently inclined to deviance and criminality. And the interplay between ‘race’, ‘immigration’, and the BlackBritish experience fascinated him. With wry cynicism and wit, Rodney would make good use of his cuttings, and these articles, cartoons, and pictures frequently made their way into his artwork,51 and he was forthright in interviews about this use of media imagery: I’ve been working for some time in a series […] about the black male image, both in the media and black self-perception. I wanted to make a self-portrait. [Though] I didn’t want to produce an image with myself in it. It would be far too heroic considering the subject matter. I wanted generic black men, a group of faces that represented in a stereotypical way black man as ‘the other’, black man as the enemy within the body politic. The pictures come from The Sunday Times and a book on blood diseases and the final black and white picture as an identikit picture from The Evening Standard.52

Even with many years of pursuing his singular and remarkable practice, Rodney’s most tangible successes were noted only posthumously. Included in this attention was one of the Tate’s most substantial embraces of a Black artist, its acquisition, in 2003, of the collection of Rodney’s archival material, including the sketchbooks. The following year, the Tate mounted what it called a ‘display’ of material on /by Rodney, centred on a number of the sketchbooks, which were exhibited in vitrines in one of the Tate’s smaller spaces, the Goodison Room, that had come to be used for such undertakings. 51 See, for example, “Cartoon 1” (1991, laminated print, newspapers and shelves, 94 x 116 x 30 cm), in Donald Rodney: Doublethink, ed. Richard Hylton (London: Autograph, 2003): 72. 52 Donald Rodney, in Shocks to the System: Social and Politic Issues in Recent British Art from the Arts Council Collection (exh. cat.; London: National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre, 1991): 66.

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Running from late September through to the end of the year, the Donald Rodney Display brought his practice to the attention of a wider public, as well as serving to remind others why Rodney was one of the most important artists of his generation.53 Despite, or possibly because of, the relative modesty of the scale of the show, the Tate devoted considerable resources to it, seeking to put Rodney and his work into wider social, political, and cultural perspective, and to foster understanding of him as an artist. This included interviewing several people who had known Rodney, all of whom had worked with him during his lifetime. They included Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, who, as director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, had been closely associated with Rodney when he undertook a traineeship there, and Marlene Smith, with whom Rodney had been a member of the the group sometimes known as the Pan-Afrikan Connection, later called the Blk Art Group, and David Thorp, who, as director of the South London Gallery, had been responsible for what turned out to be Rodney’s final solo exhibition during his lifetime, Nine Night in Eldorado, before his death from sickle-cell anaemia.54 One of the most troubling aspects of this particular Tate undertaking was that it took place at the time of the U K ’s Black History Month. (Unlike the U S A , where the idea of Black History Month originated, and where the designated month is February.) In that way, the Donald Rodney Display found itself shackled to benevolent, or possibly well-intentioned, gestures on the part of the Tate that had at their core the aspiration to broaden audiences, albeit through the somewhat distorting lens of one month a year dedicated to reaching out to, or seeking to address, ‘Black’ audiences. Black artists fre53

Donald Rodney Display, http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/rodney/intro duction.htm (accessed 3 April 2011); this is a highly detailed and informative online site for information about Rodney. The Display ran from 20 September to the end of December 2004. 54 Nine Night in Eldorado, South London Gallery, 10 September–12 October 1997. Like all of his work, the five pieces exhibited here demonstrated Rodney’s polyvalent, complex aesthetic, starting with the title of the show itself, which obliquely commemorates his father. Howard Hawks’s western El Dorado (1966) was his father’s favourite film, but the word evokes, with bitter irony, the Spanish conquistadores’ mythic hoard of gold and the false hopes of the Windrush-generation immigrants to the U K from the Caribbean. The traditional nine nights of feasting and reminiscence that take place in Jamaica after the death of a family member become the ‘wake’ of Rodney’s photographs, sculpture, and installations.

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quently found their endeavours linked to Black History Month. Rodney’s Nine Night in Eldorado, at South London Gallery (10 September – 12 October 1997), had been programmed to coincide with, and be a part of, Southwark Council’s Black History Month of that year. Anish Kapoor, the Turner Prize winner of 1991, and Chris Ofili, the winner of 1998, both served recent terms as Tate trustees, along with other artists such as Peter Doig, Julian Opie, Fiona Rae, Gillian Wearing, and Bill Woodrow, such appointments ultimately being rubber-stamped and announced by the Prime Minister. Presumably having reached “as diverse an audience as possible”55 in advertising trustee vacancies, those responsible for appointing Tate trustees selected Kapoor, whose term ran from late November 2005 to late November 2009, and Ofili (whom Kapoor replaced), whose term ran for five years from November 2000 onwards. Both artists served on the Tate’s Collection Committee, though Ofili’s tenure as a Tate trustee was overshadowed by the somewhat tawdry episode of the Tate’s purchase of Ofili’s “The Upper Room”56 series of paintings – said to have had a final sale tag of nearly three quarters of a million pounds – even as he himself served as a Tate trustee. The Tate was a registered charity, and when the purchase came to light it drew considerable comment, much of it incredulous, derisive, and disapproving, the Tate’s action appearing indefensible and causing widespread con55

http://www.tate.org.uk/about/governancefunding/boardoftrustees/join.htm (accessed 3 April 2011) 56 Richard Dorment described the sensory experience that was very much part of the viewing pleasure of “The Upper Room”: To see it, you walked down a darkened corridor to emerge into a long narrow space illuminated only by spotlights trained on 13 paintings – six lined up against each of the long walls, and one at the far end of the room. All the paintings rested on two mounds of Ofili’s trademark elephant dung, sprinkled with glitter. Twelve of the paintings had the same image: the sinuous outline of a monkey shown in profile, each facing towards the end wall. There, a much larger painting of an elephant, seated full-face like a comical Ganesha figure of Indian art and mythology, seemed to preside over them. […] The Upper Room, suggested a kind of Last Supper in which surrogates for the 12 Apostles and Christ gathered for some secret communion. In a traditional depiction of the Last Supper, you stand outside the room looking in. Here, Adjaye’s design plunged the viewer into the middle of the action so that we found ourselves surrounded by the ‘participants’ on three sides of the room. — Richard Dorment, “The chosen one,” Telegraph Magazine (14 June 2003): 40.

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sternation. 57 In the summer of 2006 the Charity Commission, having carried out an investigation into the Tate’s purchase of the Ofili – and, indeed, other trustees’ work – in a somewhat damning indictment, censured the Tate for breaking charity law. With that, a line of sorts was drawn under the affair. If the controversy surrounding the purchase of Ofili’s “The Upper Room” had generated additional interest in the work, then gallery-going audiences in London had significant opportunities to see the paintings. (They were first shown, in a wood-panelled environment especially designed by the architect David Adjaye, at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 25 June–3 August 2002.) Upon its acquisition by the Tate, “The Upper Room” was also on show at Tate Britain, for fifteen months between September 2005 and the end of 2006.58 In 2003, the Art Review named Adjaye as one of the new entries in its “Power 100: The Art World’s Top 100 Players.” Coming in at number 56, Adjaye was the only Black-British person to make the 2003 list. He was described thus: A Royal College graduate and the son of a Ghanaian diplomat. David Adjaye, 38, is a breath of fresh air. Describing his work as “building a bridge between art and architecture”, last year’s walnut-veneered Upper Room at Victoria Miro and the red, black and green British pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale attracted as many plaudits as the Chris Ofili paintings they housed.59

Several years later, the Adjaye/Ofili collaborative work formed a central element of a major mid-career retrospective by Ofili, held at the Tate, between January and May 2010.60 The exhibition was the most substantial undertaking 57

The extensive media coverage included such comments as the following: “Tate broke charity laws by buying art from its trustees,” Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent, Daily Telegraph (19 July 2006): 5; “How the Tate broke the law in buying this £600,000 Ofili work,” subtitled “Critical report highlights conflict of interest and poor management in purchase of art produced by serving trustees over many years,” Charlotte Higgins, Arts Correspondent, The Guardian (19 July 2006): 11; and “The Great Tate Art Scandal,” highlighted with the text “It has been hailed as a model for statefunded culture. But the gallery was yesterday portrayed as a cosy club all too willing to spend money on the work of its own trustees,” Louise Jury, The Independent (19 July 2006): 10–11. 58 Chris Ofili: The Upper Room, Tate Britain, 13 September 2005–1 January 2007. 59 “56: David Adjaye,” Art Review Power 100 2 (2003): 34. 60 Chris Ofili, Tate Britain 27 January–16 May 2010.

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to date by a Black artist at Tate Britain. Incidentally, “The Upper Room” was not the first time these two practitioners, frequently regarded as signifiers of New Labour’s inclusivity and dynamism, had worked together. David Adjaye, the architect responsible for making over Ofili’s home,61 was a partner in the firm Adjaye & Russell. Adjaye also collaborated with Ofili in the artist’s British representation at the Venice Biennale of 2003, at which Ofili presented a specially created new suite of paintings, and for which Adjaye redesigned the British Pavilion which housed the works. One critic described the collaboration as follows: In conjunction with Adjaye, Ofili designed an enormous dome for the central rotunda of the British pavilion, a seven-point star of red, black and green glass, lit from above with theatre lights so the colours spill over the gallery’s walls and floor, tinting the cycle of rich, densely coloured paintings Ofili has created for the space. […] The aim is to bombard, to saturate, to inundate the viewer with colour.62

One of the most recent collaborations between Adjaye and Ofili was the Stephen Lawrence Centre, a building project located in Deptford, London. Designed by Adjaye, the centre (which opened in 2008) featured etched windows designed by Ofili.63 In 2005, the Tate launched a long-term strategy to embed ‘diversity’ in all aspects of its mission and operation. Its subsequent publicity, titled Tate For All, declared: “Diversity is not about us and them. It’s about all of us.”64 In part, Tate For All’s aims and objectives were outlined and introduced as follows: Diversity is about and for everyone. Diversity for Tate therefore goes beyond equal opportunities and well beyond the six categories covered by law: disability, gender, race, religion / belief, age and sexual orientation. As a national institution, Tate has a responsibility to contribute to a society that makes the most of difference and creativity. We can do this by enabling everyone who works at Tate to play an active part in fulfilling Tate’s mission to increase 61

Jane Withers, “Within These Walls,” Guardian Weekend (25 November 2000):

59–66. For details, see fn 20 above, p. xxii. 62

Richard Dorment, “The chosen one,” 44. The somewhat troubled creation of the Stephen Lawrence Centre was discussed in the feature on the mixed fortunes of the building projects referred to in chapter 2 of this study. See esp. fn 120 above, p. 134. 64 Tate For All, press release (November 2006). 63

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knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of art. Tate’s Diversity Strategy has five objectives: 1 To open up access to visiting Tate and Tate programmes to all. 2 To tie diversity into organisational and individual planning and to transfer ownership and delivery of diversity to all. 3 To create an environment where staff feel valued, their differences are respected and there are opportunities for everyone to learn and realise their potential. 4 To open up access to working for Tate to all. 5 To become expert within the sector and lead in diversity. . . 65

Under New Labour edicts, many institutions at state, national, regional or local level were obliged to declare themselves supportive of ‘diversity’ in pretty much similar terms.66 The police, health-care sectors, transport, and education – all these fields and others, responding to government prompting or compulsion, came out with mission statements that used the same sorts of language, and declared the same intentions to make themselves over into supposedly more diverse, representative, and equitable organizations. For the most part, as with such things as equal-opportunity policies, merely or simply being in possession of a diversity mission statement was enough to escape sanction, avoid incurring government ire, and pass without hindrance into the firmament of New Labour Britain. Richard Hylton mentioned the inducements that accompanied the government’s insistence on a supposedly more equitable museum sector. One newspaper reported: “In return for their efforts to get a more diverse audience, the four biggest institutions (the British Museum, the [Victoria and Albert Museum], the Tate and the National Gallery) will receive an increase

65

Tate For All, press release (November 2006). As noted in the entry “Museums” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford: Oxford U P , 2007): 323–28, “it was not until the accession of the New Labour government in 1997, with its concerns about social inclusion, that museums embraced black history to any significant extent.” Later on in the entry, the point was reiterated as follows: “By May 1997 Labour’s landslide victory in the general election ensured that the pressure for change gathered pace. By December the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had set up the Social Exclusion Unit, designed to promote social inclusion of previously marginalized groups […]. Over the next few years the government increasingly urged museum professionals to see museums as instruments of social regeneration.” 66

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in grant of 3 per cent, slightly below the anticipated rate of inflation.”67 The newspaper report also revealed how “Britain’s most famous museums and art galleries” had “been told [by Government] that they must attract more visitors from ethnic minorities.”68

In turns, the Tate’s objectives, as was generally the way with such declarations, oscillated between the bland and the ultimately meaningless. Admission to the Tate Gallery had always been free, and the first of the above objectives – To open up access to visiting Tate and Tate programmes to all – did little more than mask (and left unaddressed) the deep-seated reasons why the substantial communities of people of African, Caribbean, and South Asian origin, living within relatively short distances of the Tate, would, could, and did go from one decade to another without setting foot in the institution. Similarly, statements such as “To tie diversity into organisational and individual planning and to transfer ownership and delivery of diversity to all,”69 while peppered with buzzwords and fashionable, right-sounding terms, ultimately meant little in any genuinely practical sense. Page after page of the Tate For All document was full of these noble sentiments. Presumably to encourage its staff, the document began its concluding notes thus: To achieve our diversity ambitions will require the participation of everyone at Tate – we all have a role to play. Change will not come just through large initiatives undertaken by the few but by the small steps that we can all make to do things differently.70

Artists such as Ofili, Locke, Shonibare, and latter-day Turner Prize nominees such as Isaac Julien (2001), Zarina Bhimji (2007), and Runa Islam (2008) were the principal beneficiaries of the Tate’s apparent embrace of diversity. But, setting aside such things as the Donald Rodney Display, the Black Turner Prize nominees and winners, and the other evidence of the organization’s embrace of Black artists, there were still signs that the Tate had changed relatively little in its century-plus history, save for some of its holdings and the colour of some of its catering staff, guards, caretakers, and security staff. Crucially, with the exception of the occasional training scheme, 67

Ian Burrell, “Museum grants tied to rise in ethnic minority visitors,” The Independent (6 December 2003), quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 26. 68 Burrell, “Museum grants tied to rise in ethnic minority visitors,” quoted in Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 26. 69 Tate For All, document (November 2006). 70 Tate For All, document (November 2006).

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there was scant evidence of the Tate’s being prepared to employ Black people in significantly increased numbers or otherwise seek their services as curators, librarians, archivists and so on. In May 2005, the Tate was one of a number of large London museums that hosted a trainee from the Inspire Fellowship Programme established to “address the under-representation of Black African, Caribbean, Chinese, South Asian and South-East Asian curators in the museums and galleries sector.”71 Richard Hylton noted that the Tate’s director, Sir Nicholas Serota, claimed: “This initiative is something we regard as a high priority for Tate.”72 Hylton also reported that Serota had stated: “Along with the other national museums we are very aware of the absence of black and ethnic minority curators in our team, at a time when we are trying to widen the range of our programmes and audiences.”73

As the first decade of the new millennium progressed, the Tate staged a number of artists’ talks, symposia, and other events about or involving some Black artists. Further, they launched research projects aimed at reframing Black-British artists’ practice and seeking to address the aims and objectives outlined in the Tate For All strategy.74 These initiatives involved artists, researchers, consultants, and academics, a number of whom were Black. But over and above those who were paid for their work, or those who took a particular interest in discussions relating to the practice of Black artists, conclusive and long-term beneficiaries of these initiatives have yet to be identified. As with much of the Tate’s involvement with Black artists, outlined earlier in this chapter, these stratagems were ultimately benign gestures, liberal posturing or political expediency; the gap between the Tate and Black people remained unbridged. Yet, so certain was the Tate that it had got right its policies and practices of equal opportunity and equal access, that within a few years of launching its Tate For All strategy, it was adding the following strap-line to all of its job vacancies: “Our jobs are like our galleries – open to all.”75 71

Arts Council England, London “Press Release” (23 May 2005), Arts Council England, London website. Quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 24. 72 Quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 24. 73 Quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 136. 74 See, for example, “Tate Encounters: Britishness and Visual Culture,” http://pro cess.tateencounters.org (accessed 3 April 2011). 75 See, for example, https://workingat.tate.org.uk/pages/job_search_view.aspx? jobId= 327&JobIndex=3&categoryList=&workingPatternList=&locations=&group=&keyword s=&PageIndex=1&Number=8 (accessed 30 June 2011).

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A pronounced aspect of the Tate’s strategy for dealing with Black artists was ‘retrospectivity’ – posthumously incorporating them into narratives of British art. Not only was this so with Donald Rodney, as mentioned, but it was also the case with Aubrey Williams. Two years before Williams died, Guy Brett wrote, with barely concealed frustration, of the “glaring injustice that Williams’s work was ignored and invisible in the country, Britain, where he has lived for nearly 40 years, as if it could not be compared with the work of his ‘English’ contemporaries.”76 Brett continued, parenthetically: No work by Williams has ever been bought by the Tate Gallery – the national contemporary collection – despite the fact that he has lived in Britain since the early ’50s. There has therefore never been the opportunity to compare his handling of abstraction directly with his contemporaries like Davy, Lanyon, Hoyland, Hodgkin: such comparisons would be revealing artistically, and socially, but we have been continually denied them.77

A substantial obituary on Aubrey Williams, written by Brett, appeared in the Independent for Tuesday 1 May 1999. In it, Brett revisited a number of the sentiments and ideas he has expressed, about Williams and his art, in previously published articles: There is as yet no work by Williams in the Tate Gallery. Historical and artistic changes we have been living through in the past 40 years have still not sunk into the national psyche. There has never yet been the opportunity to compare directly the abstract paintings produced by Williams with those of his fellow “English” artists working at the same time and in the same place, like Victor Pasmore, Alan Davie, Peter Lanyon or Patrick Heron.78

Earlier in the obituary, Brett conceded that Williams “was made a member of the Art Panel of the Arts Council in 1986 (admittedly an administrative rather than an artistic honour).”79 Nearly a decade later, Brett was still pondering on what he perceived to be the shabby treatment meted out to Willams during his lifetime: What does it mean that Aubrey Williams lived in Britain almost continually since arriving here from Guyana in 1952 until his death in 1990, and exhibited his work here, but was never considered part of British art? He was not included in any of the surveys mounted by such bodies as the Tate Gallery, 76

Guy Brett, “The Art of Aubrey Williams,” in Guyana Dreaming, ed. Walmsley, 97. Brett, “The Art of Aubrey Williams,” 97–98. 78 Guy Brett, “Obituaries: Aubrey Williams,” The Independent (1 May 1999): 15. 79 Brett, “Obituaries: Aubrey Williams,” 15. 77

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Arts Council or British Council. The first time his work was shown in an important mainstream public gallery was in The Other Story at the Hayward Gallery in 1989, an exhibition tracing the work of ‘Afro-Asian artists in postwar Britain’, which Rasheed Araeen, the organizer, had campaigned for ten years to put on.80

Brett could have added, for good measure, something noted by Anne Walmsley, in her “Chronology” included in the catalogue for Aubrey Williams, an exhibition held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1998. In February [1961], the Tate Gallery rejected an offer of work by Aubrey Williams and another artist from Dr Charles Damiano, a collector. Its director, John Rothenstein, wrote that the decision had been taken after long discussion ‘and enthusiasm on the part of certain trustees […].. The impression made by both artists was so favourable all the same that it was decided to keep a careful watch on their development.’81

Rothenstein, whose fulsome description of the greatness of Britain’s contributions to the visual arts was quoted at the beginning of chapter 2 of this study, made it clear in the above communication that a number of the Tate trustees were clearly steadfastly unimpressed with Williams’ work. Whatever “careful watch” Rothenstein and his trustees kept on Williams clearly came to naught. Within several years, Rothenstein’s tenure as director of the Tate had ended. So, too, in time, had the tenure of those trustees who had played with the idea of accepting the offer of Williams’ work. With that, whatever nominal interest the Tate had taken in Williams came to an end, at least until the years following Williams’ death some three decades later. A couple of years after his death, however, the Tate embraced Williams and was now describing his ‘forged palette’ thus: an important British artist who responded to American abstract art when it was first shown in London in the 1950s. Williams immediately took on board the expressive power of the mark, as seen in the works of Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky. He married this style of painting with a palette forged in the equatorial light of his homeland British Guiana (now Guyana).”82 80

Guy Brett, “A Tragic Excitement,” in Aubrey Williams (exh. cat., 12 June–16 August 1998; London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1998): 24. 81 Anne Walmsley, “Chronology,” in Aubrey Williams (exh. cat., 12 June–16 August 1998; London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1998): 75. 82 http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?roomid=4334 (accessed 3 April 2011).

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Unable to interest the Tate in his work during his long career, Williams had a posthumous display at the Tate, consisting of a selection of his figurative and non-figurative work, drawn from his estate.83 One of Williams’ most distinguished works from the early 1980s, “Shostakovich 3rd Symphony Opus 20” (1981), was bought by the Tate in 1993, some three years after the painter’s death. In September 2007, the Tate held an event titled “In Profile Aubrey Williams,” in which it described him as a key figure in the establishment of black visual culture in Britain and one of the founders of the Caribbean Arts Movement in the 1960s. His work and life continue to provoke debate, revealing as much about Williams’s work as about the cultural and political context in which it is viewed today. To coincide with a display of the artist’s archive, this study day brings together key critics, curators and artists including Guy Brett, Anne Walmsley, Dr Hassan Arero, Sonia Boyce, Dr Leon Wainwright and film maker Imruh Bakari to reconsider his role and legacy in British art.84

As time went on, the posthumous attempts to cast Williams as a British artist became increasingly mannered, insistent, and self-conscious. In 2010, Mel Gooding, a latter-day admirer of Williams’ work, wrote an essay on him for a substantial new catalogue.85 83

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?roomid=4334 http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/coursesworkshops/9740.htm (accessed 3 April 2011). Wainwright had authored a number of texts on Williams, including an entry on the artist in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford: Oxford U P , 2007): 527–28. See also Leon Wainwright, “Aubrey Williams: A Painter in the Aftermath of Painting,” Wasafiri 59 (Autumn 2009): 65–79, and “Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire,” in the catalogue Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire (exh. cat., 15 January–11 April 2010; Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 2010): 46–55. 85 Mel Gooding, “Aubrey Williams: The Making of a British Artist,” in Aubrey Williams, ed. Reyahn King (exh. cat.; London: October Gallery & Liverpool: National Museums Liverpool, 2010): 34–35. This catalogue accompanied the joint exhibitions Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 15 January–11 April 2010, and Aubrey Williams: Now and Coming Time, October Gallery, London, 4 February–3 April 2010. Gooding, who was introduced to Williams’ work through The Other Story exhibition, became something of an advocate of Williams’ paintings, opening exhibitions of Williams’ work at the October Gallery. Aubrey Williams: Dreams and Visions, 20 May–19 June 2004 and the above-mentioned Aubrey Williams: Now and Coming Time. 84

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The Tate was not the only major London gallery to accord Williams belated respect. In 1998, I N I V A , in association with the Whitechapel Art Gallery, mounted the major exhibition Aubrey Williams, mentioned above, complete with a monograph that surpassed any publication on Williams’ practice produced during his lifetime. The major difficulty with these posthumous initiatives was that they were disingenuous in failing to acknowledge the ways in which the institutions involved, and others, had ignored artists such as Williams during their lifetime. This was significant because this perceived disingenuousness and revisionism on the part of institutions such as the Tate left unaddressed considerations of how an artist’s practice might have evolved, under other, perhaps more favourable, circumstances. As Brett intimates, There has therefore never been the opportunity to compare his handling of abstraction directly with his contemporaries like Davy, Lanyon, Hoyland, Hodgkin: such comparisons would be revealing artistically, and socially, but we have been continually denied them.86

The ability to compare Black artists’ work with their white contemporaries was a valid and important one that challenged the racial, ethnic, or cultural quarantining of certain visual practices. Another Black artist to receive the posthumous Tate treatment was Ronald Moody,87 who “died in 1984 without receiving any official recognition from the British art establishment.”88 In belated acknowledgement of Moody, Guy Brett offered a high evaluation, as did Leslie Primo shortly thereafter: Self-taught wood-carver Ronald Moody, a former dentist born in Jamaica, is revealed as one of Britain’s most remarkable Modernist sculptors in a new display at Tate Britain.89

86

Guy Brett, “The Art of Aubrey Williams,” 97–98. For an introduction to Moody’s work, see Rasheed Araeen, “In the Citadel of Modernism,” in The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain (London: Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre, 1989): 16–19. In 1992, some eight years after Moody’s death, the Tate purchased one of his most important pieces, “Johanaan” (1936; elmwood, 155 x 72.5 x 38.8 cm). 88 Rasheed Araeen, “In the Citadel of Modernism,” 19. 89 Guy Brett, “A Reputation Restored,” Tate International Arts and Culture (March–April 2003): 79. 87

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it was after his death that Moody became truly recognized as one of Britain’s foremost modernist sculptors when, in 2002, the Tate Gallery, London purchased and featured his work in ‘A Reputation Restored’.90

A 2001 introduction to Tate Britain had framed Moody in similar terms, even as it distanced the Tate itself from any complicity in his being “overlooked”: The Jamaican-born Moody was one of the most original sculptors working in Britain in the 1930s, but his work was subsequently overlooked by the art establishment.91

As in the case of Williams, the Tate had been indifferent to Moody’s practice during his long career. In death, however, these artists found themselves incorporated into narratives of British art history, in somewhat hyperbolic language that drew attention to, rather than lessened, the mainstream marginalization they frequently endured during their careers. Another manifestation of the Tate’s ‘retrospectivity’ was its presentation, in 2011, of Thin Black Line(s), curated by Lubaina Himid.92 In 2005, the Tate was one of the London locations for Africa 05.93 According to the Tate, it had, as part of Africa 05, commissioned a wide-ranging programme. Africa 05 is a series of major cultural events taking place in London and the rest of the UK that celebrates contemporary and past cultures from across the continent and the diaspora. It has been developed by programme director Dr Augustus Casely–Hayford with the aim of raising the profile of the huge diversity of African arts and culture by bringing them into the mainstream and encouraging Britain’s arts institutions to make links with artists from across the African continent and to reach out to African communities here in the U K .94

90

Leslie Primo, “Visual Arts 2: Artists. 1 Ronald Moody,” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford: Oxford U P , 2007): 501. 91 Martin Myrone, Tate Britain, np. 92 For details, see fn 15, pp. 223–24 below. 93 http://www.tate.org.uk/africa05/ (accessed 3 April 2011). See also “A F R I C A 05 Partner Activity,” issued November 2004, and “Plans unveiled for Africa 05 – the U K ’s biggest ever celebration of African cultures,” press release issued 18 November 2004. 94 http://www.tate.org.uk/africa05/ (accessed 3 April 2011). See also “A F R I C A 05 Partner Activity,” issued November 2004, and “Plans unveiled for Africa 05.”

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But once-in-a-while ‘celebrations’ such as Africa 05 had little reach or depth, and consequently came and went leaving the merest footprint.95 As mentioned earlier, the Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor won the Turner Prize in 1991, the first non-British-born artist to do so. A year previously, Kapoor had represented Britain in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, again the first non-British-born artist to do so.96 As mentioned in chapter 2 of this study, in 1999 Kapoor was to become a Royal Academician. Together with Frank Bowling, who was elected to the Royal Academy a few years

F I G U R E 22 Anish Kapoor photograph by David Burges  Telegraph Media Group Limited

later, and another Indian-born sculptor, Dhruva Mistry, who was admitted to the RA in 1991, these artists may have unsettled the established /establishment white-male sensibilities with which the Royal Academy was generally asso95 For a critique of Africa 05, see Eddie Chambers, “[Polemic:] Africa 05,” Art Monthly 284 (March 2005): 44. 96 Anish Kapoor: British Pavilion, X L I V Venice Biennale, May–September 1990, British Council, 1990. See Britain at the Venice Biennale 1895–1995, ed. Sophie Bowness & Clive Phillpot (British Council, 1995). For the first hundred years of British representation at the Venice Biennale, all of the artists in the British Pavilion were white, with the exception of Kapoor.

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ciated.97 In this notional endeavour, women artists such as Tracey Emin, Cornelia Parker, and Fiona Rae joined Kapoor et al. as Royal Academicians.98 But a poster boy for the advancement of Black artists Kapoor most assuredly was not. Furthermore, he had, in public at least, steadfastly refused to associate himself with visual-arts undertakings that he felt had an unduly ‘racial’ aspect. Kapoor was one of a small group of naysayers – including Shirazeh Houshiary – who declined invitations to participate in the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s 1986 exhibition, From Two Worlds. In their introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Nicholas Serota and Gavin Jantjes made reference to the refuseniks: There are some omissions in the exhibition, of artists whose work fits naturally into such a theme […] in others [instances] artists declined the invitation to participate, perhaps fearing the imposition of an ‘ethnic’ label which they have aimed to avoid.99

Sonia Boyce, who had been involved in the discussions in which the From Two Worlds exhibition was developed, recalled that A few [artists] had problems with being in such a show, in terms of whether the context would restrict how their work could be viewed. They were worried that they would be classed as ‘black artists’ insofar as the word ‘black’, they said, is associated with the derivative and provincial, lacking in credibility or status.100

According to Niru Ratnam,

97

As noted by Leslie Primo, “Bowling’s contribution to British art was formally recognized with his election to the Royal Academy in May 2005, making him the first black artist to be elected to this establishment in its over 200-year history”; “Visual Arts 2: Artists. 2. Guyanese Artists,” 501–502. Chris Ofili claims that he was invited to become a Royal Academician, but that he declined. Ofili claimed that the Royal Academy representative from whom the approach was made stated that, were Ofili to accept, “‘it’s a great honour and you’d be the first black R A ,’ his suitor explained.” If correct, the Royal Academy’s approach to Ofili must have pre-dated its approach to Bowling, who was, as mentioned, elected to the R A in May 2005. Ofili’s claim is made in a feature on him (Gary Younge, “A bright new wave”) that appeared in the Guardian Weekend magazine (16 January 2010): 26. 98 http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/academicians/ (accessed 3 April 2011). 99 Nicholas Serota & Gavin Jantjes, “Introduction” to From Two Worlds, 8. 100 “Sonia Boyce in Conversation with John Roberts,” 59.

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The success of Anish Kapoor, who had determinedly kept his distance from ‘Black Art’, only seemed to confirm to its advocates that they had been part of a short-lived politically correct moment which had had only a superficial impact on the art world’s structures.101

Earlier in the same text, Ratnam had claimed that Kapoor “went to extreme lengths to play down any connection between his cultural identity and the work he produced.”102 Several years later, Kapoor, Houshiary et al. again assumed the roles of naysayers and refuseniks by declining to participate in Rasheed Araeen’s major Hayward Gallery exhibition, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain. In the foreword to the exhibition’s catalogue (and signalling tacit approval of the naysayers’ actions), Joanna Drew, the director of Hayward and Regional Exhibitions, and Andrew Dempsey, the assistant director of the Hayward Gallery, wrote: “A number of important artists felt unable to participate, wary of such a context for reasons which are perhaps understandable.”103 The naysayers – Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Kim Lim, Dhruva Mistry, and Veronica Ryan – were not listed or mentioned by Drew or Dempsey, who added, somewhat cryptically, that “Four of those five artists have shown in the Hayward before.”104 In one of the footnotes to her reflections on The Other Story, Jean Fisher suggested that, for the five artists who had chosen not to participate, The perception that an ‘ethnicity marker’ would, on the one hand, lead to limited readings of [their] work, and on the other, prejudice an artist’s success in a commercial market unreceptive to non-white artists was nonetheless a widespread anxiety.105

Fisher should perhaps have added the limiter that such anxiety was the preserve of a decidedly small number of blessed artists. Most Black artists tended to respond favourably, gratefully, and uncritically to whatever exhibition opportunities came their way.

101

Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 154. Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 153. 103 Joanna Drew & Andrew Dempsey, “Foreword and Acknowledgements,” The Other Story, 5. 104 Drew & Dempsey, “Foreword and Acknowledgements,” 5. 105 Jean Fisher, “The Other Story and the Past Imperfect.” 102

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At the Venice Biennale, artists chosen to represent Britain were doing just that – representing Britain. So, despite the postwar presence in Britain, particularly London, of so many practitioners from Commonwealth countries, the artists who tended to be selected for the British Pavilion at Venice were white and again perhaps more in the manner of traditional Royal Academicians and everything that such artists might typify or signify. As such, distinct and racially nuanced images of Britain as a ‘white’ country were declared to the world, via the artists and practice chosen to represent the country. Britain’s contributions to the Venice Biennale tended, until relatively recently, to take the form of groups shows. In 1968, the group-show format was set aside, and Phillip King and Bridget Riley, as major contributors, jointly represented Britain. Thereafter, established and establishment names such as Frank Auerbach, Tony Cragg, Howard Hodgkin, and Richard Long were the sorts of artist being honoured by the British Pavilion. They were the same general body of artists from whom the early Turner Prize nominees were drawn. And, as in the nascent years of the Turner Prize, in keeping with predictable and certainly dominant art-historical narratives, the practice of white males – with the exception of the occasional female artist – was unquestionably considered to represent the finest aspects of British art. A handful of artists of African and Asian origin did get to represent their countries in the highly important inaugural exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, Commonwealth Art Today,106 which took place from late 1962 through to early 1963. On this occasion, however, the countries represented were those of the artists’ birth, rather than that of their subsequent residence. Frank Bowling and Aubrey Williams represented British Guiana, Ivan Peries was one of the artists who represented Ceylon, and Avinash Chandra and F.N. Souza were two of the artists who represented India. Perhaps unwittingly reflecting the idea of Britain as a white, relatively mono-cultural group of nations, the U K was represented by Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, and Graham Sutherland. By the turn of the new millennium, the British Council had grown increasingly comfortable with the idea of a Black artist representing Britain. To this end, Turner Prize-winner Chris Ofili, as mentioned earlier, represented Britain at Venice in 2003,107 and Steve McQueen (who by now had been 106

Commonwealth Art Today, Commonwealth Institute, London, 7 November

1962–13 January 1963. 107

See Within Reach, vol. 1: Words, vol. 2: Works, vol. 3: an untitled notebook

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awarded an O B E ) received the same honour in 2009.108 By the early years of the new century, artists such as Ofili and McQueen had come to be regarded as latter-day established and establishment names – not just British artists but, more importantly, Britain’s artists; British by birth and, crucially, British by state patronage. Referring to Chris Ofili’s selection “by acclamation” to represent Britain, one critic proposed the view that it was, “in short, the most prestigious accolade the British art world can bestow.”109 The early years of The British Art Show reflected the same prevalent gender and ethnic selectivity as the British Pavilion at Venice. It is a five-yearly affair, which has evolved from its first, somewhat staid manifestations through to the cartwheeling road shows involving younger artists (arguably heavily influenced by the yBa grouping) that gallery-going audiences across the country have now grown used to. As Neil Mulholland opined when assessing The British Art Show of 2006 and the history of the exhibition, The first British Art Show (B A S ) opened its doors on December 1979 at the Mappin Art Gallery in Sheffield. A frumpy fair selected by the Financial Times’ art critic, William Packer, the show took much flak owing to its predilection for established white male artists.110

Such a sentiment should not detract from the presence in the exhibition of the Black artist Frank Bowling and the predictable or inevitable women artists such as Maggi Hambling, Prunella Clough, and Bridget Riley.111 Over the (British Pavilion 50th Venice Biennale, 15 June–2 November 2003; Victoria Miro Gallery, 2003). See also Chris Ofili: Within Reach, an audio C D produced for the Venice Biennale 2003 “At the British Pavilion, Venice, 15 June–2 November 2003.” 108 “Steve McQueen represented Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale. For his exhibition in the British Pavilion, McQueen presented a new film entitled Giardini, inspired by the area of Venice where the Pavilion is situated.” http://venicebiennale .britishcouncil.org/timeline/2009 (accessed 5 April 2011). See also Steve McQueen: Giardini Notebook (London: British Council, 2009). 109 Richard Dorment, “The chosen one,” 40. 110 Neil Mulholland, in Neil Mulholland & Andrew Hunt, “British Art (Does It) Show? Curated by Alex Farquharson and Andrea Schlieker, the British Art Show 6 opened at Baltic, Gateshead in September and will be touring to Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol. What does it reflect about the relationship between culture and geography in the U K ?” Frieze 96 (January–February 2006): 134. 111 See The British Art Show: Recent Paintings and Sculpture by 112 Artists, selected by William Packer, 1 December 1979–27 January 1980, Mappin Art Gallery,

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course of the half a dozen or so British Art Shows to date, the presence of Black-British artists has ebbed and flowed. As with what might be called the racial considerations of the Tate Gallery’s Turner Prize, one of the major difficulties in assessing or critiquing the extent to which The British Art Show has or has not sought to acknowledge Black artists is a distinct reticence on the part of official British Art Show narratives to assess the exhibition in such terms. In British Art Show catalogues there was little to no discussion of the interplay (or indeed, lack thereof) between Black artists and notions of ‘British’ art. Nevertheless, some important pointers and markers were alluded to by Tony Godfrey, in an essay written for the catalogue of The British Art Show 5 (2000).112 Noting the pronounced shift from what Mulholland had referred to as “established white male artists”113 to the more sprightly bright young things that latterly came to dominate The British Art Show, Godfrey suggested that this reflected “a shift from patronage to curatorship – symptomatically the selectors of The British Art Show 5 are for the first time called, by their preference, curators.”114 In time, The British Art Show would, to a similarly noticeable degree, move away from an emphasis on artists who were British by birth. The British Art Show 6 included artists born and brought up in countries as diverse as Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Iran, Serbia, and 115 U S A . While Godfrey waxed lyrical in his proficient critiquing of The British Art Shows, their trends, reception, and composition, his comments on the absence/ presence of Black artists are altogether more cautious. Of The British Art Show 3 (1990), he noted that “Half the artists were female and six were from ethnic minorities.”116 Further:

Sheffield. The exhibition then toured to venues in Newcastle upon Tyne and Bristol, February–May 1980. Catalogue, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979. 112 Tony Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” The British Art Show 5 (exh. cat., National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre, 2000): 20–32. 113 Neil Mulholland, in Neil Mulholland & Andrew Hunt, “British Art (Does It) Show?” 134. 114 Tony Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 20. 115 The British Art Show 6 (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2005). 116 Tony Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 26.

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This may have been a response to an Arts Council agenda for positive discrimination, but more importantly it was belated recognition that much of the best work was being done by women and artists of colour.117

In addition to the six ‘ethnic-minority’ artists referred to by Godfrey as having a place in The British Art Show of 1990, the exhibition also featured a work by the Black Audio Film Collective. Taken as a whole, these contributions mean that The British Art Show 3 stood out as including the most substantial number of Black artists, to date, in the history of that particular survey show.118 Godfrey, however, skirted debates about the Britishness of the artists and chose instead to emphasize the extent to which two of the artists were, as far as he was concerned, ‘exiles’, rather than artists with links to Britain that were as substantial and as ongoing as any other artist’s might be: There were also striking but melancholy installations by Mona Hatoum and Vong Phaophanit, Lebanese and Laotian exiles respectively. The first was of elements from an electric fire barring a corner, the second a bank of spinning electric fans with images of Phaophanit’s native, distant Laos projected on them.119

Perhaps the essay’s most forthright comments on the significance of The British Art Show 3 (which had been selected by Caroline Collier, of the Hayward Gallery, David Ward, an artist and tutor at Goldsmiths College, and Andrew Nairne, of the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow) were those of Stuart Morgan. Godfrey selected a passage from a review by Morgan in Artscribe.120 Dismayed by those he regarded as, in turn, being dismayed at the selection by Collier and company, Morgan had written: “[The British Art Show] has shown what we all knew before: that ‘British’ means not only white, but also black, yellow and brown and that ‘Britain’ means not only London. For the first time, perhaps, the work on show is powerful and sensitive enough to drive the point home for good. Shaffique Uddin, Vong Phaophanit, Sonia Boyce and in particular Mona Hatoum testified to the loneliness, anger and separation of outsiders in Britain.”121

117

Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 26. The British Art Show 1990 (London: The South Bank Centre, 1990). 119 Tony Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 28. 120 Stuart Morgan, “Complaints Department: The British Art Show,” Artscribe 81 (May 1990). 121 Quoted in Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 29. 118

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While Morgan could not steer clear of the somewhat sloppy and persistent caricaturing of certain artists’ work as being ‘angry’, he nevertheless made some perceptive comments when he rounded on the show’s critics. With the exception of Frank Bowling, Black artists were absent from the first British Art Show held at the end of the 1970s. In The British Art Show of the mid-1980s, non-British-born artists were again conspicuous by their absence, notwithstanding the arguably predictable inclusion of Indian-born Kapoor and Iranian-born Houshiary.122 By now it was seemingly beyond question or doubt that Kapoor and Houshiary were perceived very much as British artists, their respective sculptural practices being regarded as comfortably in step with the leading white British artists who were their contemporaries. Such was the extent, or success, of Kapoor and Houshiary’s assimilation that Caroline Collier, in critiquing The British Art Show 2 (which had included these two artists), was quoted by Godfrey as reflecting that “One of the indisputable weaknesses of the British art world is its insularity, its parochialism. Another is that it somehow succeeds, despite the artists, in making an event of this kind a wholesome bore.”123

Tantalizingly, Godfrey added the claim that “(Others had suggested the time had come to include artists from overseas.),”124 though this was left unelaborated. Although Collier bemoaned the aforementioned perception of insularity, and its tendency towards dullness, others took a somewhat opposing view. Writing a year or so after Collier made her comments, the then Guardian art critic, Waldemar Januszczak, had offered the view that “The fact that British art is currently being enriched as never before, by artists from Third World and non-European countries, cannot have escaped the attention of any but the most casual art observer.”125 As mentioned earlier, despite many years of pursuing his singular and remarkable practice, much of Donald Rodney’s most tangible career successes were posthumous. In hindsight, it now seems incredible that Rodney was not included in The British Art Show 4 alongside Permindar Kaur, Chris Ofili,

122

The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions, 1979–84 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain / Orbis, 1984). 123 Caroline Collier, quoted in Tony Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 26. 124 Godfrey, “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” 26. 125 Waldemar Januszczak, “There is a world elsewhere,” 8.

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and Steve McQueen. After all, as already indicated, Keith Piper himself had in 1997 singled Rodney out as something special.126 In a gesture of calculated cynicism, Rodney was one of only two artists of African /Asian background included in The British Art Show 5, in 2000, the other being Bangladeshiborn Runa Islam.127 Nearly fifteen years after The British Art Show 4, another Black artist not included in the exhibition, Yinka Shonibare, was still smarting over the alleged or perceived slight. When asked to describe a low point in his life, his reply (as mentioned in the previous chapter) was: “Not being included in [national touring exhibition] British Art Show 4 in 1995. That really hurt.”128 More than two years later, in 2011, Shonibare was still hurting over this apparent slight. He was, once again, the subject of a lifestyle Q&A, this time in the Guardian Weekend magazine.129 In response to the question, ‘What has been your biggest disappointment?’, Shonibare volunteered: “Not being selected for the British Art Show in the 1990s.” In contrast to The British Art Show 5’s decidedly modest tally of artists of African / Asian origin (one of whom had died several years earlier), The British Art Show 6 was a relatively well-endowed affair. It included work by the likes of Zarina Bhimji, Hew Locke, Rosalind Nashashibi, Zineb Sedira, and Alia Syed.130 By way of an addendum, it is perhaps worth noting the changing nature of British Art Show-type exhibitions that leave the U K , under the stewardship of the British Council. Traditionally, such exhibitions were effectively all-white affairs. Richard Hylton summarized one particular protest (in 1979) against such an exhibition. [Rasheed] Araeen and fellow artist David Medalla had sent “An Open Letter to the British Council” in which they were “appalled to know that no black artist was considered suitable to take part in the exhibition” called Existe-t’il un art anglais? shown at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. Sixty artists had been invited to participate in the exhibition, which according to Araeen and 126

See Piper’s comments on the Nine Night in Eldorado exhibition (104 above). The British Art Show 5. Toured to venues in Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff and Birmingham, between April 2000 and January 2001. 128 Laura Barnett, “Portrait of the artist: Yinka Shonibare, artist.” 129 Rosanna Greenstreet, “Yinka Shonibare: Q&A,” Guardian Weekend (30 April 2011): 8. 130 The British Art Show 6. Toured to venues in Gateshead, Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol, between September 2005 and September 2006. 127

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Medalla was “supposed to be representing all the new important aspects of art in Britain in the ’70s”131

In 1985 The British Show, a major undertaking, toured to important galleries in Australia.132 As with the earliest manifestations of the Turner Prize and the British Pavilion at Venice, the emphasis was on established and establishment figures, and the equally regarded essayists who introduced the artists in the accompanying catalogue. Artists such as Stephen Cox, Tony Cragg, Lucien Freud, Leon Kossoff, and Julian Opie were written about by Lewis Biggs, William Feaver, Peter Fuller, Waldemar Januszczak, and Sandy Nairne. While there was no room in the show for any artists such as those recently exhibited in Into the Open, or, indeed, for veteran artists such as Rasheed Araeen, Uzo Egonu or Aubrey Williams, Kapoor and Houshiary were inevitable or unsurprising contributors to The British Show. The exhibition took place at the same moment in which Tam Joseph was painting “The Sky at Night.” Eschewing any sort of explicit social comment, or work that might point to the ugly and naked racial fissures in British society, The British Show projected an image of serene monoculturalism, which presumably sought to comfort, rather than disturb, gallerygoing audiences Down Under. Within two decades, however, a latter-day version of The British Show, titled Pictura Britannica: Art From Britain and again under the stewardship of the British Council, toured to principal galleries in Australia and New Zealand.133 By now, however, in keeping with the times, both the exhibition and those responsible for it were keen to project an altogether less constrained and less dull, monocultural, and staid vision of British artistic practice. Accordingly, Pictura Britannica included the likes of Rotimi Fani–Kayode (who had died some years earlier), Permindar Kaur, Chris Ofili, Vong Phaophanit, Yinka Shonibare, and Maud Sulter. Similarly, the Pictura Britannica catalogue featured essays by Kobena

131

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 74. The British Show (exh. cat.; Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1985). 133 Pictura Britannica: Art From Britain, 22 August–30 November 1997 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The exhibition then toured to the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 19 December 1997–1 February 1998 and the City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 27 February–26 April 1998. 132

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Mercer and Nikos Papastergiadis, both of which discussed, or touched on, the experiences, history, and framing of Black artists in Britain.134 The 1999 exhibition “From Where to Here”: Art From London, supported by the British Council and shown in Sweden, can be similarly regarded. The exhibition featured artists representing London but from countries such as Brazil, Laos, and Pakistan – Juan Cruz, Ceal Floyer, Lucia Nogueira, João Penalva, Vong Phaophanit, Annie Ratti, Zineb Sedira, John Seth, Anne Tallentire, Simon Tegala, and Mayling To; in addition, there were artists such as Sonia Boyce and Yinka Shonibare, born in London of African-Caribbean and African parents respectively. The catalogue essay reflected the current embrace of diversity and stood in marked contrast to the fare exported by the British Council just a decade and a half earlier: the very notion of national ‘representation’ seems curiously out of tune with the current times, when ‘from where’ (indeterminate) seems of far greater relevance than ‘from here’, and is represented by thirteen artists, who all live in London, but come from completely different social, educational and cultural backgrounds and have cultural roots which reach into the farthest extremes of Europe – and, beyond that, into all corners of the globe.135

The issue of how British art is seen from abroad is interlinked with how British art sees and presents itself in the international arena. In the mid-1990s, on the occasion of The British Art Show 4, Patricia Bickers wrote a ‘view from abroad’ on the ‘Brit Pack’, though it referred neither to the historical absence of Black artists from international exhibitions of British art nor to how Black artists such as Chris Ofili were beginning to figure in such line-ups.136 While Black artists have, on occasion, featured in The British Art Show, no Black selector has yet participated in the exhibition’s planning. Although the Afri134

Kobena Mercer, “Back to My Routes: A Postscript to the 1980s,” in Pictura Britannica: Art From Britain, ed. Bernice Murphy (exh. cat., 22 August–30 November 1997; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 1997): 112–23; Nikos Papastergiadis, “Back to Basics: British Art and the Problems of a Global Frame,” in Pictura Britannica, ed. Murphy, 124–45. 135 “Introduction” to “From Where to Here”: Art From London (exh. cat., 27 November 1999–30 January 2000; Göteborg: Konsthallen, 1999): 5. The exhibition was put together by Svenrobert Lundquist, Director of Konsthallen, Göteborg and Henry Meyric Hughes, independent curator. 136 Patricia Bickers, The Brit Pack: Contemporary British Art: The View from Abroad (Cornerhouse Communiqué 7; Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1995).

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can-American curator Thelma Golden was a jurist for the 2007, the first and only time, thus far, that a Black-British person has served as a Turner Prize jurist was in 2008, the jurist in question being the architect David Adjaye.

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5

1

Everything Crash 

[Okwui] Enwezor tells us that he flew all over God’s earth looking for artists to include in the exhibition, but evidence of genuine research is hard to ascertain, because Enwezor’s selection (and that of his [Octavio] Zaya his co-curator) is quite a lazy one. Take for example the London contingent, which includes the likes of Yinka Shonibare, Steve McQueen, Isaac Julien, Vong Phaophanit, Sam Taylor–Wood and Mark Wallinger. These are all accomplished and successful artists whose work is already doing the rounds. If these British artists were Enwezor’s most original selection, that gives you some idea about the rest of the exhibition and the international artists represented in it.2

T

has come close to replicating anything like the broad range of exhibition activity involving Black artists in the 1980s.3 (To some extent, the initiatives of artists and activists themselves must be differentiated from a more institutional embrace of Black artists during the decade.) More tellingly, there has been little to nothing of the drive, energy, and inventiveness with which artists and activists pursued their own visions and their own agendas. When Shakka Dedi and other like-minded individuals set up the Black-Art Gallery, via their organization, O B A A L A , they did so in ways that were decidedly proactive,

1

HUS FAR, NO MOMENT IN RECENT HISTORY

“Everything Crash,” a popular reggae song by The Ethiopians, was released in Jamaica in 1968. The song bemoaned the political paralysis and widespread labour unrest of the time. Most significantly perhaps, the song lamented the floundering of the hopes and dreams of independence, which had been ushered in just a few years earlier. Sorrowfully, the song reiterated the Jamaican proverb ‘What gone bad a mornin’ can’t come good a evenin’. 2 Eddie Chambers, “Johannesburg: A Review of the Second Johannesburg Biennale,” Art Monthly 212 (December 1997–January 1998): 17. 3 For discussion of this activity, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986: Press and Public Responses.”

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with no primary regard for what mainstream galleries were or were not doing.4 Likewise, when the grouping of cultural activists headquartered in Brixton, south London, established themselves as Creation for Liberation, they did so wholly without primary reference to governmental ethos or artsfunding mechanisms.5 Instead, in both instances, these initiatives were developed as a means of giving platforms to a greater range of Black artists. Those were different days. Artists did not tend to presuppose that Arts Council funding had to be secured in order for them to undertake substantial projects. Conversely, the Arts Council’s engagement with ‘ethnic arts’ and all of its subsequent incarnations was still very much in its infancy.6 The art world has changed almost beyond recognition over a period of little more than two decades. There was no pronounced and sustained courting or embracing of Black artists, and governmental or other state initiatives (such as they were) were regarded by many Black people themselves with indifference, suspicion, or hostility. Much of the exhibition activity generated by Black artists themselves, across a range of gallery spaces, was autonomous, rather than initiated at the behest of a gallery system that frequently had to be cajoled into exhibiting Black artists. But since the 1980s, in a relatively short space of time, projects initiated by Black artists themselves had ended, or in some instances, crashed and burned. Equally fatally, galleries themselves were not inclined to repeat or continue the sorts of engagement with Black artists that had led to exhibitions such as Into the Open or From Two Worlds. For most Black artists, these two developments were a twofold setback from which many of them, in terms of their profile, never recovered. In tallying up the fortunes of Black-British artists over the period of this study, we can venture the blunt summary that a limited number of winners have advanced into prominence, at the expense of a far greater number of losers, who have retreated from view. But this is not necessarily anything out of the ordinary. The art world has always been reluctant to deviate from a relatively narrow grouping of artists who are regarded to be of proven worth and calibre, or who have been identified as new, upcoming, exciting. Traditionally, Black artists have only had a limited showing in either of these two favoured categories. The art-world star system has gradually, 4

See Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986.” See Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986.” 6 For a substantial discussion of the history of the Arts Council’s involvement with Black artists, see Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast. 5

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over a period of several decades, become hegemonic and (the fortunes of the likes of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare aside), this system has ultimately disadvantaged the majority of Black artists, curtailing their chances of achieving significant career success. One of the most important reasons for this is the way in which there has been a discernible convergence of curatorial agendas among the country’s art galleries. In the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a wide range of visual arts venues, which were – despite the generally poor profile of Black artists in these galleries – exhibiting a similarly broad span of artists’ practice. The extent of arts spaces included municipal and local-authority galleries, which were frequently adjacent to, or housed in, museum or library buildings in town and city centres; arts centres, in which audiences could access such art forms as theatre, dance, music, and poetry, alongside the visual arts; independent art galleries that tended not to be under the direct control of either local authorities or national and regional funding bodies; university and polytechnic art galleries; gallery spaces in artists’ studios; and, in London, there were also both the national galleries and the private gallery sector. To some extent this plurality reflected or covered different artists, different audiences, and different types of media outlet. Over time, however, these gallery spaces have converged and coalesced around a much more limited range of the same artists. These art spaces were in many ways reflected in the range of professionals or semi-professionals charged with mounting exhibitions there – again despite the generally poor prospects of Black people who might seek employment in these venues. From university-trained keepers of art who worked in city museums and galleries, through to librarians and others whose jobs included looking after gallery spaces in libraries and arts centres; from art-school tutors who looked after their college’s gallery spaces, through to artists and other practitioners who had morphed into gallery directors – there was a discernible plurality of arts personnel, reflecting the plurality of galleries. Again over time, and again with little exception, this range of personnel has clustered around a much more limited range of like-minded people who now invariably refer to themselves as curators. Here we have to recognizee the ‘professionalizing’ of the visual arts and the ways in which the proliferation of curating courses has detrimentally narrowed the range of preferences and sensibilities among gallery staff. As Tony Godfrey has noted, Broadly speaking, since 1979 it seems that the art world has changed from something like a gentleman’s club to a website and that the large group show

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has been transformed from an anthology to an argument. Most generally, we see a shift from patronage to curatorship – symptomatically the selectors of The British Art Show 5 are for the first time called, by their preference, curators.7

In a footnote to this, Godfrey states: The rise of the curator, someone who organizes exhibitions as their profession, is a key development in the last twenty-five years. It is symptomatic that the selector of The British Art Show 1 was a critic and that two of the three ‘selectors’ of The British Art Show 5 should describe themselves, wholly or in part, as freelance curators. A defining moment in the professionalization of the curator in Britain was the founding in 1992 of the Royal College of Art M A in Visual Arts Administration: Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Art.8

Although possibly unintended, these changes tended to limit, rather than foster, the plurality through which Black artists of the 1980s sought and gained exhibition exposure. The galleries of the country have by and large pursued the same ‘white cube’ aesthetic and, in a kind of systemic feedback, are now run by the same sorts of people, who tend to congregate curatorially around the same sorts of artist. With few exceptions, Black-British artists are clear losers in these changes. Worse still, the dominant cultural, political, and intellectual climate seems largely unconducive to the emergence of new generations of Black artists, outside of existing frameworks, structures, and pathologies. From different quarters we have witnessed the stacking-up of formidable factors that have historicized earlier generations of Black-British artists and militated against repetition of their group-level successes. We need also to consider that, despite the relatively increased academic attention being paid to Black artists in recent years, no moment in recent history has come close to generating anything like the variety of argument, opinion, and debate that circulated around exhibition activity involving Black artists in the 1980s.9 With regard to the 1980s, several cautionary notes should be struck. Mainstream gallery activity involving Black artists sometimes came across as 7

Tony Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000,” in The British Art Show 5 (exh. cat.; London: National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre, 2000): 20. 8 Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000.” 31 9 See Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986,” esp. Chapter Two, “Black Art: For and Against.”

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benevolent gestures and frequently came about as a result of political pressure, on occasion from funding bodies anxious to see some sort of nod towards greater diversity in the programming of the institutions they funded.10 Furthermore, most of the large-scale group exhibitions involving Black artists were mounted by galleries that declared these exhibitions to be opening manoeuvres – hopefully, further attention would be paid to these artists. Group or survey shows were overtures, to be followed by closer curatorial involvement with individual Black artists. This was hardly ever the case. Whatever exposure certain Black artists had in group exhibitions was as much institutional or mainstream attention as they were ever likely to get. Furthermore, although the decade looked particularly fruitful for Black-British artists, quantifiable activity was modest. Between 1981 and the end of the decade, a significant number of galleries in the capital and across the country had little to do with Black artists. And of those that did, their attention was often fleeting. One researcher, Juliette Jarrett, focusing on the mixed fortunes of the Black woman artist, warned against too generous a reading of the 1980s: it would be a mistake to give the impression that there were many exhibitions by Black women during the 1980s. From 1980 to 1990 there were only eight solo exhibitions by Black women in mainstream galleries.11

Although Jarrett did not directly provide the source of her bald statistic, it had, several years earlier, been supplied by Lubaina Himid, whose embellishment of it served only to emphasize the paltry figure. As Himid observed, “There have been no more than 8 solo exhibitions by black women in major galleries in the last decade. Five of these have taken place in one gallery in a span of four years.”12 Richard Hylton presented another stark assessment of the fortunes of Black artists, in the middle of what has widely been reported as being ‘their’ decade. 10

Lubaina Himid, who had been responsible for organizing The Thin Black Line exhibition at the I C A in 1985, had claimed: “The G L C [Greater London Council] had threatened to withdraw its considerable contribution to the I C A if something black did not appear in that financial year.” Her claim was made in “Mapping: A Decade of Black Women Artists 1980–1990,” in Passion: Discourses on Black Women’s Creativity, ed. Maud Sulter (Hebden Bridge: Urban Fox, 1990): 65. 11 Juliette Jarrett, “Creative Space? The Experience of Black Women in British Art Schools,” in Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism: Writings on Black Women, ed. Delia Jarrett–Macauley (London: Routledge, 1996): 123. 12 Lubaina Himid, “Mapping: A Decade of Black Women Artists 1980–1990,” 67.

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During [Arts Council] Committee meetings, members and representatives were […] free to express more general concerns about the profile and support Black artists were receiving from both the Arts Council and the gallery sector. Comments such as “only one work of art had been purchased by the [Arts Council] Art Department from the many exhibitions by Black artists this year” seem to suggest a general recognition that Black artists were receiving a derisory share of the pie. This view was, at least within the confines of these meetings, not held solely by advisors of Ethnic Minority Arts Officers: “Elizabeth McGregor [sic] of the Art department agreed that the Black Art profile in and around the London areas was particularly low, despite this being the area of highest activity.”13

The perception, however, was that Black artists did particularly well out of the 1980s. This view is of crucial importance – having stuck in the mind as a monumentally important decade for Black artists, the 1980s has since stood as a towering and enduring edifice of Black artistic achievement. Much like the framing of the Harlem Renaissance, the ‘critical decade’ of the 1980s shines as a beacon of achievement, in constant need of fuelling with acknowledgement, appraisal, even adulation.14 Two of the most recent manifestations of this were offered up in the summer of 2011 by Tate Britain and Graves Gallery, Sheffield, respectively. The Tate presented a display titled Thin Black Line(s). Devised by Lubaina Himid, it reprised, through archival material and a selection of art works, her curatorial interventions of the 1980s, which centred on the multiple practices of Black women artists.15 Running 13 Minutes of the Monitoring Committee (Ethnic Minority Arts Action Plan) Held on Wednesday 8 October 1986, point 2, A C G B /32/22, box 1 of 3, Arts Council of Great Britain archive, Victoria and Albert Museum. Quoted in Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 64. 14 Critical Decade was a Ten.8 Photo Paperback. Subtitled “Black British Photography in the 1980s,” the issue (2.3) was published in Spring 1992. 15 Thin Black Line(s) ran from 22 August 2011 to 18 March 2012. It was described on the Tate website as follows: In the early 1980s three exhibitions in London curated by Lubaina Himid – Five Black Women at the Africa Centre (1983), Black Women Time Now at Battersea Arts Centre (1983–4) and The Thin Black Line at the Institute for Contemporary Arts (1985) – marked the arrival on the British art scene of a radical generation of young Black and Asian women artists. They challenged their collective invisibility in the art world and engaged with the social, cultural, political and aesthetic issues of the time.

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largely concurrently with Thin Black Line(s) was B L K A R T G R O U P 1983– 1984. The card announcing the exhibition described the exhibition in the following terms: The Blk Art Group was formed in the early 1980s by a radical group of young black artists including Eddie Chambers, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, and Marlene Smith. At a time when the Conservative government was on the rise and the Brixton riots were shaking London, the Blk Art Group emerged as a creative force in Britain. This exhibition will feature significant works which were acquired for Sheffield during the 1980s, but which have rarely been seen since. It will also explore the important role that regional galleries, including Sheffield’s, played in supporting and promoting black British art at a time when many public art institutions were reluctant to engage with the political subject matter.

The exhibition opened on 7 September and was programmed to continue “until March 2012.” In such a mind-set, comparatively little attention was paid to Black artistic activity before the 1980s, nor, indeed, to that which came thereafter. The conceivably over-generous framing of the 1980s has, perhaps inadvertently, distracted from the task of seeking ever-greater and

This display features a selection of key works by some of these artists. At their core is a conceptual reframing of the image of black and Asian women themselves. Drawing on multiple artistic languages and media, these works repositioned the black female presence from the margins to the centre of debates about representation and art making. Most of the works on display have been lent by the Arts Council and from artists’ private collections. They and local museums were more proactive at the time than national museums such as Tate in collecting these works. The participants in the three exhibitions were: Brenda Agard, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Burman, Jean Campbell, Jennifer Comrie, Margaret Cooper, Elizabeth Eugene, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Mumtaz Karimjee, Cherry Lawrence, Leslee Wills, Houria Niati, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith, Maud Sulter and Andrea Telman. This display has been devised by artist Lubaina Himid M B E , Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire, with curator Paul Goodwin. — From http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?venueid=1&roomid=7237 (accessed 29 August 2011).

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perhaps, in some instances, more credible levels of exposure for the wider body of Black artists in Britain in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Black art seems frozen in the 1980s. Particularly problematical in this regard was Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, the 2005 book, which was, as mentioned elsewhere in this study, based on a conference of the same name, which took place at Duke University in 2001. Both conference and book sought to recall, critique, and revisit the supposed glory days of the 1980s. The publicity for Shades of Black centred on a somewhat overblown claim: In the 1980s – at the height of Thatcherism and in the wake of civil unrest and rioting in a number of British cities – the Black Arts Movement burst onto the British art scene with breathtaking intensity, changing the nature and perception of British culture irreversibly.16

In her review of Shades of Black, Courtney J. Martin claimed that, for the book and the art it promoted, “One of its chief successes is situating Black British art in the discourse of modernity, thereby bridging one (neglected) gulf between nineteenth-century British art and British art in the 1990s.”17 Such fulsome and fanciful comments stood in marked, sobering, and telling contrast to the studious indifference shown towards most Black artists, by academia and the gallery system alike. There is little to no evidence that sentiments such as Martin’s were reflected in any wider academic or curatorial engagement beyond what was narrowly defined by notions of race or ethnicity. The idea that British culture has been irreversibly changed amounts to a sense of a mission having been accomplished; no further action was required. The Harlem Renaissance analogy applied to Black artistic activity in the 1980s can be detected in the publicity for a Sonia Boyce exhibition at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool in early 2010: “Sonia Boyce, pioneer in the Black British cultural renaissance of the 1980s, is returning to Liverpool’s creative hub, the Bluecoat, 25 years after first exhibiting there.”18 A more measured, albeit dispiriting, assessment of the legacy of Black artists of the

16

From the back cover of Shades of Black. Courtney J. Martin, “Brixton Calling,” Art Journal (Spring 2007): 119. 18 Media release for Sonia Boyce, Like Love (Liverpool: Bluecoat Gallery, 30 January–28 March 2010). 17

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1980s was offered by Niru Ratnam, for whom Britain’s ‘Black Art’ “advocates” were part of a temporary, surface phenomenon.19 With the “Black British cultural renaissance”20 of the 1980s being remembered, or constructed, as a noteworthy high point for Black-British artists, there has been an attendant implication that what happened thereafter (and, in some ways, what happened beforehand) was of no great consequence. The hyperbole drowning out a more measured or nuanced art historical assessment of Black artists in 1980s Britain has resulted in, or gone hand-in-hand with, a fatal fly-in-amber historicizing of these artists. As Gen Doy wrote, “at the end of the twentieth century, black visual culture is seen by some cultural critics and historians as something which took place in the 1980s.”21 In the dominant racial pathologies of the art world, what were often slight or modest contributions by Black artists were blown up into highly significant endeavours of lasting valency. Black artists have tended to find that during the 1980s and thereafter, solitary and sporadic group exhibitions of their work went a very long way. A gallery might have had only the briefest flirtation with Black artists, but as far as appearance and perception were concerned, that flirtation was often over-valorized, by the galleries themselves and by onlookers such as the press, in whatever passing interest it sometimes took in these matters. With so many Black artists’ exhibitions being relatively large group shows, substantial individual exhibitions of an artist’s work were a rarity. Lubaina Himid noted, when commenting on the impression of the 1980s as a bountiful period for Black artists, The pervading impression is therefore of a great proliferation of exhibitions of black artists [sic] work, huge numbers of artists, but no real expanding of an individuals [sic] boundaries.22

Kobena Mercer’s appraisal of Black artists’ achievements reflected something of the pathology whereby modest and sporadic undertakings took on the

19

Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity.” See quotation above, p.

206–207. 20

Media release for Sonia Boyce, Like Love (Liverpool: Bluecoat Gallery, 30 January–28 March 2010). The notion of a cultural renaissance had previously been given an airing by Leslie Primo; collapsing several decades, and several generations of artists, into one moment (see long quotation, p. 106 above). 21 Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture, 242. 22 Lubaina Himid, “Mapping: A Decade of Black Women Artists 1980–1990,” 67.

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semblance of something more substantial.23 He cited cities such as Bristol, Liverpool, and Manchester as having “long-standing” track records in showing Black artists’ work.24 But precious few venues, in cities such as these, could be said to have had more than a passing or token engagement with Black artists. Mercer, though, painted a picture of artists who were in a state of satiated bliss and who had effortlessly stamped an indelible mark on the art world: across the country, black artists from African, Caribbean, South Asian and other backgrounds are everywhere involved in the contemporary culture life of the nation. Cities such as Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham each have institutions with a long-standing track record in exhibiting black British artists, and indeed, in most any large town in England, Scotland and Wales you would be able to access “culturally diverse” visual arts in one form or another.25

Even allowing for the possibility that “culturally diverse” arts might include artists from overseas and artists from beyond Britain who in recent years might have migrated to the U K , Mercer’s upbeat assessment is profoundly at odds with the experiences of a great many Black-British artists. In somewhat hyperbolic terms, Mercer claimed that “England’s green and pleasant land, one might observe, is now inflected by many shades of ‘black’.”26 Mercer, in his comments, conflated Ofili et al. with “black British art” as if they might somehow be one and the same, or interchangeable. Ofili had declared himself a supporter of I N I V A and its Rivington Place building project. Elsewhere, and in a different period of time, Shonibare had declared himself to be a supporter of the Arts Council’s efforts in the direction of ‘cultural diversity’, having been a member of the cultural-diversity advisory and monitoring committee of the Arts Council and subsequently joining the Board of Trustees of I N I V A . (Shonibare’s work was used to decorate the cover of the 23

Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’: Reflections on Aesthetics and Time,” in “Black” British Aesthetics Today, ed. R. Victoria Arana (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009): 66–78. 24 Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 66. 25 “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 66. 26 “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. Within this claim, Mercer had incorporated a reference to Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce (Durham N C : Duke U P & London: I N I V A / A A V A A , 2005).

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Cultural Diversity Action Plan for the Arts Council of England, issued in March 1998, although the work in question, a piece called “Deep Blue,” 1997, ended up being incorrectly reproduced at 90 degrees clockwise.27). These were, however, for the most part, furtive embraces of developmental or building-base initiatives by these leading artists. While, in their art practice, Ofili et al. were at various times keen to embrace and make use of the Black image, they were, it seemed, equally keen to distance themselves, and to be distanced, from Black artists as a whole, piecemeal support for cultural diversity and I N I V A notwithstanding. Ofili, through the imagery and iconography of his projects such as Freedom One Day and Freeness, appropriated potent symbols of Blackness and Black liberation, but, for the most part, this appropriation was little more than a cross between marketing tactic and advertising strategy.28 The undoubted successes of McQueen, Ofili, Shonibare, and a few others, at home and abroad, stood in for the marginalization of a far greater number of Black artists who had not fared nearly so well. Mercer continued: The global dimension of the process whereby international recognition has been conferred upon “black British artists” has been a crucial aspect of the

27

Cultural Diversity Action Plan, Arts Council of England, March 1998. Chris Ofili, Freedom One Day, exhibition and catalogue, Victoria Miro Gallery, 25 June–3 August 2002. The exhibition featured Ofili’s distinctive series of paintings executed in red, black, and green. These colours were highly significant, being those of the flag of Marcus Garvey and his U N I A (Universal Negro Improvement Association), particularly active throughout the world from the late 1910s through to the middle of 1940, at which time Garvey died in London. Of equally powerful symbolism as the red, gold, and green tricolour, Garvey’s U N I A flag resonated with associations of Black Power, Black struggle, and diasporic African identity and the quest for liberation and fulfilment. In its own way, Ofili’s work in Freedom One Day made liberal use of these associations. Indeed, the cover of the accompanying catalogue featured, in part, a motif of the outline of the African continent, coloured in with the U N I A tricolour. Freeness was a music project directed by Ofili and Icebox, “a not-for-profit music-led initiative” which aimed “to embody a variety of projects that aim to explore, encourage and enable new creative talents.” A C D , Freeness, volume 1, presented a number of music tracks from what was called The Freeness Tour 2005. The singers and musicians came from a plurality of diasporic backgrounds, though many were of African descent. 28

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evolution of the black arts scene during the 1980s and 1990s, and the transAtlantic component of this has been especially important.29

Mercer proceeded to cite 1997’s New York exhibition, Transforming the Crown. But beyond that particular endeavour, and exhibitions such as Interrogating Identity (1991) and Eclectic Flavour (1998), there was little in the way of transatlantic curatorial activity involving Black artists, over and above the blessed few. Mercer nevertheless felt able to claim that “‘black British art’ has now become a recognisable strand in contemporary art.”30 In appraising the fortunes of Black-British artists, the casual stirring into the mix of Ofili et al. is highly problematical, as their work can more properly be regarded as standing outside of, rather than alongside or as part of, the general practice of Black-British artists. Furthermore, the rising tide that bore Shonibare, McQueen, and Ofili to fame most certainly has not had the effect of lifting all boats. Along with Black artists’ frustrations at a lack of substantial exhibition opportunities, there existed the concurrent and perhaps not unconnected problem of Black curators and would-be curators being unable to secure meaningful jobs in the visual-arts sector, particularly beyond those projects delineated by Blackness or some such signifier of racial or ethnic difference. Continuing his upbeat assessment, Mercer contended “Black arts professionals are among decision-makers in ‘British’ institutions of art and culture in a way they certainly were not twenty or thirty years ago.” “The opportunities,” Mercer declared, “are exhilarating,” though he qualified this: “fresh anxieties inevitably accompany such an unprecedented moment.”31 Although Mercer proceeded to raise questions and doubts, the fulsome and unequivocal nature of his assessment may well have been one with which government arts ministers and senior figures from the country’s arts funding bodies could concur. It was, however, an appraisal that stood in marked contrast to ongoing frustrations on the part of Black artists and Black would-be arts professionals – the former for the most part unable to gain significant access to the country’s gallery spaces, the latter unable to secure significant employment opportunities from or within the same institutions.32 29

Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. 31 “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. 32 For a discussion of the poor levels of mainstream gallery employment for Black people, see Eddie Chambers, “Whitewash,” Art Monthly 205 (April 1997): 11–12. 30

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With so many Black artists denied consideration by the country’s white curators and gallery directors, the need for Black curators has never been greater. This is in no way to advance the somewhat reductive notion that Black curators, in and of themselves, are more able to exhibit the work of Black artists than are white curators. But, historically, it has often been the independent Black curator or project organizer who has facilitated the showing of Black artists’ work.33 Beyond projects governed by notions of ethnic and racial difference, the Black curator has neither profile nor field of operations. This point is of immeasurable importance when appraising the fortunes of Black-British artists, because there currently exists a system of separate development among the U K ’s arts institutions. Black artists are to be served through the endeavours of London projects such as Rich Mix, the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, and Rivington Place. Beyond London, Black artists are to be served – again, so it would seem – by activities of the New Art Exchange in Nottingham. Concurrent with the rise of such art(s) centres, there has been a diminishing presence of Black artists in mainstream galleries. To put it bluntly, there is now an explicitly racial dimension to the arts institutions of the country; year on year, the work of Black artists is absent from the walls of the country’s ‘white’ art galleries. Such a desperate state of affairs has not been known in Britain since the 1970s. Over the past several decades, many initiatives have aimed at bringing into existence new generations of Black curators and other visual arts professionals, from the Arts Council’s Black Visual Artists Trainee Scheme, of the early 1990s, through to the ShowHow fellowships of a decade or so later, and on to the more recent Inspire programme. These schemes have tended to follow the same approach, which has been to offer training, work experience, and mentoring to those people perceived as somehow being at a disadvantage on the visual-arts job market. To date, such schemes have by and large failed to halt, stem, or reverse the trend wherein jobs in the visual arts routinely go to white people, with only the most occasional, race-based exceptions. Aspiring Black curators and other arts professionals should, of course, not be presumed to have worth only as far as the promotion of Black artists’ practice is concerned. But the absence of Black curators, beyond short-term training schemes, from the country’s galleries fosters the perception that Black artists are absent from the programming of the same institutions. With the exception 33

For discussion of this activity, see Eddie Chambers, “Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981–1986,” esp. chapter 4, “The First Exhibitions, the Earliest Responses.”

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of projects such as Rivington Place and New Art Exchange, there is, by and large, no body of individual curators and arts professionals lobbying for the cause of the country’s Black artists. I N I V A , developed to support Black artists and to provide a platform for visual art practice from a plurality of backgrounds and locations, was now in the hands of a white chief executive and a white senior curator. Mercer, in his upbeat assessment of the employment opportunities of Black people in the arts, concluded that “Black arts professionals are among decision-makers in ‘British’ institutions of art and culture in a way they certainly were not twenty or thirty years ago.”34 Even allowing for the fleeting installing of Gus Casely–Hayford as director of I N I V A (one of the appointments cited), Mercer’s appraisal is at odds with the realities faced by aspiring Black visual arts professionals. From the mid-1970s onwards, the national quasi-governmental funding body for the arts, the Arts Council, began to pay increasing attention to Black artists in Britain. In the mid-1970s there was no official acknowledgement of ‘Black’ artists in Britain. There were, instead, ‘ethnic’ artists, or ‘ethnic’ art, ‘Afro-Caribbean’ or ‘West Indian’ art/ists, and other practitioners and practices designated by their ‘ethnic’, ‘cultural’, or ‘national’ (as in ‘non-British’ and, by and large, ‘non-white’) identities. In the mid-1970s the emergence of the ‘Black-British’ artist was still some years off. Even so, the Arts Council was beginning to realize that it perhaps needed to open up other fronts of funding activity, centred on immigrant practitioners, mainly in the performing and decorative arts. At first, the structures set in place by the Arts Council were decidedly modest and were characterized by institutional hesitancy, perhaps reflecting a British timidity to acknowledge, especially in the arts, openly racial, cultural, or ethnic difference, particularly when such difference existed as an uncomfortable signifier of discrimination or unequal treatment.35 By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the demographics of race in Britain had changed significantly. By now, alongside the immigrant population, there now existed Black people who were British-born and British-raised. Despite frequent and loud protests about social alienation and strong identification with other parts of the pan-African world, these Black youngsters were, to all intents and purposes, British. Indeed, their Britishness was as a matter of fact. Even so, this did not prevent the Arts Council from embarking on an escalat34

Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. For a substantial discussion of the history of the Arts Council’s involvement with Black artists, see Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast. 35

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ing programme of separate development for Black artists in Britain. More than a quarter of a century, and many millions of pounds later, Black artists in Britain ended up with not much more than a few building-based initiatives, the most important of which are the aforementioned Rivington Place in London and New Art Exchange in Nottingham. Beyond these two spaces, the presence, reach, and impact of Black artists – excepting the chosen few – was slight indeed.36 The plethora of Arts Council-sponsored research, report writing, committee work, and no end of publications reflecting its embrace (indeed, what looked at times like its championing) of cultural diversity in its various guises has drifted in two directions. First, Black people must constantly be provided with training opportunities, separate and distinct from those available to white people; secondly, Black arts activity needs separate homes in which to be presented and through which Black and other communities of people can be engaged. Together with other initiatives, the compulsory adopting of equalopportunity policies by galleries was intended to be a significant step on the journey to create a more equitable arts infrastructure. In reality, however, what the country in general, and Black artists in particular have ended up with, can be categorized as Arts Council-sponsored separate development. Gone were the relatively heady days of the 1980s, when Black artists’ work was featured in a range of exhibitions, taking place in what now has the appearance of a broad range of venues, as a consequence of initiatives taken by a wide variety of people. The end of the large-scale group or survey show may have been no bad thing. But we have seen relatively little by way of a corresponding proliferation of integrated gallery programming with a range of solo exhibitions, from modest ‘debuts’ through to more substantial affairs, perhaps in the manner of Keith Piper’s Relocating the Remains (which was, in point of fact, organized and funded by I N I V A ).37 Outside of the favoured artists such as Ofili et al., and outside of projects such as Rivington Place and New Art Exchange, what substantial projects there have been involving Black artists have tended to reflect racial or political initiatives, such as Black His36 Mindful of the decidedly mixed fortunes of a number of arts-based building projects (such as those referred to in chapter 2 of this study), Richard Hylton cautioned against assuming any long-term stability of capital initiatives such as Rivington Place and New Art Exchange, suggesting that “judgement ought to be reserved” on such building projects (The Nature of the Beast, 131). 37 For details on Relocating the Remains (1997), see fn 8 above, p. xxiii.

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tory Month or Abolition 200.38 With rare exceptions, the only ‘choice’ for Black artists in Britain more recently has been the quarantined initiative, taking place within galleries or contexts that are heavily coded to prevalent social notions of ‘racial’, ‘cultural’, or ‘ethnic’ ‘difference’ or ‘signification’. Given the Britishness of so many artists involved in this story, given the development of anti-discrimination legislation, given all manner of things, we might have expected an altogether different ‘trajectory’ for Black artists in Britain. In recent years, several voices were raised against what was perceived as a persistent boxing-in and marginalization of Black-British artists, particularly, though perhaps by default, on the part of funding bodies such as the Arts Council. In March 2007, Richard Hylton’s The Nature of the Beast appeared, an investigation of cultural diversity and the visual-arts sector over three decades beginning in 1976, the year in which Naseem Khan’s report, The Arts Britain Ignores, was published.39 Hylton set out “to explore the impact that cultural diversity policies and initiatives, within the publicly funded arts sector, have had on Black visual arts activity in England.”40 He argued that, though the Arts Council had at times developed what looked like progressive initiatives that empowered Black curators and artists, for the most part it appeared incapable of abandoning or setting aside its construction of Black artists as being ‘culturally diverse’ and in need of separate development. The Nature of the Beast drew attention to the ever-changing “nomenclature”41 devised to describe Black people and their arts. Although the ‘nomenclature’ appeared to be ever-changing, what remained consistent, in Hylton’s view, was the institutional insistence that those perceived as being ‘different’ needed correspondingly different treatment, attention, and funding structures. The publisher’s marketing description stated: 38

It was mentioned in chapter 2 that artists such as Sonia Boyce and Yinka Shonibare undertook visual arts projects that were in some instances arguably press-ganged into an association with Abolition 200, the collective name for events across the country, which sought to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament. As mentioned in chapter 4, visual-arts projects such as Donald Rodney’s Display at the Tate were scheduled to coincide with Black History Month. 39 Naseem Khan, The Arts Britain Ignores. 40 From the book’s back cover. 41 Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 40.

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Richard Hylton offers the reader a fascinating insight into the roles played by the protagonists, including the Greater London Council, Arts Council England, publicly funded galleries and arts organizations. Charting cultural diversity’s various incarnations, from ‘ethnic arts’ in the late 1970s, ‘black arts’ in the 1980s, ‘new internationalism’ in the 1990s and ‘culturally diverse arts’ in the twenty-first century, Hylton’s study considers how, despite such changes to nomenclature, overly benevolent and prescriptive attempts at inculcating cultural diversity within the visual arts today reprise much of the outmoded thinking dating back to the 1970s. Through in-depth research and analysis, this study assesses the extent to which certain policies and initiatives might have assisted or hindered the progress of Black artists within the English gallery system. This study meets a long overdue need for a public analysis of cultural diversity policies in the visual arts and will be invaluable to readers interested in cultural policy, arts administration, curatorial practice and the contemporary visual arts in general.42

Unlike a subsequent report on the alleged ‘boxing-in’ of Black artists released several months later, Hylton’s study elicited no form of public response from the Arts Council. Some two months later, Sonya Dyer released her own, somewhat damning assessment of the fortunes of Black artists. Launched through the Manifesto Club, Boxed In was a report that was trailed and promoted under the blunt claim that government policies ghettoize black artists and brand them as ‘second class’. The report, written by Dyer, mentioned several sets of financial figures that, if correct, gave an indication of the Arts Council’s commitment to implementing its cultural-diversity strategies: In 2002, A C E [Arts Council England] designated £29 million to black, Asian and Chinese-led organisations from its lottery-funded Arts Capital Programme. A C E has committed 10 percent of its Grant for Arts awards to 43 black and ethnic minority artists and arts organisations.

42

See, for example, http://www.bath.ac.uk/icia/archive/the-nature-of-the-beast/ (accessed 24 March 2011). See also an online review of Hylton’s book by Tiffany Jenkins, “The ‘disorganised apartheid’ of cultural diversity. Meet the curator and author who says that diversity policies in the arts are doing exactly what their label suggests: dividing people,” http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site /reviewofbooks_article /3359/ (accessed 3 April 2011). 43 Sonya Dyer, Boxed In: How Cultural Diversity Policies Constrict Black Artists (Manifesto Club, Artistic Autonomy Hub, May 2007), http://www.manifestoclub

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The Arts Council runs two main ‘positive action’ schemes called Inspire and decibel, which offer internships at prestigious galleries and museums but only to ethnic-minority arts professionals. The budget for decibel was around £10 million, over five years; the budget for Inspire is £411,000 per year (6). None of this impressed Dyer, who cited such spending as evidence of the Arts Council’s apparent determination to maintain a cordon around Black artists, preventing them from practising, exhibiting, and being employed in racially unfettered ways. In a sentiment that flatly contradicted Mercer’s claims of a plethora of Black arts professionals brokering power from privileged positions, Dyer claimed that “many black and minority ethnic artists are [...] cut off from the mainstream” and effectively treated as second-class “because their reliance on diversity schemes” create ghettos connecting them “almost exclusively with other non-white practitioners, instead of the wider network of powerbrokers in the mainstream art world” (22). Dyer concluded that class privilege and class prejudice lay at the root of Black artists’ difficulties. Making use of the in-vogue institutional terminology to describe Black people and others – Black and Minority Ethnic (B M E ) – Dyer argues that government-led targets fail to get to grips with the real reasons why B M E people don’t enter the arts. Very few graduates from non-white backgrounds choose to study a ‘creative arts’ subject at university but this is because of class and money, not race (31). The majority of black people, like white working-class people, cannot afford the typically low-paid work in the arts. Dyer suggests that instead of singling black people out for special help, a new colour-blind approach is needed where opportunities are offered to all people struggling to pay their way through a career in the visual arts. This would be fairer to everyone in the arts and also improve the confidence of black artists to get their work seen. Pigeon-holing them as “needy because of race” (29) will only stigmatize them and keep them apart from the mainstream (see also 17, 24). Dyer’s report elicited a number of responses, including a qualified reproof from Niru Ratnam, a former programme manager of Inspire,44 and a defen-

.com/files/B O X E D I N P R I N T .pdf (accessed 3 April 2011): 5. Further page references in this paragraph are in the main text. 44 Manifesto Club for Freedom in Everyday Life, “Boxed In: Comments and Views” (May 2007), http://www.manifestoclub.com/aa-diversity-comments (accessed 3 April 2011).

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sively worded rebuttal from the Arts Council itself.45 Dyer in turn sought to counter, point by point, the Arts Council’s rebuttal, in what amounted to an addendum to her original report.46 In addition to the range of arguments advanced in Hylton’s The Nature of the Beast and Dyer’s Boxed In, there were other voices raised in criticism of what was perceived to be problematical Arts Council attitudes towards Black artists.47 Over and above the arguably disastrous consequences of the Arts Council’s initiatives ostensibly aimed at supporting Black artists, other factors that seemed to be at play in the perceived sidelining of the wider body of BlackBritish artists, in the years leading up to and into the new millennium. One of the most significant factors not yet mentioned is the role played by internationalism in the fortunes of Black-British artists. Mercer had claimed that “artists such as Steve McQueen, Yinka Shonibare, Zarina Bhimji, and Isaac Julien have attracted the attention of curators, critics, and collectors throughout the world”48 and that The global dimension of the process whereby international recognition has been conferred upon “black British artists” has been a crucial aspect of the evolution of the black arts scene during the 1980s and 1990s, and the transAtlantic component of this has been especially important.49

Certainly, the newspaper and magazine life-style features to which such artists as Shonibare contributed confirmed these artists’ international standing and reputation. “My week: Steve McQueen,” in a May 2009 issue of the Observer, opened: I went to Chicago for the weekend for the opening of the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, designed by Renzo Piano and also for the opening of a piece of mine, Girls, Tricky, in the new wing.50 45

Arts Council England, “Re: Boxed in: how cultural diversity policies constrict black artists” (18 May 2007), http://www.manifestoclub.com/files/aceresponse.pdf (accessed 3 April 2011). 46 “Sonya Dyer responds to Arts Council England” (23 May 2007), http://www .manifestoclub.com/aa-diversity-ace (accessed 3 April 2011). 47 See Niru Ratnam, Decibel: Running To Stand Still, Spin Cycle (Bristol: Spike Island / Systemisch, 2004): 69–76, and Rasheed Araeen, “[Polemic:] Decibel – Inverted Racism?” Art Monthly (May 2007): 39. 48 Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. 49 Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67 50 “My week: Steve McQueen 7 Days,” Observer (31 May 2009): 40.

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As mentioned in chapter 3, Shonibare’s own “My week” had appeared just over a year before McQueen’s, in the Daily Telegraph Review magazine. On day one, Shonibare had made it known to the reader that “Today, amid all the turmoil, I was trying to prepare for a huge retrospective of my work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in September.”51 Isaac Julien had also been the subject of such a life-style piece, his having appeared in the Guardian in 2005. Although the piece was, in the manner of such items, relatively brief, Julien managed to fit in multiple references to his internationalism. “I then walk across Bloomsbury, which makes me realize that it is already fall. That sounds very American, but after living in the States for some time there are certain things that stick.” Julien later tells the reader that “at lunchtime my gallery dealer from Stockholm is upon me.”52 And so it goes on. But the internationalism in which these artists delighted was very much a two-way process. Artists from beyond the U K had, over the period of this study, grown increasingly attractive to curators and gallery directors keen to demonstrate diversity in their gallery programmes but not particularly minded to work with Black-British artists, who might traditionally have represented, or benefitted from, such attempts at diversity. In indicating the extraordinary changes in the British art world that took place between the time of the first British Art Show and its later incarnations towards the new millennium, Godfrey could easily have pointed out another factor, in his essay “British Art and The British Art Show 1976–2000,” written for the catalogue of The British Art Show 5 (2000).53 The element missing from Godfrey’s essay was the extent to which London and British art schools had become a destination of choice for both would-be art students and aspiring younger artists from every continent. Artists had always been drawn to the vibrancy and cosmopolitanism of cities such as London, Paris, and New York, but the pace at which artists travelled and set themselves up in other parts of the world accelerated during the 1990s. Encouraged in part by cheaper flights, many people responded favourably to the entry into the airline market of ‘budget’ airlines offering flights to no end of destinations, many within reach of the capitals and other important cities of Europe. Another factor was the changing nature of British higher education, including its art schools. International students (or foreign 51

“My week, Yinka Shonibare Artist,” Daily Telegraph Review (12 July 2008): 5. “Isaac Julien in London,” Guardian Weekend (22 October 2005): 9. 53 Tony Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000.” 52

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students, as they were then more commonly known) had always been a presence at British universities and polytechnics. But as higher education, under pressure from governmental parsimony, adopted more and more explicit business practices, universities increasingly began to market themselves to prospective, higher-paying students all over the world. Consequently, those with the economic means, or whose families were thus endowed, were able to avail themselves of a British (art) college education while bypassing many of the obstacles which had traditionally kept them out of the U K , or prevented them from considering the U K as a destination of choice for their studies. Nicholas Serota saw fit to comment on this developing internationalism: In Britain we live in a society that, broadly speaking, welcomes newcomers. Opening doors to economic and political migrants as well as our art schools to students from across the world has been beneficial to the visual arts in this country. New art flourishes where different streams of consciousness meet. Paris in the early years of the twentieth century, Berlin in the 1920s and New York during and immediately after the Second World War provided such meeting points. London, it can be argued, is now such a centre.54

Furthermore, the language of internationalism had been proliferating in sections of the art world since the beginning of the 1990s. Talk of globalization, migration, shifting borders, imagined communities, transnationalism etc. had indelibly seeped into the discourse of contemporary art, and pretty much everybody – artists, curators, writers, collectors – wanted to avail themselves of some of these new and supposedly exciting ideas.55 Particularly important in this regard was the work of the Arts Council-sponsored Institute of New 54

Nicholas Serota, “Foreword,” The Turner Prize and British Art (London: Tate

2007): 9. 55 By the late 1990s, the discourse of these new attitudes to internationalism was well established. See, for example, Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity (Oxford: Polity, 1999), and Changing States: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globalisation, ed. Gilane Tawadros (London: I N I V A , 2004). See also exhibitions such as Imagined Communities, a touring exhibition, organized by Andrew Patrizio, National Touring Exhibitions, and Richard Hylton, which opened its nationwide tour at the Oldham Art Gallery, 27 January–24 March 1996. One of the earliest exhibitions to encourage its audiences to consider the interlinked issues of migration, location, citizenship, and identity was Shifting Borders, curated by Richard Hylton and featuring photography, mixed media, film, and installation works by twelve artists from Europe, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 20 August–18 October 1992.

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International Visual Arts, as it was known in the early 1990s. (The word ‘New’ would in time be dropped, though the acronym I N I V A would remain, albeit in a constantly changing use of upper- and lower-case letters.) The Independent newspaper reported as follows on plans to launch I N I V A : A public gallery that aims to place “artists of colour” in a wider contemporary art context is to be set up by the Arts Council and the London Arts Board. The initiative, to be announced on Thursday [27 August 1992], aims to strengthen London’s position as the cultural capital of the world. The Institute of New International Visual Arts (I N I V A ) – inspired by post-war migration and the breaking-down of cultural boundaries – sets out to place artists from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia alongside their European and American peers. Although the council has, since 1987, supported “initiatives in cultural diversity”, it feels that they have not kept pace with the achievements of black artists in the West.56

The internationalism of I N I V A was laid out and discussed in position papers, reliant to a large extent on the input and thinking of the South African-born artist Gavin Jantjes.57 A number of years earlier, another significant visualarts initiative involving Black artists, the exhibition From Two Worlds, had also relied heavily on Jantjes’ thinking and ideas. Much of the intellectual and curatorial framework on which the exhibition rested was provided by Jantjes, who had delivered a paper at a conference in the East Midlands Arts region on 12 April 1986, during which he stated “A contemporary black visual art is an innovative synthesis of two worlds.”58 The next step in the development of I N I V A was a conference in 199459 and a subsequently released volume of proceedings. The marketing synopsis of Global Visions stated: 56

Dalya Alberge, “ ‘ Artists of colour’ gallery redraws the cultural map,” The Independent (25 August 1992): 3. 57 The Independent, in its article announcing the launch of I N I V A ; noted that “I N I V A has come about after extensive research by Gavin Jantjes, the artist, and Sarah Wason [senior visual arts officer at the Arts Council]”; Dalya Alberge, “‘Artists of colour’ gallery redraws the cultural map.” 58 Gavin Jantjes, “Black Artists White Institutions: Talk delivered at the East Midlands Arts Conference (12.4.86),” Artrage 15 (Winter 1986): 36. Jantjes’ paper was reprinted as “Art & Cultural Reciprocity: Talk delivered at the East Midlands Art Conference on 12 April 1986,” in The Essential Black Art (1988), 42–45. 59 “A New Internationalism”: a two-day symposium at the Tate Gallery, London on Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 April 1994. This was the first international sym-

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This anthology of papers, presented at the I N I V A symposium in London in April 1994, presents a critique of notions of internationalism, the role of curatorial practice, the modern museum and art history, particularly in relation to the debates on cultural identity and difference, and the nature of innovation in visual culture at the end of the millennium.60

Gone were the days when an exhibition or exhibiting artist from abroad was a rarity, something of an unusual, ‘exotic’ occurrence. International workshops and residencies proliferated, enabling British artists to casually travel overseas, and artists from other parts of the world to visit London and other large cities or the destinations at which workshops and residencies were held. Previously, such travelling would have required far greater effort, but the expansion of the European Union, developments in technology, an expanding airline industry, curatorial musings on internationalism, aggressive marketing by institutions of higher learning, and old-fashioned wanderlust all combined to transform fundamentally the ecotope of the many artists located in London and the visual-art practice of the capital. As Neil Mulholland observed when assessing the British Art Show of 2006 and the history of the exhibition, The first British Art Show (B A S ) opened its doors on December 1979 at the Mappin Art Gallery in Sheffield. A frumpy fair selected by the Financial Times’ art critic, William Packer, the show took much flak owing to its predilection for established white male artists.61

In time, The British Art Show would slacken its embrace of old-fashioned notions of Britishness and the corresponding dependency of those who were deemed to most reflect this Britishness – “established white male artists.” Moving away from an emphasis on artists who were British by birth, The British Art Show 6 included artists born and brought up in countries such as Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Iran, Serbia, and the U S A .62 posium organized by the I N I V A ; speakers included Rasheed Araeen, Stuart Hall, Sarat Maharaj, and Gilane Tawadros. The Symposium Consultant was Gavin Jantjes. 60 Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts, ed. Jean Fisher (London: Kala / Third Text, 1994). 61 Neil Mulholland, in Neil Mulholland & Andrew Hunt, “British Art (Does It) Show?” Frieze 96 (January–February 2006): 134. 62 The British Art Show 6 toured to venues in Gateshead, Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol, between September 2005 and September 2006. The British Art Show 6 (exh. cat.; London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2005).

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It is important to reiterate that, in a great many respects, the traffic of internationalism was two-way. Artists came and artists went. As Chris Townsend noted, in a process he referred to as “reverse migration,” There are, of course, diverse causes for this cosmopolitan culture. What’s happening in the London art scene is in part a consequence of a larger, continuing transformation of communication and flows of commodities and capital. Britain’s membership of the European Union (E U ) has meant that other E U citizens can live and work in London, or elsewhere, just as Britons can go to France, or Germany or Spain. Even as Prime Minister Blair proclaimed the emergence of ‘Cool Britannia’ in the late 1990s, harnessing pop culture to the promotion of one political vision of national identity, some of our foremost artists were heading off to live and work elsewhere: Tacita Dean to Berlin; Hannah Collins to Barcelona; Steve McQueen to Amsterdam; Lucy Orta to Paris.63

McQueen to Amsterdam (and for that matter, Tariq Alvi to the Netherlands, Zarina Bhimji to Berlin, and Chris Ofili to Trinidad64) notwithstanding, Black-British artists can in important respects be thought of as net losers rather than net beneficiaries of London’s new internationalism. As I pointed out several years ago,65 the process by which Black artists were sidelined in deference to international exhibitors had been in place since the late-1980s. At that time, international exhibitions were relatively lumbering affairs, focusing on a particular country or otherwise geographically specific art forms. There had for decades been occasional exhibitions from countries of Europe, or from Australia, or the U S A , but such exhibitions tended to be ‘white’ affairs that by and large showed no interest in reflecting matters of racial difference in the countries being curatorially looked at. By the late 1980s, however, such exhibitions, invariably dominated by white males, had begun to fall out of favour, as artists from Africa, South Asia, China, and such parts of the world became, albeit fleetingly, more attractive. Exhibitions such as Art From South Africa relied heavily on anthropological/ curatorial frameworks whereby a particular country was trawled, in an effort to supposedly identify and present the ‘best’ and most representative bodies of work by

63

Chris Townsend, New Art From London, 16. During the period of this study, other artists moved abroad. These included Allan de Souza to the U S A , and Shaheen Merali to Berlin. 65 Eddie Chambers, “True Colours,” Versus 2 (1994): 28–29. 64

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artists from the country in question.66 In time, such exhibitions, drawn from areas such as India and Aboriginal Australia, were presented in galleries in London and elsewhere in the country.67 These were decidedly ‘exotic’ showings, which allowed domestic gallery-going audiences the opportunity to see bodies of work they might not otherwise be able to access. Such exhibitions, however, were to some extent stymied by the notion that supposedly disinterested white curators claimed the privilege of selecting and introducing to British audiences the art of whole nations in other parts of the world. (No less problematical was the globetrotting star curator, perpetually in and out of airport departure lounges in this country or that, who emerged during the 1990s, having taken over from those curators who only occasionally went abroad in pursuit of curatorial product.) The pathology of these now oldfashioned international exhibitions was heavily reliant on Britain’s stubborn perception of itself as a monocultural society with a largely monocultural body of British artists on which to draw. In this sense, international exhibitions were perceived as pluralizing and diversifying a gallery programme without having to work in any significant way with Black-British artists, whom certain galleries were loth to recognize as convincing practitioners. Indeed, the galleries that were most enthusiastic in programming the international exhibition were oftentimes those from which Black-British artists found themselves most consistently excluded.68 Jean Fisher offered a candid assessment of the failings of these exhibitions, and proposed a bold explanation for their proliferation:

66

Typical in this regard was Art From South Africa, which was originated by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, and was shown there 17 June–23 September 1990. It then toured to venues in Warwick, Aberdeen, London, Bolton, Stoke on Trent, and Nottingham, between October 1990 and July 1991. 67 Richard Hylton observed that “By the mid-1990s, exhibitions featuring artists from the Indian Sub-continent, Latin America and Australia became a relatively common feature of gallery exhibition programmes” (The Nature of the Beast, 110). Such exhibitions included Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, Hayward Gallery, London, 23 July–10 October 1993; Critical Difference: Contemporary Art from India was an Aberystwyth Arts Centre touring exhibition in collaboration with The Showroom, London. During 1993 it toured to a number of venues in England and Wales, including Camden Arts Centre, 28 May–4 July 1993. 68 For a discussion of this, see Eddie Chambers, “Makonde,” Art Monthly 129 (September 1989): 18–20.

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Exhibitions based on ethnic interpretations of multiculturalism that arise from the current fashion for curatorial globe-trotting have mostly failed to advance an understanding of contemporary visual art from beyond the Western metropolis. In Britain, a glance at recent exhibition reviews touching on such themes as “New Art from China (or India, Cuba, etc.),” is enough to confirm the suspicion that the esthetic concerns of individual artists continue to be neglected in favor of redundant assumptions about ethnicity or poorly informed comparisons with Western Modernism. Why this continues to occur may seem puzzling, but one factor that must be taken into account is the impulse of some poorer nations to “exoticize” themselves in order to gain a stronger footing in the Western art market. While many exhibitions are quick to contextualize non-Western work with anthropological anecdotes, historical context is usually missing from the equation. Without it, we cannot help but fail to understand the trajectory of global Modernism as it has evolved outside the West.69

Araeen was similarly critical, offering the following judgment: With the emergence of postmodernism and globalisation, with openings for artists from other cultures to enter its space and become celebrated as part of the global spectacle, the intellectual energy of the Third World was sucked into these spectacles.70

As mentioned, by the mid-1990s the nature of international exhibitions had been markedly transformed. Singly curated presentations of supposedly representative samples of artistic practice from this or that distant country were out. This, as Godfrey had stated, was when “the large group show [was] transformed from an anthology to an argument.”71 International exhibitions became multi-stranded projects that drew together artists from a number of different countries, in their attempts to develop arguments about contemporary conditions that were seen as having universal application. Referring to the rise of the notion of hybriduty, Niru Ratnam noted that the “shift from” what he called “the didactic work of the late 1970s and 1980s to Ofili’s more open-ended, lucid approach mirrors a shift in contemporary postcolonial theory.” Ratnam went on to mention the articulating, by the likes of Stuart Hall, of “ ‘a new politics of representation’, where the black experience was

69

Jean Fisher, “Seven stories about modern art in Africa,” Artforum (January 1996):

94. 70 71

Richard Dyer, “Rasheed Araeen in Conversation,” Wasafiri 53 (Spring 2008): 30. Tony Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000.” 20

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primarily diasporic and centred on the ‘process of unsettling, recombination, hybridization and “cut-and-mix”’.”72 It was at this moment that the art world began to take increased notice of biennales and mega-exhibitions across the world beyond the established and long-recognized ones, such as Venice and Documenta. Particularly important in this regard were the Istanbul Biennial and the Cairo Biennale, both established in the mid-1980s, and the Johannesburg Biennale, which took place twice in the 1990s.73 In addition to presenting international group exhibitions of work by artists from several different countries, the British art world began to stage increased numbers of solo exhibitions by such artists. With even the most unassuming and provincial of gallery spaces in Britain seeking to avail themselves of this latter-day internationalism, all but the most favoured Black artists found their chances of substantial gallery attention shrinking even further, as more and more galleries sought to internationalize their curatorial programmes, as a nod towards cosmopolitanism and diversity. The coterie of freshly minted international curators emerging in the 1990s were interested in few Black-British artists beyond such already familiar names as Bhimji, Julien, Locke, McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare. This limited horizon extended to similarly limited numbers of familiar names of favoured artists drawn from other countries. Thus, in biennales, biennials, and other mega-exhibitions it was possible for international audiences to see the same sorts of work, from the same sorts of artists, time and again. In this regard, the artists mentioned above were clear beneficiaries of these shifts in international cultural politics, away from what were regarded as worthy but dull approaches to art and politics; “the world of visual arts has realized that hybridity allows a release from dreary identity politics work and has embraced Ofili with open arms.”74 Richard Hylton summarized something of the impact and consequences of international dimensions on Black-British artists. Although the ‘internationalising’ of the visual arts programmes across England may have reflected changes occurring within the international art world, 72

Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 155. Africus: Johannesburg Biennale, 28 February–30 April 1995; 2nd Johannesburg Biennale 1997, Trade Routes: History and Geography, 12 October 1997–18 January 1998. For a critique of the second Johannesburg Biennale, see Eddie Chambers, “Johannesburg: A Review of the Second Johannesburg Biennale,” Art Monthly 212 (December 1997–January 1998): 14–18. 74 Niru Ratnam, “Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity,” 157. 73

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it also signaled a tendency for major publicly funded galleries in England to privilege artists of colour from abroad above Black British artists. In the early to mid-1990s, artists such as Keith Piper, Zarina Bhimji, Permindar Kaur, Veronica Ryan and Shirazeh Houshiary commanded solo shows at major public funded galleries. However, such opportunities became increasingly rare as publicly funded galleries, particularly major independent spaces, began to accommodate artists of colour from abroad.75

Hylton went on to reiterate the sentiment that “there was a certain correlation between galleries’ eagerness to display the work of artists from all corners of the world and the increasing obsolescence of Black artists to the English gallery system.”76 A formidable range of obstacles and adverse developments served to frustrate the ambitions of most Black-British artists to thrive as individual practitioners. As mentioned in chapter 4, the Tate’s strategy for dealing with Black artists involved seeking to incorporate them posthumously into narratives of British art. But the Tate was not alone in this regard. Fulsome, adulatory exhibitions by recently deceased and long-deceased, artists came to be a significant aspect of the presence of Black artists in the gallery system. Such exhibitions could not be separated from the general profile of Black artists, simply because such exhibitions represented a Black presence in the country’s galleries. By seeming to rescue certain dead Black artists from obscurity and belatedly recognizing others, galleries were thus able to demonstrate not only liberal credentials but also, just as importantly, a commitment to diversity and inclusivity. The rise in exhibitions of dead Black artists helped to reduce still further whatever residual interest in living Black artists that a gallery might have. Such exhibitions were sometimes accompanied by catalogues, the size and lavishness of which only a favoured handful of living Black artists could ever hope to enjoy during their lifetime. In the dominant racial pathologies of the art world, such sporadic exhibitions of dead artists’ work went a very long way. Rather than being seen as ‘historical’ exhibitions, a perhaps necessary supplement to exhibitions of work by living artists, they became instead emphatic signifiers of the general presence of living Black artists, thereby further entrenching an already entrenched marginality. In that regard, dealing

75 76

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 111. Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 111.

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with dead Black artists became another way for the art establishment to avoid having to deal with Black artists who lived and breathed.77 For several years, from the mid-1980s onwards, the Horizon Gallery distinguished itself as a substantial exhibition space, located in central London, in which visitors could expect to see work by practitioners of primarily South Asian background. The gallery was run by, and home to, a body known as the Indian Arts Council. It hosted a number of important exhibitions, including Sutapa Biswas: Recent Paintings (17 June–11 July 1987). When the gallery closed in 1991, a well-located venue dedicated to showing the work of artists with, frankly, limited exhibition options was lost. Within a couple of years of the Horizon Gallery’s closing, the Black-Art Gallery, in Finsbury Park, also closed its doors for the final time, having had its core funding withdrawn by Islington Borough Council. While neither of these galleries was without its critics, for periods of about five and ten years respectively they provided exhibition opportunities for significant numbers of artists, albeit practitioners representing different, demarcated constituencies. Notwithstanding the establishment of Rivington Place, the gallery-based home to I N I V A and Autograph (Association of Black Photographers), the closure of the Horizon Gallery and the Black-Art Gallery effectively meant that two particular venues were lost and not replaced. Other not insignificant venues to be lost included the Africa Centre and the Commonwealth Institute, again well-located central-London sites. The Africa Centre, in Covent Garden, hosted several of the most important exhibitions that signalled the emergence of a new generation of Black artists. These included The Pan-Afrikan Connection78 and Five Black Women Artists.79 During the 1980s, the Commonwealth Institute’s two exhibition spaces – the main gallery, and a smaller area known as the Bhownagree Gallery – had hosted a significant number of shows by Black-British prac77 Several of I N I V A ’s most substantial exhibitions to date involved presenting exhibitions of work by dead artists, such as Aubrey Williams at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (12 June–16 August 1998) and Li Yuan-chia at Camden Arts Centre (26 January– 18 March 2001, before touring to other venues). For a critique of this, see Eddie Chambers, “Dead Artists’ Society,” Art Monthly 244 (March 2001): 15. 78 Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Claudette Johnson, Wenda Leslie, and Keith Piper; 4 May–4 June 1982. 79 Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Houria Niati, and Veronica Ryan; 6 September–14 October 1983.

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titioners, as well as artists from other parts of the Commonwealth. Aubrey Williams had exhibited there, as had younger painters such as Denzil Forrester (who exhibited drawings in the Bhownagree Gallery, 4–28 April 1986). With the closing of the Commonwealth Institute, opportunities for Black artists to exhibit were further reduced. Chapter 1 above mentioned the sorts of exhibitions, such as Woven Air,80 that had become an irregular but consistent aspect of the Whitechapel Art Gallery programme, as a means by which the communities of South Asian peoples that existed in the vicinity of the gallery would supposedly be addressed and catered for. In addition to offerings such as Woven Air and Living Wood,81 the gallery also served up fare such as Krishna The Divine Lover82 (programmed during the year in which celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of Indian and Pakistani Independence took place) and, in 1999, 000zerozerozero.83 More recently, the gallery hosted Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.84 While, for these types of exhibition, the Whitechapel presented itself as something of a ‘local’ gallery, these exhibitions often functioned as signifiers of the London art world’s capacity to embrace and demonstrate plurality. Such was the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s resistance to programming substantial exhibitions by individual Black practitioners that, following Sonia Boyce’s exhibition (in a gallery space on the upper level of the building) in 1988,85 it would

80

Woven Air: The Muslin & Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 4 March–1 May 1988. This was, according to the press release issued on 21 January 1988, a “major exhibition of historical and modern textiles from Bangladesh.” 81 Living Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 10 April–31 May 1992. The exhibition consisted of “relatively unknown [. . . ] Southern Indian art of wooden sculpture” drawn from collections in India and Europe. 82 Krishna The Divine Lover, a product of National Touring Exhibitions, was at the Whitechapel Art Gallery 30 May–27 July 1997. It then toured on to venues in Huddersfield, Sheffield, and Brighton, between August 1997 and January 1998. 83 000zerozerozero (10–31 July 1999), described on the cover of the accompanying brochure as “british asian cultural provocation: music_art_[,] photography_film_[,] fashion_magic.” 84 Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 21 January–11 April 2010 85 Sonia Boyce: Recent Work, Whitechapel Art Gallery, New Gallery, 13 May–26 June 1988.

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be a considerable number of years before a living Black-British artist would occupy the main gallery space proper.86 Typically, the large ‘Asian’ exhibitions periodically offered by the Whitechapel Art Gallery either contained greater numbers of contributors or showcased work that was, to all intents and purposes, anonymous (or at least, the name of the maker, when known, was secondary to whatever object itself was being exhibited). What might broadly be called a strategy of ‘Asian art for local Asian audiences’ was replicated at certain galleries and museums around the country, particularly in the north and the Midlands. Towns and cities such as Bradford, Huddersfield, Leicester, and Oldham are known to have relatively substantial ‘Asian’ communities. Municipal galleries in these towns and cities have either mounted a number of exhibitions or established and developed collections of work by artists of South Asian origin, believing these initiatives to be ways of acknowledging, addressing or servicing the local ‘South Asian’ constituencies. As mentioned in chapter 1 of this study, such a strategy was unambiguously referred to in the preface to the Whitechapel Art Gallery catalogue Woven Air: The exhibition aims, firstly, to provide the local Bangladeshi community in Spitalfields with a chance to review its own culture and particularly for young Bangladeshis growing up in this country to see a significant expression of their own background.87

Apart from the arguably patronizing and reductive nature of many of these exhibitions and initiatives, perhaps their biggest failing was the way in which individual practitioners were reduced to not much more than the perceived value of their ethnicity.88 For Black artists themselves, the consequences and the implications of this were to be catastrophic. Whilst some municipal galleries may have seen such a policy as supportive of both artists and communities, the implications of such an approach were arguably more problematic. If certain exhibitions were deemed relevant for certain communities, taken to its logical conclusion, this also implied that 86 Tariq Alvi, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 12 January–4 March 2001. Five years later, the gallery programmed David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 24 January–26 March 2006. 87 Beth Stockley, “Preface,” Woven Air catalogue, 6. 88 For an appraisal of this, see Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, particularly “Municipal Galleries,” in the chapter “Publicly funded galleries, ‘survey’ exhibitions and Black artists during the 1980s.”

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without a discernible ‘ethnic’ community to cater for, the work of Black and Asian artists could be deemed irrelevant to many other (municipal) galleries located in cities and towns across Britain.89

Perhaps one of the most poignant indications of the lopsided nature of exhibitions such as Krishna The Divine Lover was the final sentence of the latter’s news release, which opened thus: Krishna, the legendary Hindu god, has been the subject of song, dance and poetry for centuries, but it is perhaps through painting that he is celebrated most exuberantly. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Indian and Pakistan Independence, this exhibition delves into the mythology surrounding Krishna. It draws together around 100 exquisite miniatures from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The exhibition also features new or previously unseen work by Sutapa Biswas, Maqbool Fida Husain, Permindar Kaur, Dhruva Mistry and Amrit & Rabindra K D Singh.90

The final sentence of the news release stated: “Also showing at the Whitechapel during this period is Cathy de Monchaux.”91 In the manner of substantial adulatory exhibitions of work by dead Black artists, and curatorial product aimed at ethnically specific local audiences, Black artists also had to contend with, and vie with, large and often cumbersome exhibitions that claimed a broad historical sweep. Much like the sorts of ‘Asian’ show mentioned above, these historical exhibitions frequently functioned as signifiers of the London art world’s capacity to embrace and demonstrate plurality. Again, the Whitechapel Art Gallery was home to several such exhibitions, which included Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa92

89

Richard Hylton, The Nature of the Beast, 89. “Krishna The Divine Lover Opens in London,” National Touring Exhibitions News Release. 91 “Krishna The Divine Lover Opens in London.” 92 Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa (Whitechapel Art Gallery, 27 September–26 November 1995), described by one critic as “part of a multimedia jamboree called ‘africa95,’ was the first exhibition to attempt to provide a historical context for African Modernism”; Jean Fisher, “Seven stories about modern art in Africa,” Artforum (January 1996): 94. The exhibition toured to Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden, 27 January–17 March 1996, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (SoHo), New York, mid-June–mid-September 1996 (as printed in the catalogue). 90

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and Back to Black: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary.93 Such exhibitions followed a familiar structure; numerous artists’ work being put together in grandiose curatorial narratives in which individual artist’s contributions were largely subordinated to the ambitious themes and frameworks offered by the exhibition’s curators and catalogue essay writers. The inclination to turn to Black artists when a supposedly relevant festival or commemoration was in the offing was a key factor in the ongoing hemming-in of these artists’ aspirations to be seen and accepted as individual practitioners in their own right. Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa was one of the flagship exhibitions of africa [sic] 95. Similarly, Back to Black: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary was one of the flagship exhibitions of Africa 05.94 These africa 95 /Africa 05 exhibitions by and large featured the work of Black artists from beyond Britain, though they functioned as signifiers of the British art world’s impulse towards inclusivity and diversity. The most recent of such exhibitions has been Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic, held at Tate Liverpool, 29 January–25 April 2010.95 Beyond these bitty exhibitions 93 Back to Black took place at Whitechapel Art Gallery, 7 June–4 September 2005, before touring to the New Art Gallery, Walsall. 94 As indicated in Chapter 4 of this study, Africa 05 presented itself as “a series of major cultural events taking place in London and the rest of the U K that celebrates contemporary and past cultures from across the continent and the diaspora. It has been developed by programme director Dr Augustus Casely–Hayford with the aim of raising the profile of the huge diversity of African arts and culture by bringing them into the mainstream and encouraging Britain’s arts institutions to make links with artists from across the African continent and to reach out to African communities here in the U K ” (http://www.tate.org.uk/africa05/ (accessed 3 April 2011). See also “A F R I C A 05 Partner Activity,” issued November 2004, and “Plans unveiled for Africa 05 – the U K ’s biggest ever celebration of African cultures,” press release issued 18 November 2004. For a critique of Africa 05, see Eddie Chambers, “[Polemic:] Africa 05,” Art Monthly 284 (March 2005): 44. africa (sic) 95, which provided the blueprint for Africa 05, had Clémentine Deliss as its artistic director. 95 Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic was “part of Liverpool and the Black Atlantic, a series of exhibitions and events that explores connections between cultures and continents” (gallery guide). Other exhibitions that coincided with Liverpool and the Black Atlantic included Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire (exh. cat., 15 January–11 April 2010; Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 2010), and Sonia Boyce, Like Love (Liverpool: Bluecoat Gallery, 30 January–28 March 2010). Both of these exhibitions are dealt with elsewhere in this study.

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(bulked out by slender contributions from large numbers of artists) and commemorative programmes such as Abolition 200,96 the vast majority of Black artists found themselves with nowhere to go and nothing to do. During the period of this study, the nature of the coverage of Black artists in the British media changed markedly. As more and more Black artists found their stock, such as it was, plummeting, a small number of artists, dominated by McQueen, Ofili and Shonibare et al., concurrently found their stock rising. The latter secured press attention unlike anything that Black artists of previous generations had known. But this coverage had the effect of conveying the message that it was Black artists in general (and not just these few Black artists) who had ‘made it’. To some extent, the press coverage secured by Ofili et al. presupposed, on the reader’s part, an understanding of, or familiarity with, these artists’ practice, thereby leaving them free to indulge their celebrity status. With an artist’s practice no longer necessarily being the focus of press coverage, it was instead the very success of the artist that became the essence of this new type of media attention. As discussed in chapter 3 of this study, newspaper or magazine features on Black artists in previous decades, on the rare occasions they appeared, tended to be serious, plodding affairs. In all instances, the artist’s racial identity and/ or the artist’s practice were discussed in earnest terms, reflecting the then dominant thinking – as Tony Godfrey put it, “To be an artist was a vocation, a serious, po-faced business.”97 Typical, in this regard, was an interview with Keith Piper that appeared in City Limits in 1984,98 at the time of the artist’s solo exhibition at the BlackArt Gallery.99 The two-page interview, conducted by Nigell Pollitt, centred on the asking of questions, by Pollitt, such as “When you talk about the need to create a black visual aesthetic, it sounds as if it’s completely separate from white culture. Is that the case?,” “Are you saying the black visual arts in this country are behind compared to music?,” “But don’t you feel the mere presence of black artists, whatever the content of their work, presents a threat, to a 96

As mentioned in chapter 2 of this study, Abolition 200 was undertaken with the aim of commemorating the abolition of the slave trade by the British parliament in 2007. 97 Tony Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000,” 20. 98 Nigell Pollitt, “Piper at the gates of dawn, Visual Arts, Circuit: The Cream of the Week,” City Limits (6–12 July 1984): 13–14. 99 Keith Piper, Past Imperfect, Future Tense, the Black-Art Gallery, 7 June–22 July 1984.

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degree, to the art establishment?,” and “Have you had critical reactions from people who would regard themselves as first British, then black?” But by the mid- to late 1990s, newspapers and magazines had by and large dispensed with such approaches and questions and had adopted, instead, the approach and structure of the celebrity interview in their features on Black artists. In the light of the unprecedented levels of media attention given to leading yBa figures, the changing media approach to the visual arts was perhaps inevitable. These artists, including Ofili et al., were, after all, “at ease with the camera and the media.”100 At the time of his I C A exhibition, Steve McQueen appeared as one half of a substantial double-page spread in the Independent on Sunday, in a regular feature titled “How We Met.” He was paired with the hair-stylist Johnny Sapong, whom the feature introduced as “[age] 29, styles hair for catwalk shows; his clients include Alexander McQueen, Red or Dead and Katherine Hamnett.”101 Taking turns, McQueen and Sapong let the interviewer, Anna Melville–James, know how fond they were of each other. McQueen: These days he’s always flying off somewhere. I’m the same, but Johnny does it more, because he’s the man, basically. So we don’t get to see each other that often. I live in Amsterdam, and Johnny still lives in Ealing, so when I come over I stay at my mum’s and I’ll see Johnny if he’s around… We’ll only go out to a party if it’s a good party. No celebrity bashes or events like that, because it’s just not our thing.102

A sizeable portrait of Sapong and McQueen accompanied the article. Such irredeemably frothy press attention was meat and drink to this new generation of artists, who regarded it as a legitimate and valuable prop for themselves and their practice. Such coverage extended beyond practitioners to favoured people of African and Asian origin working in other sectors of the arts. Munira Mirza, for example, was the subject of a “My week” feature in a June 2009 issue of the Observer. Described as “culture advisor to London mayor Boris Johnson,” Mirza took the reader through her hectic but fulfilling week, before musing on ways in which her position had influenced her attitude to London. “Since I began this job a year ago, I have become aware of a cultural revolution going 100

Tony Godfrey, “British Art and the British Art Show 1976–2000,” 20. “How We Met: Steve McQueen and Johnny Sapong,” The Independent on Sunday Magazine (7 February 1999): 52. 102 “How We Met: Steve McQueen and Johnny Sapong,” 52. 101

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on inside my own heart.” Mirza went on to let the reader know that “I am slowly falling in love with the suburbs.”103 Mercer’s decidedly upbeat summary of the multiple achievements of Black-British artists had raised some concerns and disquiet about several prominent aspects of the state of Black arts activity.104 Mercer had opened his musings by noting positively that the architect David Adjaye, who had recently held an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, was “actually producing three of the four new arts centres that will be permanent ‘homes’ for the black British art scene.”105 This comment prompted readers to ponder on the question of which individuals or forces had decided that what Black-British artists needed to thrive and prosper were dedicated (or, some might suggest, segregated) visual-arts spaces. Mercer was perhaps aware of the decidedly mixed fortunes of the visual-arts building projects initiated in the run-up to the new millennium (and referred to in chapter 2 of this study), because he continued: “am I alone in wondering what exactly is going to go into these buildings and what exactly is going to come out of them?”106 Rosie Millard was to provide some cheerless responses to Mercer’s wondering about the precise function of these buildings. In a newspaper feature on the mixed fortunes of building projects, including those Mercer had cited as “‘homes’ for the black British art scene,” Millard offered a downbeat assessment of these ‘homes’, including the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, which had “opened in a blaze of hoopla and [was] a building designed by architect David Adjaye.” Her report continued: It was supposed to be a “flagship for cultural diversity” at a cost of £15 million, £6.4 million of which came from the Millennium Fund. On calling this week to find out what was on, the friendly woman at the box office could only guide me to a tea dance and a visiting arts troupe. Not quite the home of “nurturing, inspiration, stimulation and challenge”, as promised on the website, and certainly no flagship. Let me repeat the figures. £15 million for an arts centre offering two events in the next month, one of which is a tea dance. [. . . ] “Until signage went up. . . we had no idea what it was. . . and even now, we wish the centre’s purpose was more clear or somehow tangible,”

103

“My Week: Munira Mirza,” The Observer (7 June 2009): 38. Kobena Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 67. 105 Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 66. The three building projects, designed and Adjaye, were the Bernie Grant Centre, the Stephen Lawrence Centre, and Rivington Place, all in London. 106 “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 69. 104

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writes one blogger on the Deptford Dame webpage. What is it for? Er, education. And something called “incubator offices” in which businesses are meant to do something called “live work”. No, I don't know what that is, and I don't think Stephen Lawrence’s mother Doreen does, either. She’s said to be very unhappy with how things are.107

Mercer wondered if the impetus for these assorted building projects, dominated by Rivington Place, the combined home of I N I V A and Autograph (the Association of Black Photographers), had gathered momentum just when the fortunes and profile of Black-British artists had begun to fade dramatically: To raise such doubts is observe [sic] that the current black British art scene has reached something of a plateau in the period between 2000 and 2005. The driving energies of its creative ambition actually began to level off, in my view, some time ago, at some point in the late 1990s. Against this backdrop, the complex question of institution-building is underlined by the double-sided connotations of its cognate term: institutionalisation. On the one hand, without museums, collections, and institutions to preserve the materials of shared cultural history, the past is vulnerable to selective erasure – a symbolic threat that the cultures of the Black Atlantic diaspora have had to contend with from their inception. On the other hand, there is the appalling dystopian risk that Adjaye’s beautiful buildings might somehow end up “empty” if there is insufficient passion for genuine public dialogue, debate, and disagreement about the overall “direction” – or rather “directions” in the plural – that the black British arts scene is taking as a whole.108

Although Mercer had, earlier, erroneously stated that Ofili had won the Turner Prize in 2002 (the correct year being 1998), he nonetheless suggested that the successes of McQueen, Ofili, and Shonibare, which began in earnest in the late 1990s, coincided with the beginnings of a questionable institutionalization of the Black-British artist. Put in these sobering terms, Mercer’s doubts underlined the degree to which Ofili et al. were going in one direction, while the bulk of Black-British artists were, or at least had the appearance of, moving in a conceivably less favourable direction. Perhaps mindful of the extent to which these two directions indicated Black artists’ decidedly mixed fortunes, Mercer plumped for “it may well be the case that the black British arts scene is flourishing and floundering in equal measure.”109 107

Rosie Millard, “Money for nothing,” 14. Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 69. 109 “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 69. 108

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In seeking to evaluate the mixed fortunes of Black-British artists of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, it is important to recall that “the black British arts scene extends back across the twentieth century as a whole.”110 Collectively and individually, Black-British artists have, over an extended period of time, had notable moments of success and achievement. The decade of the 1950s can be identified as a particularly significant one for the pioneering generation of Black artists in London. According to Leslie Primo, These early pioneers of black British art [Frank Bowling and Aubrey Williams] would eventually be recognized, post-millennium, by the mainstream art establishment for their contribution to the British art scene; however, black British artists would not again experience the heady days of the 1950s.111

Notwithstanding Primo’s characterization of the 1950s as a pivotal decade and Bowling’s disillusionment regarding the period, in the early 1960s Bowling and Williams both had significant and important solo exhibitions at London galleries, as well as showing in equally important group exhibitions in which their practice was appraised alongside that of their white colleagues.112 Later, in an altogether different space and time, thirteen London-based Black artists had exhibited together at Festac 77, the 2nd World Black & African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos Nigeria in 1977.113 Within several 110

Mercer, “ ‘ Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day’,” 69. Leslie Primo, “Visual Arts 2: Artists. 2 Guyanese Artists,” in The Oxford Companion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P , 2007): 502. 112 For example, both of these artists had several important exhibitions at Grabowski Gallery in London in the early 1960s. Frank Bowling and Derek Boshier, Image in Revolt, 5 October–3 November 1962; Aubrey Williams, 3–24 January, 1963. Although Frank Bowling felt that he had been unjustly excluded from the 1964 New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel (see In the Citadel of Modernism, The Other Story catalogue, 1989, 40), Aubrey Williams was included in Appointment With Six: International Abstract Trends, Arun Arts Centre, 19 October–5 November 1966. Along with Williams, the exhibition included Gwen Barnard, Pip Benveniste, Oswell Blakeston, Max Chapman, and A. Oscar. In 1962, the Arts Council Collection obtained one of Bowling’s paintings (“Birthday,” 1962, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4cm), making it one of the first works by a Black-British artist to be thus acquired. 113 In 1977, a group of London-based Black artists exhibited at Festac’77, an international festival of arts and culture from the Black world and the African Diaspora 111

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years of this, a new generation of Black-British artists had emerged and their energies were coalescing around shows such as Five Black Women Artists at the Africa Centre, Black Woman Time Now, and the Creation for Liberation exhibitions.114 Looking back at the astonishing history of Black-British visual-arts practice, we could argue that its most pronounced moments of achievement have involved artists themselves, initiating their own projects, with little or no regard for state funding, which by its nature often consigns what it touches to failure, disappointment, or a disempowering and moribund existence. Change characterized the emergence of the 1980s generation of Black artists, just as much as (or no less than) change characterized the emergence of a core group of favoured artists during the 1990s. This point is of great consequence because whatever was ‘new’ about the second generation of Black-British artists did not stay ‘new’ for long. Once the art establishment had ‘discovered’ Black artists, via the survey shows discussed in this study, their ‘newness’ quickly evaporated, leaving instead a few artists who were discussed and related to with an almost suffocating, though ultimately hollow, familiarity. The art establishment was able to rapidly assimilate the ‘new’, making it the ‘familiar’. It was perhaps this process of assimilation that Keith

hosted by the Nigerian Government. Winston Branch, Mercian Carrena, Uzo Egonu, Armet Francis, (Emmanuel) Taiwo Jegede, Neil Kenlock, Donald Locke, Cyprian Mandala, Ronald Moody, Ossie Murray, Sue Smock, Lance Watson, and Aubrey Williams. 114 Five Black Women Artists at the Africa Centre, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Houria Niati, Veronica Ryan (Africa Centre, 6 September–14 October 1983); Black Woman Time Now, Brenda Agard, Sonia Boyce, Chila Burman, Jean Campbell, Margaret Cooper, Elizabeth Eugene, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Mumtaz Karimjee, Cherry Lawrence, Houria Niati, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Andrea Telman, and Leslee Wills (Battersea Arts Centre, 30 November–31 December 1983); and four Creation for Liberation exhibitions: 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, 17 July–8 August 1984); 3rd Creation for Liberation, Open Exhibition of Contemporary Art by Black Artists (G L C Brixton Recreation Centre, 12 July–3 August 1985); and Creation for Liberation Open Exhibition: Art by Black Artists, contributions by 46 artists (Brixton Village, 7 October–17 November 1987).

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Piper meant when he wrote, in 1987, that “some of us would argue that Black Art, like Brixton, is undergoing a period of ‘gentrification’.”115 Piper’s view of this ‘gentrification’ navigates several readings of the emergence of Black visual artists in 1980s Britain. The first reading was that artists in general and, in this instance, Black artists in particular were reluctant to see themselves as building on whatever had gone before them. They were instead inclined to regard whatever they were doing as an emphatic, refreshing and better departure from whatever had gone before. To quote Piper: History shows us that the Arts, or more specifically in this case ‘Fine Art’, unlike (the) Sciences, holds too antagonistic a view of itself to effectively build upon what has gone before. Preceding events are more often than not reacted against, denigrated as passé, or parodied as kitsch. Because of this art changes rather than advances.116

Black-British artists and their art in the 1980s ushered in the ‘new’ (different from the ‘old’) because the artists themselves regarded themselves and their work as such. Concurrent with the sidelining of those most-favoured 1980s Black artists, a newly favoured body of Black artists took centre stage. If change is to a great extent a given, an inevitable part of the human condition, then we can perhaps expect that a new chapter in the history of Black artists in Britain, a new era of change, will – sooner or later – be upon us. Again, looking back at the recent history of Black artists in Britain, it is difficult, though not impossible, to imagine individual artists, or groups of artists, emerging at points in the future, on pronounced counter-cultural platforms. With so many Black-British artists of recent times being sidelined and the rest institutionalized by the honours system and an establishment embrace, the conditions are perhaps right for new generations of artists to emerge, with little or no regard for either art-world indifference or those separate-development initiatives ostensibly created to serve Black artists and Black people. By the late-1970s, major artists such as Henry Moore had largely become an irrelevance to a generation of younger artists, anxious to develop their own practices with a breezy disregard for the art-establishment hegemony typified by Moore. Fleetingly, art in the Punk years had a dynamism that owed much

115

Keith Piper, “Black Art: A Statement,” in The Essential Black Art (exh. cat.; London: Chisenhale Gallery / Black Umbrella / Kala, 1988): 46. 116 Piper, “Black Art: A Statement,” 46.

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to its counter-cultural sensibility.117 The rapid ascendancy of the dominant personalities discussed in this study, artists such as Ofili and Shonibare, suggests that they are on their way to becoming the Henry Moores of our time – establishment, successful, but quite possibly less than relevant to upcoming generations of artists keen to make their own mark.

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117

See, for example, Panic Attack: Art in the Punk Years (exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery; London: Merrell, 2007). See also John A. Walker, Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001).

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

Index 

000zerozerozero (exh.), 248 “13 Dead (Nothing Said)” (Johnny Osbourne), 74 “13 Killed” (Keith Piper), 166, 177 “3Y + 3B” (Rasheed Araeen), 185 Abdu’Allah, Faisal, 140 Aberystwyth Arts Centre, 243 Abolition 200, 234, 252 abolition of the slave trade, 92, 234, 252 Aboriginal art, 37, 243; peoples, 81 abstract painting, 7 Abts, Tomma, 188 Adams, Brook, 102 Adjaye, David, 70, 136, 218, 249, 254, 255; David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings (exh.), 249; & Chris Ofili, “The Upper Room,” xlvi, 196–98 Adrus, Said, 140 Afghanistan, 76, 91 Africa 05 festival, xxxvi, 206, 207, 251 africa 95 festival, 251 Africa Centre, London, 224, 247, 257 “African American Flag” (David Hammons), 151–52 African art, 113, 114, 115, 117 African artists, 9, 112, 113, 115, 150, 188, 217, 240 African arts, xxxvi, 3, 206, 251 “African Children” (Aswad), 174 African immigrants, 200 African origin, artists of —See: African artists African-American artists, xvii, xix, xlix, 17, 100, 102, 106, 149, 151, 157, 218 Africanness, 107, 115 Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic (exh.), 251

Afro-Caribbean Art (exh.), xli (1986/87), 37 (1978) Agard, Brenda, xlii, 23, 225, 257 Air Gallery, 32 Ajamu, 140 Akomfrah, John, 70, 87, 88; dir., Handsworth Songs, 82 Alberge, Dalya, 158, 187, 240 Alele, Henrietta Atooma, 140 Alexander, Simone, xxiii, xli, xlii, 16, 40 Alibhai–Brown, Yasmin, 56, 77 alienation, 78, 82, 116, 172, 179, 232 Aliya, Hassan, 140 Alker, David, 87 Allen, Tim, 139 Ames, Mrs Ernest, 83 angry artists, 21, 166, 167, 214 —See also: political artists annexation (Januszczak), 47 anti-apartheid activity, 13 apartheid, 172, 235 Appointment With Six: International Abstract Trends (exh.), 256 Araeen, Rasheed, xvii, xx, xxxvii, xlii, 1, 3, 17, 27, 32, 37, 38, 46, 48, 75, 76, 95, 97, 98, 104, 106, 110, 138, 160, 161, 166, 185, 203, 205, 209, 216, 237, 241, 244; as curator, xxxvii, 17, 32, 46, 48, 97, 138; “Rang Baranga,” 183; “3Y + 3B,” 185; “Zero to Infinity,” 185 Aratjara: Art of the First Australians (exh.), 243 architecture, xxvi, 152 —See also: David Adjaye Arero, Hassan, 204 Arif, Saleem, xx, xxxvii, xlii, 38, 42, 70 Arnold, Liz, 139

278 Arnolfini, gallery in Bristol, 40 art criticism, xxv, xxx, xxxviii, 16, 18, 24, 46, 98, 116, 138, 149, 152, 153, 157, 166, 187, 211, 214, 241 art education, xxii —See also: art schools Art From South Africa (exh.), 242 Art Gallery of New South Wales, 216 Art Gallery of South Australia, 216 Art History: Artists Look at Contemporary Britain (exh.), 139 Art Institute of Chicago, 237 art market, xxiv, 100, 113, 244 art projects, 89, 122 art schools, xxi, xxii, xlv, 11, 31, 50, 96, 97, 111, 112, 116, 126, 142, 144, 150, 187, 188, 189, 197, 221, 238, 239 Arts Council, xxiv, xxxvi, xxxviii, xlvi, 12, 23, 28, 30, 71, 79, 92, 135, 171, 179, 185, 192, 194, 201, 202, 203,, 212, 213, 220, 224, 225, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 239, 240, 247, 256 Arts Council Collection, 12, 30, 79, 171, 194, 256 Arts Council of England, 229, 237 Arts Council of Great Britain, 28, 212, 214, 224 arts projects, 60, 61, 156, 234 Arun Arts Centre, 256 Asian artists, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxxi, xxxvii, xlviii, 27, 28, 29, 33, 35, 39, 47, 64, 69, 72, 75, 82, 97, 140, 150, 166, 176, 187, 188, 201, 203, 205, 209, 210, 215, 224, 225, 235, 240, 249, 250, 253 Asian immigrants, 249 assemblage, xxii, 146 Association of Black Photographers (Autograph), xxxvi, 247, 255 Aswad (reggae group), “African Children,” 174 Atkinson, Terry, 87, 186 Attenborough, David, 45 Aubrey Williams (exh.), 165, 203, 204, 247, 256 Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire (exh.), 204, 205, 251

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Aubrey Williams: Dreams and Visions (exh.), 205 Aubrey Williams: Now and Coming Time (exh.), 205 Auerbach, Frank, 210 Auguiste, Reece, 82 Australia, 33, 66, 81, 108, 123, 216, 242 Australian artists, 242 authenticity, xxxi, xxxv, 108, 117, 118, 161, 190 autobiography, xxii Autograph (Association of Black Photographers), xxxvi, 247, 255 Back to Black (exh.), 79, 251 Bailey, David A., 70, 141, 153, 157; Ian Baucom & Sonia Boyce, xxiii, xli, 1, 2, 4, 11, 103, 105, 226, 228 Bakari, Imruh, 204 B A L T I C Centre for Contemporary Art, 60

Bancroft, Bronwyn, 37 Bangladeshi community, 28, 31, 249 Bankspace gallery, 139 Baraka, Imamu Amiri, 5 Barbican Art Gallery, 4, 259 Barclays Young Artist Award, 110, 111, 115, 116, 120, 121 Barnard, Gwen, 256 Barnett, Laura, 111, 112, 115, 124, 215 Baron, Francis, 66 Barrett, David, 99 Basquiat, Jean–Michel, xxxi, 147, 149 Bath Academy of Art, 150 Battersea Arts Centre, 224, 257 Batty, Lolly, 139 Bear (Steve McQueen, dir.), 153, 154 Beard, Matthew, 66, 67 Bearden, Romare, 107 Beauchamp–Byrd, Mora J., 79, 140 Beckford, Franklyn, xx, xli, xlii, 38; Food (exh.), 31 Bedeau, Clement, xli, 23 Bedford Hill Gallery, 107, 108, 109 Beech, Dave, 139 Belmore, Rebecca, 110 Ben–David, Zadok, xx, xlii, 31, 38, 42 Bending the Grid (exh.), 185



I n d ex

279

Black/black, orthography of, xv, xvii, xviii Black-Art Gallery, xlii, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 162, 219, 247, 252 Blair, Tony, xix, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii, xliii, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 63, 64, 66, 67, 103, 199, 242 Blake, William, 147, 149 Blakeston, Oswell, 256 “Bliz-aard Ball Sale” (David Hammons), 146, 147 Blk Art Group, 195 Blk Art Group 1983–1984 (exh.), 225 Blood Ah Goh Run (Menelik Shabazz, dir.), 72, 73, 74 Bluecoat Gallery, 226, 227, 251 Blunkett, David, 13 Bolton, Sylbert, 21, 140 Bomberg, David, 31 Booker McConnell, 181 Boothroyd, David, 176 122 Boshier, Derek, 98 Black Art Movement (U K ), xvi, 104 Bourouissa, Mohamed, 173 Black Art: New Directions (exh.) , 109, Bowling, Frank, xxxvii, xli, 65, 70, 75, 140, 214 76, 77, 95, 97, 98, 102, 143, 150, 156, Black Art: Plotting the Course (exh.), 184, 186, 207, 208, 210, 212, 214; xlvii “Birthday,” 256; Frank Bowling and Black artists, identification as, xxvii, xxxii Derek Boshier, Image in Revolt (exh.), Black Arts Movement (U S ), 5, 226 98, 165, 256; “Spread Out Ron Kitaj,” Black Arts, xxiii, xli, xlii, 1, 4, 5, 11, 72, 184, 185 73, 101, 103, 105, 226, 228 Bowness, Sophie, & Clive Phillpot, 207 Black Atlantic, 8, 251, 255 Boyce, Sonia, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxv, Black Audio Film Collective, xx, xlii, 70, xxxvi, xxxvii, xli, xlii, 1, 4, 11, 12, 16, 213; Expeditions: Signs of Empire and [Sonia Boyce, cont.] 17, 20, 23, 24, Images of Nationality, 79, 82, 83, 84, 26, 29, 30, 33, 37, 38, 41, 42, 46, 48, 87; Three Songs on Pain, Light and 49, 70, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 91, Time, 179 102, 103, 105, 108, 139, 140, 162, Black History Month, 195, 234 184, 204, 208, 209, 214, 217, 225, Black Liberation, xvi, 5 226, 227, 228, 234, 247, 248, 251, “Black Man” (Macka-B), 76 257; as curator, 24, 26, 29, 33, 208; Black People and the British Flag (exh.), Devotional, 92; “From Tarzan to xlvii Rambo,” 182; “Lay Back, Keep Quiet Black Peoples Day of Action, 72, 74 and Think of What Made Britain so Black Power, 18, 101, 229 Great,” 79–84, 87, 108; Like Love, Black Woman Time Now (exh.), 9, 257 224; “Missionary Position,” 80, 82, Black, demarcation of term, xv, xvi 184; Sonia Boyce: Recent Work Black, Ian, 58 (exh.), 248 Bennett, Marcia, 140 Benoist, Marie–Guillemine, 86 Benveniste, Pip, 256 Berbice Slave Rebellion, 181 Bernie Grant Arts Centre, 231, 254 Beverley, Jackie, 178 Bhabha, Homi K., 32 Bhaskar, Sanjeev, 67 Bhimji, Zarina, xv, xx, xxiv, xxxii, xlii, xlviii, 16, 30, 31, 38, 40, 56, 99, 105, 140, 177, 178, 187, 200, 215, 237, 242, 245, 246 Bhownagree Gallery, 247 Bickers, Patricia, 160, 161, 217 Biggs, Lewis, 216 Bill, Simon, 139 “Birthday” (Bowling), 256 Biswas, Sutapa, xlii, 16, 31, 46, 139, 140, 225, 247, 250; Sutapa Biswas: Recent Paintings (exh.), 247 Black Art an’ Done (exh.), xxii, xxv, 101,

280 Bracewell, Michael, xxviii, 114 Branch, Winston, 140, 257 Bravo, Tyrone, 6, 8 Brett, Guy, 181, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206 Brewster, Yvonne, 67 Brilliant! New Art From London (exh.), 101, 114, 146 Brisley, Stuart, 139 Bristol, 171 Brit Pack, The, xxvii, 104, 217 Britannia decorated (Yinka Shonibare), 190, 192 British Art Show, The (exh. series), xlviii, 12, 104, 115, 139, 142, 153, 185, 189, 211, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 222, 238, 241 British Council, 38, 138, 144, 203, 207, 211, 215, 216, 217 British Empire, xliii, 51, 52, 57, 65, 69, 77, 79, 80, 81, 84, 89, 91, 122 “British Product, A” (Val Brown), xlvii, 81

British Show, The (exh.), 216 Britishness, xxxviii, xlvii, 47, 48, 59, 71, 81, 86, 93, 94, 179, 201, 213, 232, 234, 241 Brixton, xxiii, xlii, 30, 101, 171, 172, 220, 225, 226, 258 Brixton Village, xliii, 257 Broadwater Farm riots, 172, 173, 175 Bronx Museum of the Arts, 140 Brooklyn Museum, xlviii, 123 Brown, Gordon, xxxi, 55 Brown, Neal, 94 Brown, Val, “A British Product,” xlvii, 81 brutality, police, 172, 175, 178 Buchan, Norman, M.P., 13 Buchhart, Dieter, & Mathias Fuchs, xxvi Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., 113 Buck, Louisa, xxvii, xxviii, xxxiv, xlv, 99, 121, 134, 138, 144, 145 Burke, Vanley, 6, 79, 95, 140 Burman, Chila Kumari, xlii, 16, 31, 140, 177, 178, 225, 257 Burrell, Ian, 200 Burrows, David, 139 Bush, George W., 93

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Button, Virginia, xxx, xlv, 131, 150, 184, 187, 189 Caborn, Richard, M.P., 13 Caesar, Pogus, 5, 6, 10, 36, 73, 88, 177; as curator, xlii, 19, 185 Cairo Biennale, 245 Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, 150

Camden Arts Centre, 243, 247 Camera d’Or, 154 Cameron, David, xix, xxxi, xxxiii, 67 Camp, Sokari Douglas, xx, xlii, 38, 42, 70, 106, 140; “Cross We Bear,” 135 Campaign Against Racism in Art (C A R A ), 4 Campbell, Charles, xlviii Campbell, Jean, 225, 257 “Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars” (Chris Ofili), 128, 155 Carew, Jan, 181 Caribbean artists, 165 Caribbean Arts Movement, 204 Caribbean Cultural Center, New York, 140

Caribbean Expressions in Britain (exh.), xli, xlii Caribbean immigrants, 195, 200 Caribbean origin, artists of, xv, xvi, xvii, xli, xlviii, 6, 13, 28, 29, 33, 35, 37, 39, 43, 48, 75, 84, 102, 140, 150, 152, 157, 176, 181, 182, 188, 201, 217, 228, 232, 240 Caribbean, and plantation slavery, 76, 107, 180, 181, 182, 183 Carmichael, Stokely, 5 carnival, West Indian, 192 Carrena, Mercian, 257 “Cartoon 1” (Donald Rodney), 194 cartoons about artists, 99, 127, 128, 159, 194

Cartwright Hall, Bradford, xli “Caryatid Figures Rafia Colour Motif” (Yinka Shonibare), 110 Casadio, Mariuccia, xxvi Casavecchia, Barbara, xxvi Casco, Dee, 6



281

I n d ex

Casely–Hayford, Augustus, xxxvi, 152, 206, 251 Castle Museum, Nottingham, xli Cathcart, Brian, 129, 134, 135 Caulfield, Patrick, 65, 98 C B E , 53, 54, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 76, 95 celebrity status, xxvi, xxvii, xxxv, xxxix, xl, xli, xliv, 61, 65, 89, 98, 102, 115, 121, 122, 123, 126, 127, 132, 140, 151, 154, 164, 184, 185, 224, 252, 253 Centre for Visual Arts, Cardiff, 60, 61 Centre Georges Pompidou, 112 Chadwick, Helen, 140, 188 Chambers, Eddie, xviii, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxxi, xxxvi, xxxvii, xli, xlii, 6, 7, 14, 16, 101, 122, 166, 177, 207, 219, 220, 222, 225, 230, 231, 242, 243, 245, 247, 251 Chan, Nadine, 110 Chandra, Avinash, xxxvii, 210 Chapman, Max, 256 Charity Commission, 197 Charles, Michael Ray, 149 Charlton, Bobby, 65 Chelsea School of Art, 30, 177 Chia, Li Yuan, xxxvii, 247 Chisenhale Gallery, 17, 41, 258 Chong, Albert, 110 Chris Ofili (Sarah Wason, dir.), 152, 240 City Gallery, Wellington, 216 City Museum, Sheffield, 42, 109, 111 civil rights, 101 Clarke, Peter, 87 Cleaver, Eldridge, 5 Clough, Prunella, 212 Cocaine Orgasm (exh.), 139 Colescott, Robert, 149 Collier, Caroline, 213, 214 Collins, Hannah, 242 colonialism, xxx, xxxi, 78, 81, 84, 153, 181

comfortable dualism, 120 “Coming in From the Cold” (Marley), xlvi Commanders of the British Empire, xliii —See: C B E Commonwealth Art Today (exh.), 210 Commonwealth Institute, 9, 210, 247

Compton, Adrian, 6 Comrie, Jennifer, xlii, 16, 23, 177, 178, 225

Conceptual Clothing (exh.), 38 “Concrete Jungle” (Bob Marley), 174 confrontational art, xxix, 168 Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 101, 114 Conwill, Kinshasha Holman, 112 Cook, Robin, xxxii, 58 Cook, Stephen, 73 Cool Britannia, xxxiii, xxxiv, 54, 55, 242 Cooper, Margaret, xli, 225, 257 Cork, Richard, 153, 155, 189 Cornerhouse gallery, Manchester, xlii, xlvii, 15 Corrion, Lisa, 168 Court, Elsbeth, 110, 111, 115, 120 Cox, Stephen, 216 crafts, 27, 29, 162 Cragg, Tony, 186, 210, 216 Creation for Liberation, organization and exhibition series, xlii, xliii, 9, 220, 257

Crisis (exh., Donald Rodney), 41 Critical Difference: Contemporary Art from India (exh.), 243 Critical Realism: Britain in the 1980s (exh.), 139 “Cross We Bear” (Sokari Douglas Camp), 135

Cruz, Juan, 217 cultural duality, 44, 45 cultural politics, xxix, 245 curatorship, xvii, xx, xxiv, xxvii, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xxxii, xxxvii, xxxviii, xxxix, xlii, xliii, xlvi, xlviii, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 49, 92, [curatorship, cont.] 100, 101, 105, 114, 115, 120, 126, 139, 140, 149, 151, 153, 157, 167, 184, 201, 204, 206, 212, 213, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 250, 251 —See also esp. the following Black artists as (co-)curators: Rasheed

282 Araeen, Sonia Boyce, Pogus Caesar, Lubaina Himid, Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Aubrey Williams Currie, Ken, 87, 139 Cussans, John, 139 Dabydeen, David, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones, 63, 199 Daley, Anthony, 140 Damiano, Charles, 203 David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings (exh.), 249 David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble (exh.), 145, 148 David, Catherine, 105, 114 Davis, Miles, “So What,” 161 Davson, Victor, 184, 185 Dawes, Dominic, xxv, 122, 247 De Salvo, Donna, 149 Deacon, Richard, 186 Deadpan (Steve McQueen, dir.), 154 Dean, Tacita, 65, 131, 242 Dedi, Shakka, xli, xlii, 4, 5, 6, 17, 219 Deliss, Clémentine, 113, 251 Denzil Forrester: Two Decades of Painting (exh.), 111 Depicting History: For Today (exh.), 22, 87, 139, 182 Deptford fire, 72, 74, 136, 167, 177, 198, 255

Desnoes, Olive, 6 Devil’s Feast, The (exh.), 177, 178, 179 Devotional (Sonia Boyce), 92 Dhandia, Sarup Singh, 70 Dhanjal, Avtarjeet, xxxvii, 150 Dia, Tamessir, 113 Diary of a Victorian Dandy (Yinka Shonibare), 143–44 diaspora, xxxvi, 8, 180, 206, 251, 255 Diawara, Manthia, 120 didacticism, xxv, 110, 136, 137 difference, xxiv, xxxii, xxxv, xliii, xlv, 16, 17, 20, 26, 28, 33, 35, 36, 87, 125, 155, 169, 193, 199, 230, 231, 232, 234, 241, 242 Dimé, Moustapha, 113 Dimensione Futuro (exh.), 112, 113

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Dislocations (exh.), 40 Display (Donald Rodney, exh.), 195, 200, 234

diversity, ethnic (= non-white) , xxi, xxxii, xxxv, xxxvi, 16, 20, 35, 40, 67, 71, 100, 113, 124, 125, 135, 177, 184, 188, 189, 190, 194, 196, 197, 198, 204, 210, 215, 221, 226, 227, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 240, 243, 244, 249, 252 Documenta 10 (exh.), 114 Documenta 11 (exh.), xxxv, 105, 114 Doig, Peter, 194 Dominica, 102 Donald Rodney: Display (exh.), 195, 200, 234 Donaldson, Anthony, 98 Donkor, Godfried, 140 Dorment, Richard, 154, 196, 198, 211 Double Dress (Yinka Shonibare, exh.), 119

Double Dutch (Yinka Shonibare, exh.), 106, 117, 118, 120, 121 Double Vision (exh.), xli, 31 Doy, Gen, xv, xvi, xviii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxix, 62, 147, 227 Drew, Joanna, & Andrew Dempsey, 48, 171, 209 duality, cultural, 39, 45, 120 Duchamp, Marcel, 146 Ducker, Richard, 111, 121 Duguid, Hannah, 78, 167 Durrant, Sabine, xxvi, 163, 164 Dusinberre, Deke, 113 Dyer, Richard, xxxi, 76, 127, 244 Dyer, Sonya, 235, 236, 237 Dyer, Terry, 6 East London, 27, 95 East Midlands Arts Conference, 34, 240 Eclectic Flavour (exh.), 141, 143, 230 Eden, Richard, & Tim Walker, 68, 69 Edge, Nina, 140, 141 Edge, Sarah, 87 Egonu, Uzo, xxxvii, xli, 106, 140, 150, 186, 216, 257 El Anatsui, 106, 112



I n d ex

283

“Everything Crash” (The Ethiopians), 219 El Dorado (Howard Hawks, dir.), 195 elephant dung, and David Hammons, 148, exclusion, xxxvii, xlvi, 2, 3, 4, 19, 32, 39, 149 81, 85, 98, 115, 166, 180, 227, 249 elephant dung, and Chris Ofili, xxxiv, 97, E X H I B I T I O N S : 121, 126, 127, 129, 132, 137, 138, 144, GROUP: 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 154, 155, 187, 000zerozerozero 248 188, 196 Afro Modern: Journeys Through the “Elephant Dung Sculptures” (David HamBlack Atlantic, 251 mons), 148 Afro-Caribbean Art, xli, 37 ‘Elephant Shit’ ad (Chris Ofili), 141 Appointment With Six: International elitism, 6, 7 Abstract Trends, 256 Elliott, David, 29 Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, Emin, Tracey, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxix, 65, 98, 243 99, 115, 123, 126, 143, 157, 158, 159, Art From South Africa, 242 187, 188, 208; “My Bed,” 121, 123, Art History: Artists Look at 124, 143, 157, 158, 159, 170, 185, Contemporary Britain, 140 186, 191 Back to Black, 79, 251 England, as focus for Black art activity, Bending the Grid, 185 xlvii Black Art an’ Done, xxii, xxv, 101, England / Britain distinction, xlvii 122 Englishness, xlvii Black Art: New Directions, 109, 140, 214 Enwezor, Okwui, 84, 105, 114, 219 Black Art: Plotting the Course, xlvii Esche, Charles, 151 Black People and the British Flag, Essential Black Art, The (exh.), 17, 27, xlvii 32, 34, 240, 258 Black Woman Time Now, 9, 257 establishment, art, xxviii, xxxi, 9, 13, 16, Blk Art Group 1983–1984, 225 19, 22, 23, 24, 26, 32, 34, 37, 38, 41, Brilliant! New Art From London, 101, 46, 47, 49, 50, 60, 73, 75, 86, 103, 114, 146 106, 114, 127, 135, 179, 204, 205, The British Art Show (exh. series), 206, 208, 210, 211, 216, 247, 253, xlviii, 12, 104, 115, 139, 142, 153, 256, 257, 258, 259 185, 189, 211, 210, 212, 213, 214, Ethiopians, The, “Everything Crash,” 219 215, 217, 218, 222, 238, 241 ethnic minorities, 20, 57, 58, 68, 71, 213, 236 The British Show, 216 ‘ethnic minority’ artists, xx, xxxvi, 67, Caribbean Expressions in Britain, xli, 68, 71, 200, 201, 235 xlii ethnicity, xv, xvi, xx, xxix, xxxi, xxxv, Cocaine Orgasm, 139 xxxvi, 4, 16, 24, 32, 35, 37, 48, 57, Conceptual Clothing, 38 58, 64, 67, 68, 69, 71, 95, 111, 116, Creation for Liberation, xlii, xliii, 9, 121, 155, 184, 188, 200, 201, 205, 220, 257 208, 209, 211, 213, 220, 226, 230, Critical Difference: Contemporary Art 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 244, 249, from India, 243 250 Critical Realism: Britain in the 1980s, ethnicization, 37 139 Eugene Palmer (exh.), 111 Dimensione Futuro, 112, 113 Eugene, Elizabeth, 225, 257 Dislocations, 40 Europe, press coverage in, xxvi Documenta 10, 114

284 Documenta 11, xxxv, 105, 114 Depicting History: For Today, 22, 87, 139, 182 The Devil’s Feast, 177, 178, 179 Double Vision, xli, 31 Eclectic Flavour, 141, 143, 230 The Essential Black Art, 17, 27, 32, 34, 240, 258 Five Black Women Artists at the Africa Centre, 257 Five [Garden] Festival Sculptors, 38 From Two Worlds, xix–xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxxii, xxxv, xxxvii, xli, xlii, xliii, 9, 14, 15, 23–26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45–49, 171, 208, 220, 240 “From Where to Here”: Art From London, 217 Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale, 113 Gravity & Grace, 3, 4 Heart in Exile, 4, 6, 8 The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art, xli, xlii, 15, 16, 40 Imagined Communities 239 Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, xlviii Interrogating Identity, 110, 140, 230 Into the Open, xli, xliii, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 35, 36, 42, 44, 46, 49, 185, 216, 220 The Issue of Painting, 31 Krishna The Divine Lover, 248, 250 Living Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India, 27, 248 Magiciens de la Terre, 112, 113 Makonde: Wooden Sculpture from East Africa, 29, 243 Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference & Desire, xvii, xviii, 141, 153, 157, 160, 163, 164 The New Generation: 1964, 97 The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, xxxvii, xlviii, 1, 24, 32, 46, 48, 97, 138, 150, 166, 171, 203, 205, 209, 256

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Panic Attack: Art in the Punk Years, 259

Pictura Britannica: Art From Britain, 216, 217 Re-Writing History, 151 Room at the Top, 49, 139 Scratch the Surface, 92 Sculptors and Modellers, 38 Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection, 102 Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, 250, 251 Shifting Borders, 239 Shocks to the System, 194 The Thin Black Line (1985–86), xli, xlii, 23, 25, 46, 49, 157, 166, 185, 206, 223, 224, 225 Thin Black Line(s) (2011–12), 185, 206, 224 Trade Routes: History and Geography, 114, 245 Transforming the Crown: African, Asian, and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996, 105, 140, 230 Trophies of Empire, 40 Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, 248 Woven Air: The Muslin & Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh, 27, 28, 248, 249 EXHIBITIONS: SOLO: Aubrey Williams, 165, 203, 204, 247, 256

Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire, 204, 205, 251 Aubrey Williams: Dreams and Visions, 205 Aubrey Williams: Now and Coming Time, 205 Chris Ofili, 144 (1998), 195 (2010) Crisis (Donald Rodney), 41 David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, 249 David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble, 145, 148



285

I n d ex

Denzil Forrester: Two Decades of Painting, 111 Devotional (Sonia Boyce), 92 Donald Rodney: Display, 195, 200, 234

Double Dress (Yinka Shonibare), 119 Double Dutch (Yinka Shonibare), 106, 117, 118, 119 Eugene Palmer, 111 Food (Franklyn Beckford), 31 Frank Bowling and Derek Boshier, Image in Revolt, 98, 165, 256 Freedom One Day (Chris Ofili), 97, 229

In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson, 162 Nine Night in Eldorado (Donald Rodney, exh.), 104, 195, 196, 215 Past Imperfect, Future Tense (Keith Piper), 252 Relocating the Remains (Keith Piper), xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxix, 233 Sonia Boyce: Recent Work, 248 Sutapa Biswas: Recent Paintings, 247 Steve McQueen, 168 Tam Joseph: This is History, 42, 111 Tariq Alvi, 249 Within Reach (Chris Ofili), 211 Yinka Shonibare: Double Dress, 119 Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch, 106, 117, 118, 119 Yinka Shonibare: Recent Paintings, 107, 108 Exhibition Gallery, Milton Keynes, 38 exhibitions, group, xx, xxvii, xxxii, xxxvii, xli, xlii, xliii, xlv, xlvii, xlviii, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 24, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 42, 43, 49, 50, 65, 87, 97, 110, 112, 114, 116, 121, 122, 135, 139, 140, 141, 152, 156, 176, 178, 185, 195, 202, 210, 221, 222, 223, 225, 227, 233, 244, 245, 256, 257

exhibitions, integrated, 13, 15, 40, 233 exhibitions, international, xxvi, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxix, 3, 6, 33, 98, 100, 102, 105, 112, 113, 114, 153, 164, 192,

217, 219, 229, 237, 240, 242, 243, 244, 245, 256

exhibitions, solo, xxiv, xxv, xxix, xxx, xxxii, xxxviii, xliii, 4, 13, 15, 22, 30, 38, 41, 97, 99, 107, 111, 119, 126, 131, 153, 156, 194, 195, 223, 233, 245, 246, 252, 256 exhibitions, survey, xx, xxxviii, xli, 1, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 39, 40, 50, 105, 213, 223, 233, 249, 257

exhibitions, white, 164, 242 exoticism, xxx, xxxi, 27, 241, 243 Expeditions: Signs of Empire and Images of Nationality (Black Audio Film Collective), 79, 82, 83, 84, 87 Fani–Kayode, Rotimi, 140, 216 Fanon, Frantz, 5, 153 faux-African materials, 89, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 143, 144, 154, 190 —See also: textiles Faye, Mor, 113 features, newspaper, xix, xxvi, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxviii, xliv, 19, 29, 54, 56, 61, 65, 77, 78, 92, 94, 121, 122, 124, 126, 133, 136, 138, 144, 147, 152, 154, 159, 161, 162, 164, 167, 198, 208, 243, 253, 254 Feaver, William, 116, 216 feminism, xxii Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, 40 Festac ’77, 3 Figueiredo, Deirdre, 71 Finkelpearl, Tom, 148 Finn–Kelcey, Rose, 87 Finsbury Library, 7 Fisher, Jean, 82, 83, 149, 150, 209, 210, 241, 243, 244, 250 Five [Garden] Festival Sculptors (exh.), 38

Five Black Women Artists at the Africa Centre (exh.), 257 Five Easy Pieces (Steve McQueen, dir.), 154

Floyer, Ceal, 217 Food (exh., Franklyn Beckford), 31

286

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Gardner, Mario, 141 Garvey, Marcus, 149, 150, 151, 192, 229 Gentiles, Funsani, 6 Geoffrey, Iqbal, xxxvii George, Edward, xlii, 16, 141 Ghana, 51, 112, 197 ghetto, notion of, 18, 32, 174 ghettoization, 164 Giardini Notebook (Steve McQueen), 211 Gibbons, Fiachra, 158, 159 Gilbert & George, 186 Gill, Anton, 80 G L C (Greater London Council), xxxi, xliii, 45, 223, 235, 257 229 “Global Underground Map” (Yinka free-market liberalism, xxxi Shonibare), 125–27 Freeness (Chris Ofili & Icebox), 229 globalization, xxx, 105, 112, 239, 244 Freeze exhibition, xxvii, xxviii Glynn, Stephen, 139 Freud, Lucien, 216 Godfrey, Tony, 142, 144, 212, 213, 214, “From Tarzan to Rambo” (Sonia Boyce), 221, 222, 238, 244, 252, 253 184 Going Places (exh., Steve McQueen), 169 From Two Worlds (exh.), xix–xxi, xxiii, Golden, Thelma, 119, 218 xxv, xxxii, xxxv, xxxvii, xli, xlii, xliii, Goldsmiths College, xxviii, 30, 70, 95, 9, 14, 15, 23–26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 111, 114, 115, 152, 154, 158, 162, 213 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, Gooding, Mel, 204, 205 45–49, 171, 208, 220, 240 Goodwin, Paul, 225 “From Where to Here”: Art From LonGormley, Antony, xliv, 78 don (exh.), 217 Government Art Collection, xxxii Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, xx government involvement in the arts, xxxv, Fryer, Peter, 72, 73, 74, 129, 130 63, 89, 92, 193, 220, 232 Fuller, Peter, 216 Gowrie, Earl of, 13 funding for the visual arts, xxiv, xxxi, Grabowski Gallery, 98, 165, 256 xxxvii, xxxviii, xxxix, 7, 8, 9, 14, 22, Graham, Paul, 139, 140 23, 50, 60, 62, 63, 100, 192, 197, Graves Gallery, Sheffield, 224 220, 221, 223, 230, 232, 233, 234, Gravity & Grace (exh.), 3, 4 235, 246, 247, 249, 257 Gray Art Gallery, 110 —See also: lottery funding Great Depression, xl Fusco, Coco, xxx, 103, 106, 107, 137, Greater London Authority, xliv 141, 142, 149, 168; & Christian Haye, Greater London Council 146 —See: G L C Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Green, Renée, 141 Biennale (exh.), 113 Greenstreet, Rosanna, 124, 215 Greer, Bonnie, 71, 86 Gabriel, Carl, 6 Gregory, Joy, 140, 141, 143 galleries, independent, xxiv, 89, 100, 217, Groce, Mrs Cherry, 172, 177, 178 221, 231, 246 group exhibitions, xx, xxvii, xxxii, xxxvii, gallery system, xxiv, xxxix, 18, 179, 220, xli, xlii, xliii, xlv, xlvii, xlviii, 4, 5, 6, 226, 235, 246 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 24, 28, 30, formalism, xxxi, 89 Forman, James, 5 Forrester, Denzil, xx, xli, xlii, 3, 38, 42, 140, 248; Denzil Forrester: Two Decades of Painting (exh.), 111 Fourth Plinth Project, xliv, 78, 89, 90, 91, 99, 123 Francia, Peter de, 140 Francis, Armet, 257 Frank Bowling and Derek Boshier, Image in Revolt (exh.), 98, 165, 256 Frankel, David, 154 Fraser–Munro, Ronald, 141 Freedom One Day (exh., Chris Ofili), 97,



287

I n d ex

[group exhibitions, cont.] 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 42, 43, 49, 50, 65, 87, 97, 110, 112, 114, 116, 121, 122, 135, 139, 140, 141, 152, 156, 176, 178, 185, 195, 202, 210, 221, 222, 223, 225, 227, 233, 244, 245, 256, 257 Gulbenkian Galleries, xxiii Gupta, Sunil, 141 Gutsa, Tapfuma, 112 Guyana, xlviii, 75, 94, 102, 150, 181, 202, 203, 208, 210, 256 Hall, Stuart, 241, 244 Hambling, Maggi, 212 Hamilton Finley, Ian, 186 Hammons, David, 101, 107; and elephant dung, 147, 149; “African American Flag,” 151–52; “Bliz-aard Ball Sale,” 146, 147; David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble (exh.), 145, 148; “Elephant Dung Sculptures,” 147 Handsworth Songs (John Akomfrah, dir.),

Hilton, Tim, 115, 116 Himid, Lubaina, xx, xxxvii, xli, xlii, 9, 10, 19, 23, 32, 38, 42, 49, 70, 87, 102, 103, 104, 141, 156, 166, 185, 206, 223, 224, 225, 227, 247, 257; as curator, xxxvii, xli, 9, 19, 23, 156, 166, 183, 206, 223, 224, 225 Hirst, Damien, xxvii, xxviii, xxxii, xxxv, xxxix, 62, 98, 115, 126, 143, 188 historicization, xlvi, 222 Hlobo, Nicholas, 106 Hockney, David, 65, 98 Hodgkin, Howard, 186, 188, 202, 205, 210

Holiday, Amanda, xxiii, xlii, 16, 140 homophobia, 85 homosexuality, 85 honorary doctorates, xxiii, xxxvii, 54, 94, 95

honours refuseniks, 52, 53, 56, 66, 77, 85, 208, 209 honours system, xxxiii, xliii, 52, 53, 56– 59, 64, 65, 67–69, 71, 75, 77, 85, 87, 82 89, 93, 96, 258 Harding, Anna, 151 —See also: C B E , M B E , O B E , New Harlem Renaissance, 224, 226 Year’s honours list, Queen’s Birthday Harris, Lyle Ashton, 141 honours list Hartford, Liz, dir., Joy Adamson – Born Horizon Gallery, 247 Wild? 45 Houshiary, Shirazeh, 47, 48, 191, 208, Harvey, Pascal, 126 209, 214, 216, 246 Hassan, Jamelie, 110 Hatoum, Mona, xxxvii, 40, 104, 110, 213, housing, urban working-class, 173, 175 Howard, Janice, 111, 121 214 Hawkins, Screaming Jay, xxx, 167 Howe, Una, 44 Hawks, Howard, dir., El Dorado, 195 Hoyland, John, 98 Hawthorne, Amanda, xli Hoyt, Satch, xlviii Hayward Gallery, xxxvii, xlviii, 1, 3, 46, Hughes, Henry Meyric, 217 48, 97, 138, 166, 171, 203, 205, 209, Hume, Gary, xxxiv, 59, 98, 99, 126, 152 212, 213, 241, 243 Hunger (Steve McQueen, dir.), xxxviii, Hazel, Andrew, xxv, 122 121, 164 Heart in Exile (exh.), 4, 6, 8 Hunjan, Bhajan, 141 Hemmings, Jessica, 106, 107 Hunt, Richard, xix Hemsworth, Gerard, 139 Huxley, Paul, 98 Hendricks, Barkley, 107 hybridity, 35, 37, 39, 42, 43, 121, 134, 245 Henry, Lenny, 53, 163 Hylton, Richard, xxii, xxiv, xxxvi, xxxvii, Higgins, Charlotte, xlvi, 152, 160, 197 xxxviii, 3, 14, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, Higgs, Matthew, 139 38, 39, 41, 44, 50, 60, 64, 104, 135, higher education, and government under171, 192, 194, 199, 200, 201, 215, funding, 239

288

THINGS DONE CHANGE



[Richard Hylton, cont.] 216, 220, 223, 102, 105, 112–14, 153, 164, 192, 217, 219, 229, 237, 240–43, 244, 245, 224, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239, 256 243, 245, 246, 249, 250 internationalism, xlvi, 235, 237–42, 245 Hynes, Nancy, 42 Interrogating Identity (exh.), 110, 140, ICA

—See: Institute of Contemporary Arts identity labels, xlix Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 30, 38, 195 Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art, The (exh.), xli, xlii, 15, 16, 40

Imagined Communities (exh.), 239 In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson (exh.), 162 inclusion, xliii, 15, 30, 31, 40, 48, 63, 81, 85, 100, 104, 111, 156, 184, 192, 193, 199, 214 inclusivity, xxviii, xxxv, xl, xlvi, 54, 67, 76, 87, 93, 125, 198, 246, 251 independent galleries, xxiv, 89, 100, 217, 221, 231, 246 India, xvii, 27, 48, 81, 83, 84, 91, 108, 176, 210, 243, 244, 248 Indian-born artists, 38, 47, 77, 186, 207, 208, 214, 241, 243 Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (exh.), xlviii I N I V A (Institute of New International Visual Arts), xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxxvi, 1, 141, 143, 153, 205, 228, 229, 232, 233, 240, 241, 247, 255 Inspire Fellowship Programme, 201 “Installation” (Yinka Shonibare), 115, 117, 118, 120 Institute of Contemporary Arts (I C A ), xlii, xlv, 99, 141, 145, 148, 153, 156, 157, 169, 224 Institute of New International Visual Arts —See: I N I V A Institute of Race Relations, 172 institutional racism, 129 integrated exhibitions, 13, 15, 40, 231 —See also: mixed exhibitions, survey exhibitions integrationism, 13 international exhibitions, xxvi, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxix, 3, 6, 33, 98, 100,

230

Into the Open (exh.), xli, xliii, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 35, 36, 42, 44, 46, 49, 185, 216, 220 I R A hunger strikes, xxxviii Iraq war, xxxviii, 56, 66, 76, 167, 192 Iremonger, Edmund, 176 “Is It O K at the Back? (Tam Joseph), 43 Islam, Runa, 187, 200, 215 Islington Borough Council, 7, 8, 247 Islington Local History Centre, 7 isolation, xxxix isolationism, xxxvi Israel Museum, 119 Issue of Painting, The (exh.), 31 Iyapo, Anum, 6 Jaar, Alfredo, 151 Jacir, Emily, 105 Jadunath, Anthony, xli Jafarey, Meena, 141 Jamaica, 44, 102, 132, 173, 183, 195, 206, 219 Jantjes, Gavin, xx, xxxvii, xli, xlii, 17, 26, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 43, 44, 48, 49, 104, 141, 208, 240, 241 —See also: two worlds thesis Januszczak, Waldemar, xxv, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 36, 46, 47, 48, 49, 166, 214, 216 Jarman, Derek, 124 Jarrett, Juliette, 223 Jarrett, Mrs Cynthia, 172, 177, 178 Jauffret, Magali, 173 Jazzie B, 64 Jegede, Emmanuel Taiwo, 140, 257 Jenkins, Tiffany, 235 Jewish artists, 31 “Johanaan” (Ronald Moody), 205 Johannesburg Biennale, 114, 153, 219, 245



289

I n d ex

Johnson, Claudette, xli, xlii, 1, 3, 16, 141, 225, 247, 257; In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson (exh.), 1612 Johnson, Glenys, 87 Johnson, Martin, 66 Jones, Allen, 98 Jones, Cecily, 72, 74, 172 Jones, Jonathan, 133, 152 Jones, Kellie, 147 Jones, LeRoi, 5 Jordan, Michael, 92 Joselit, David, 112 Joseph, Tam, xx, xxi, xli, xlii, 16, 30, 38, 42, 43, 49, 102, 111, 139; “Is It O K at the Back?,” 43; “The Sky at Night,” 173–75, 179, 216; “U K School Report,” 23 Joy Adamson – Born Wild? (Hartford, dir.), 45 Julien, Isaac, xxxvi, 75, 100, 105, 123, 124, 141, 187, 200, 219, 237, 238, 245

Jury, Louise, 197 Just Above My Head (Steve McQueen, dir.), 160 Kapoor, Anish, xvii, 32, 33, 38, 47, 48, 49, 67, 70, 75, 77, 95, 186, 188, 196, 207, 208, 209, 214, 216 Karenga, Ron, 5, 17 Karimjee, Mumtaz, 141, 225, 257 Kaur, Permindar, xxiv, 215, 217, 246, 250

Kay, Jackie, 67 Keane, Tina, 87 Kearney, Andrew, 111, 121 Keefe, Barrie, Sus, 131 Keegan, Rita, 106, 141 “Keep on Movin’” (Soul II Soul), 64 Kelly, George, 6, 141 Kempadoo, Rishini, 110, 141 Kenlock, Neil, 257 Kent, Sarah, 116 Kettle, Martin, & Lucy Hodges, 172 Kettle’s Yard gallery, Cambridge, 30, 38, 40, 151 Khan, Addela, 141 Khan, Keith, 141

Khan, Naseem, 28, 31, 71, 234 Khanna, Balraj, xxxvii, 94 King, Phillip, 210 King, Reyahn, 204 King, Woodie, & Earl Anthony, 5 “King Creole” (Hew Locke), 191, 192 Kitaj, R.B., 139, 184 Klasmer, Gabriel, 111, 121 Konsthallen, Göteborg, 217 Kossoff, Leon, 216 Kravagna, Christian, 151 Krishna The Divine Lover (exh.), 248, 250

Kuiland–Nazario, Marcus, 141 Kunsthalle Wien, 106 Kunsthalle, Zürich, 156, 157 Kureishi, Hanif, 67 La Rose, John, 72 Labour Party, xxxii, xxxiii, 13, 54, 55, 59, 60, 63, 124, 129, 199 —See also: New Labour Lacayo, Richard, 78, 81, 84, 121 Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 239

Lakofski, Ruth, 40 Lamba, Juginder, xli, 141 Landau, Suzanne, 119 Lannaman, Sonia, 71 Laos, 186, 213, 217 Latamie, Marc, 141 Lawrance, Joanna, 111, 121 Lawrence, Cherry, 6, 225, 257 Lawrence, Doreen, 129, 130, 132, 135, 187, 255 Lawrence, Errol, 44 Lawrence, Stephen, xxxv, 59, 73, 129– 36, 187, 255 “Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great” (Sonia Boyce), 79–84, 87, 108 Leeds City Art Gallery, 87, 139 Lehman, Arnold L., xlviii Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, xli, xlii, 30 Leonard, Jason, 66 Leppard, David, & Robert Winnett, 52 Leslie, Wenda, 247

290 Lett, Maggie, 20, 21, 22, 44, 45 Lewis, Susan, 141 life-style features on artists, xxvi, xliv, 94, 115, 122, 143, 146, 152, 237, 238 Light Work gallery, Syracuse N Y , 141, 143

Ligon, Glenn, xxxvi, 110, 141 Like Love (exh., Sonia Boyce), 226 Likely Lads, The (B B C T V ), xl Lim, Kim, 48, 209 Lister, David, 158 Little, Ken, 44 Living Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India (exh.), 27, 248 Livingstone, Ken, xxxi Lloyd, Errol, xli, 44, 141 Locke, Donald, xxxvii, xlviii, 150, 257 Locke, Hew, xxxii, xxxvi, xlviii, 90, 93, 94, 99, 143, 184, 215, 245; “King Creole,” 191, 192; “Sikandar,” 90 London, as centre for visual arts, xxiii, xxvi, xlvii, xlviii, 3, 9, 24, 25, 33, 49, 72, 116, 125, 127, 134, 146, 157, 162, 172, 174, 176, 187, 210, 217, 220, 221, 238, 241, 242, 247, 248, 256 London Arts Board, 240 London Underground, 124, 125 Long, Richard, 184, 210 Lottery funding, xxxiv, xxxv, 60–63, 235 Lovell, Whitfield, 110 Lubbock, Tom, 158 Lundquist, Svenrobert, 217 Lutchman, Sharon, 140 Lyle, Abram, 180 —See also: Tate & Lyle Lynch, Kenny, 57 Lyons, John, xli Mabbutt, Mary, 49 MacCabe, Colin, 124 Macgregor, Elizabeth Ann, 195 Macka-B, “Black Man,” 76 Macmillan, Mona, 172, 183 Macpherson Report, xxxv, 129, 135 Macpherson, Sir William, 129 Macritchie, Lynn, 148 Maestro, Lani, 110

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Magiciens de la Terre (exh.), 112, 113 Maharaj, Sarat, 241 “Maid and Madam” (Mowbray Odonkor), 81

mainstream, xxiii, xxxi, xxxvi, xl, 10, 11, 14, 16, 24, 26, 46, 50, 68, 73, 74, 99, 164, 171, 179, 185, 203, 206, 220, 223, 230, 231, 236, 251, 256 Major, John, xxxi, xxxiii, 53, 63, 67 Major, Lee Elliot, 95 Makonde: Wooden Sculpture from East Africa (exh.), 29, 243 Malik, Anna, 104, 105 Malmö Konsthall, 250 Maloney, Martin, 143, 161 Mandala, Cyprian, 257 Manifesto Club for Freedom in Everyday Life, 235, 236 manifestos, 4, 5, 6 Manley, Edna, 102 Mappin Art Gallery, xli, 10, 12, 13, 17, 21, 22, 23, 26, 42, 87, 111, 139, 182, 185, 211, 212, 241 marginalization, xxxviii, xxxix, 17, 25, 33, 38, 46, 63, 80, 81, 85, 87, 157, 164, 184, 199, 206, 229, 234, 246 Margolis, Jonathan, 53, 163 Marian Goodman Gallery, 153 Marley, Bob, & The Wailers, “Coming in From the Cold,” xlvi; “Concrete Jungle,” 174; “No Woman No Cry,” 131, 173

Martin, Courtney J., xxiii, 226 Martin, Jean–Hubert, 113 Martin, Simon, 139 Martinsen, Soren, 139 Mathison, Trevor, xlii, 16, 140 Matt (Pritchett), 127, 128 M B E , xxiii, xxx, xxxvii, 56, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 85, 86, 87, 92, 95, 122, 123, 125, 225 McCarthy, Michael, 89, 90 McCurbin, Clinton, 178 McEvilley, Thomas, 113 McGavin, Harvey, 56, 69 McKenzie, Jeni, 141 McManus, Irene, xxv, 122



291

I n d ex

McNish, Althea, 141 McQueen, Steve, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxxii, xxxv, xxxviii, xxxix, xliii, xliv, xlv, 3, 11, 54, 69, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 114, 115, 121, 123, 126, 139, 140, 141, 152–67, 168, 169, 186, 187, 211, 215, 219, 221, 229, 230, 237, 238, 242, 245, 252, 253, 255; dir., Bear, 153, 154; dir., Deadpan, 154; dir., Five Easy Pieces, 154; dir., Hunger, xxxviii, 121, 165; dir., Just Above My Head, 160; Giardini Notebook, 209; Going Places (exh.), 168; Queen and Country (exh.), xxxviii, 167; Steve McQueen (exh.), 168 Medalla, David, xxxvii, 141, 216 media (communications), xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxx, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxviii, xxxix, xl, xliii, xliv, 4, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 34, 35, 39, 45, 46, 49, 54, 56, 57, 69, 73, 74, 89, 91, 92, 99, 111, 121, 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 137, 138, 144, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164, 167, 172, 174, 178, 181, 191, 194, 197, 198, 199, 206, 221, 225, 227, 234, 248, 251, 252, 253 media-consciousness, of artists, xxiv, xxvii, xlv, 97, 126, 142 mega-exhibitions, xxxix, 112, 114, 245 Melville–James, Anna, 253 Members of the British Empire, xliii —See: M B E Merali, Shaheen, xv, 141, 242 Mercer, Kobena, xxiii, xxxv, xxxix, xli, 8, 104, 105, 118, 119, 143, 217, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 236, 237, 254, 255

meritocracy, 76 Metropolitan Police, 74, 129 Middle Passage, 182, 183 migration, xvii, 104, 107, 112, 239, 240 Millard, Rosie, 61, 136, 254, 255 millennium bug, 59, 62 Millennium Dome, 60, 62 Millennium Fund, 136, 254 Milner, Ron, 5

Ming, Bill, xli, 141 Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference & Desire (exh.), xvii, xviii, 141, 153, 157, 160, 163, 164 Mirza, Munira, 253, 254 “Missionary Position” (Sonia Boyce), 80, 82, 184 Mistry, Dhruva, 32, 38, 47, 48, 49, 77, 208, 209, 250 mixed exhibitions, 40, 139, 140 —See also: integrated exhibitions, survey exhibitions mixed media, xxii, 129, 137, 177, 182, 184, 188, 239 modernism, xxi, 62, 112, 113, 117, 118, 149, 166, 175, 205, 206, 226, 244, 250, 256 Monchaux, Cathy de, 131, 191, 250 Monerville, Trevor, 178 monoculturalism, 216 Moody, Ronald, xxxvii, xli, 140, 206, 257; “Johanaan,” 205 Moore, Bobby, 65 Moore, Henry, 210, 258 Moore, Patrick, B B C , The Sky at Night, 176

Morgan, Stuart, 213, 214 Morley, Malcolm, 186, 188 Morris, Octavia, 121 Morrison, Angeline, 3 Mosaka, Tumelo, xlviii Moss, Robert F., xix Mossman, Anna, 139 Muir, Hugh, 95 Mukhergee, Ranu, 139 Mukomberanwa, Nicholas, 112 Mulero, Lillian, 110 Mulholland, Neil, & Andrew Hunt, 211, 212, 241 Müller, Silke, xxvi multiculturalism, xxix, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxv, xxxvi, 67, 126, 191, 193, 244 Muntean, Marcus, 139 Munyaradzi, Henry, 112 Mur-Ray, Ming, 110 Murray, Ossie, xli, 6, 257 Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 216 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 106

292 Museum for African Art, 113 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 77, 123, 216, 217, 238 Museum of Modern Art, New York, 151, 153

Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 29, 243 Muslims, 67 “My Bed” (Tracey Emin), 121, 123, 124, 143, 157, 158, 159, 172, 187, 188, 194 Myrone, Martin, 180, 206 Nairne, Andrew, 213 Nairne, Sandy, 216 Nashashibi, Rosalind, 215 National Front, 176 National Gallery, 92, 179, 190, 200 National Gallery of British Art, 180 National Museum of African Art, 123 National Museums Liverpool, 204 National Portrait Gallery, xxxviii, 86, 92 Neal, Larry, 17 Nelson, Horatio, 89 “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle” (Yinka Shonibare), xliv, 89, 123 neo-colonialism, xxxi New Art Exchange, 231, 232, 233 New Art Gallery, Walsall, 60, 93, 144, 251

New Britain Party, 176 New Cross fire —See: Deptford fire New Generation: 1964, The (exh.), 97 New Labour, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxv, xliii, xlvi, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 66, 67, 103, 129, 186, 192, 198, 199 New Year’s honours list, 52, 53, 59, 64, 67, 71, 122 New Zealand, 33, 216 Newbury, John, 75 newness, 24, 60, 257 Newsome, Rachel, 127, 147 “Next Turn of the Screw, The” (Keith Piper / Donald Rodney), 104, 177, 178, 179

Niati, Houria, xx, xli, xlii, 12, 38, 49, 225, 247, 257 Nichols, Colin, xxv, xli, 46 Nicholson, Adam, 60

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Nicola Jacobs Gallery, 49, 139 Nigeria, 3, 33, 41, 93, 107, 112, 114, 117, 119, 150, 256 Nine Night in Eldorado (exh., Donald Rodney), 104, 195, 196, 215 “No Woman No Cry” (Bob Marley), 131, 173

“No Woman No Cry” (Chris Ofili), 129, 131–33, 138, 187 Nogueira, Lucia, 217 non-European exhibitions, xix, 17, 26, 27, 34, 35, 39, 40, 44, 45, 47, 111, 214 North London, xlii, 4 Norwich Gallery, 111 Notorious B.I.G., “Things Done Changed,” xlix novelty, xlv, 24 Nsusha, Ben, xli, 10 Ntuli, Pitika, xli, 6 O’Reilly, Kelly, 135 O B A A L A , xlii, 4, 5, 6, 219 O B E , xxxiii, xxxv, 53, 54, 55, 57, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 85, 86, 87, 88, 95, 211 obscurity, xix, xxiii, xxvii, xxix, xlii, 3, 7, 11, 25, 31, 47, 246 October Gallery, 204 Odonkor, Mowbray, xxiii, xlii, 3, 16; “Maid and Madam,” 81 Odundo, Magdalene, 70 Officers of the Order of the British Empire, xliii —See: O B E Offoedu–Okeke, Onyema, 106, 120 Ofili, Chris, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, xxx, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi, xxxviii, xxxix, xl, xliii, xliv, xlv, xlvi, 2, 10, 11, 59, 75, 77, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 115, 121, 125–28, 130–38, 139, 140, 141, 143–52, 154, 155, 156, 161, 167, 168, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 200, 208, 209, 211, 215, 217, 221, 227, 228, 229, 230, 233, 242, 244, 245, 252, 253, 255, 259; and elephant dung, xxxiv, 97, 121, 125, 127, 131, 137,



I n d ex

[Chris Ofili, cont.] 138, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 154, 185, 186, 194; ‘Elephant Shit’ ad, 141; Shit Sale event, 146, 147, 148, 150; “Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars,” 128, 155; Chris Ofili (exh.), 144 (1998), 195 (2010); Freedom One Day (exh.), 97, 229; “No Woman No Cry,” 129, 131–33, 138, 187; “Painting With Shit on It,” 138; “Popcorn Tits,” 155; “Seven Bitches Tossing Their Pussies Before the Divine Dung,” 155; “Union Black,” 151, 192, 193; Within Reach, 211; & David Adjaye, “The Upper Room,” xlvi, 196–98; & Mary J. Blige, xliv; & Icebox, Freeness, 229 Oguibe, Olu, 141 Ohene, Johney, xli Okore, Nnenna, 106 Oldham Art Gallery, xlvii, 239 Onobrakpeya, Bruce, 112 Opie, Julian, 196, 216 Organisation for Black Arts Advancement and Leisure / Learning Activities, xlii, 4

—See: O B A A L A Orta, Lucy, 242 Osbourne, Johnny, “13 Dead (Nothing Said),” 74 Oscar, A., 256 Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in PostWar Britain, The (exh.), xxxvii, xlviii, 1, 24, 32, 46, 48, 97, 138, 150, 166, 171, 203, 205, 209, 256 Ouditt, Steve, xlviii Oulton, Thérèse, 188 Outtara, 113 Ové, Horace, 70, 99 Owusu–Ankomah, 106 Packer, William, 212, 241 “Painting With Shit on It” (Chris Ofili), 138

Pakistan, 33, 176, 217, 248, 250 Palmer, Eugene, xli, 137, 141; Eugene Palmer (exh.), 111 Palmer, Ian, xxv, 3, 122

293 Pan-Afrikan Connection, 9, 195, 247 Panic Attack: Art in the Punk Years (exh.), 259 Papastergiadis, Nikos, 217, 239 Parker, Cornelia, 191, 208 Parris, Janette, 139 Parvez, Ahmed, xxxvii Pasmore, Victor, 210 Past Imperfect, Future Tense (Keith Piper, exh.), 252 Patrizio, Andrew, 239 patronage, xxxi, 53, 85, 91, 92, 94, 211, 212, 222 Patrons of New Art (Tate Gallery), 185 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists, 99 Penalva, João, 217 People’s Republic of South Yorkshire, 13 Peries, Ivan, xxxvii, 210 Perkins, Hetti, 37 Phaophanit, Vong, 186, 188, 213, 214, 217, 219 Phillips, Peter, 98 Phillips, Sir Hayden, 57, 58, 68, 96 Phillips, Tony, 141 Phillips, Trevor, 131 Phoenix, Sybil, 75 Picton, John, 120, 121 Pictura Britannica: Art From Britain (exh.), 216, 217 Pine, Courtney, 64 Piper, Keith, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxix, xxxvii, xli, xlii, xliv, 1, 4, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 30, 38, 40, 41, 46, 48, 49, 87, 95, 100, 102, 103, 104, 110, 122, 140, 141, 166, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 186, 193, 215, 225, 233, 246, 247, 252, 258; Past Imperfect, Future Tense (exh.), 252; Relocating the Remains (exh.), xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxix, 233; “The Seven Rages of Man” 182; “13 Killed,” 166, 177; & Donald Rodney, “The Next Turn of the Screw,” 104, 177, 178, 179; & Marlene Smith (as co-curators), xlii, 15, 16, 40–41 Pippin, Steve, 157, 159 plantations, colonial, 180, 183

294 pleasure of aesthetics (Yinka Shonibare), 85, 86 plurality, 36, 59, 184, 221, 222, 229, 232, 248, 250 political artists, xxv, xxix, xxx, xliv, 21, 134, 136, 137 —See also: angry artists political correctness, xxx, xlv, 134, 149, 168

political ideology, xxxi, xxxii Pollard, Ingrid, xlii, 104, 110, 141, 225, 257

Pollitt, Nigel, 9, 252 Poovaya–Smith, Nima, 85, 86 Pop Art, xxii “Popcorn Tits” (Chris Ofili), 155 Poppi, Cesare, 113 “Portrait d’une Négresse (Bonnie Greer)” (Maud Sulter), 86 postcolonialism, 32, 118, 244 postmodernism, 33, 45, 112, 113, 117, 118, 154, 244 Powell, Lucy, xxxii, xxxiii Powell, Richard J., 100 Prasad, Raekha, xlv, 136, 139, 179 prejudice, racial, xxviii, xxx, xl, 3, 103, 168, 194, 227 —See also: racism, racial violence press coverage, xxvi, xxx, xliv, 10, 12, 16, 20, 46, 50, 89, 99, 121, 137, 161, 164, 252

Price, Richard, & Andy Dolan, 53 Primo, Leslie, 106, 205, 206, 208, 227, 256

private galleries, 100, 221 Procktor, Patrick, 98 public galleries, xxxi, xxxvii, 9, 12, 14, 17, 100, 203, 221, 240, 249 Public, The, West Bromwich, 60 Pugh, Geoff, 90 Pugh, Jonathan, 127 quarantining, 2, 14, 15, 99, 149, 205, 234 Queen and Country (exh., Steve McQueen), xxxviii, 167 Queen’s Birthday honours list, 52, 59, 67, 68, 86 Quinn, Marc, xliv

THINGS DONE CHANGE



race, xv, xvi, xviii, xxiv, xxviii, xxix, xxxi, xxxv, xliv, xlv, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 28, 39, 64, 73, 74, 75, 82, 95, 102, 106, 121, 129, 138, 146, 155, 156, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169, 171, 176, 187, 188, 189, 194, 198, 205, 208, 212, 216, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 236, 242, 246, 252 Race Relations (Amendments) Act, 135 Race Today Collective, xlii, 72 racialization, 27, 153 racism, xxxix, xlvii, 4, 11, 17, 19, 21, 33, 41, 44, 59, 64, 72, 74, 79, 129, 130, 134, 135, 156, 176, 182; institutional, 129

—See also: racial prejudice Rae, Fiona, 65, 196, 208 Raj, the, 109 Ramsey, Alf, 65 “Rang Baranga” (Rasheed Araeen), 185 Rangasamy, Jacques, 71 Rantzen, Esther, 95 Ratnam, Niru, xxix, 10, 11, 71, 133, 134, 136, 137, 168, 209, 227, 237, 244, 245

Rawlings, Jerry, 51 Recent Paintings (exh., Yinka Shonibare), 107

Red Dragon, “We Run Tings,” 97 refuseniks, 56 Reigate, Barry, 126 Relocating the Remains (Keith Piper, exh.), xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxix, 233 representation, xxiv, xxvi, xxxv, xli, 14, 22, 27, 29, 39, 41, 64, 68, 82, 112, 132, 135, 151, 201, 207, 217, 225, 244 reverse migration (Townsend), 242 reviews, exhibition, xxiii, xxv, xxix, xxxi, xliv, 3, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 28, 31, 37, 41, 44, 46, 48, 77, 115, 116, 120, 127, 138, 151, 154, 166, 177, 213, 226, 235, 249 “Revolt” (Aubrey Williams), 181 Re-Writing History (exh.), 151 Reynolds, Nigel, 128, 158, 197 Richards, Paul, 49, 139 Richardson, Lisa, 111, 121

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295

I n d ex

Riggs, Thomas, 102 Riley, Bridget, 98, 210, 212 Riley, Richie, xli, 23 rioting, 74, 172, 226 —See also: police brutality, social unrest Rivington Place, xxxvi, 228, 231, 232, 233, 247, 254, 255 Roach, Colin, 178 Roberts, John, xx, 24, 26, 30, 33, 209 Robinson, Peter, 40 Rochdale Art Gallery, 32, 87, 140 Rodgers, Franklyn, 141 Rodney, Donald, xlii, 1, 4, 16, 31, 41, 87, 99, 103, 104, 106, 110, 141, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 193, 194, 195, 196, 200, 202, 215, 225, 234; “Cartoon 1,” 194; Crisis (exh.), 41; Donald Rodney: Display (exh.), 195, 200, 234; Nine Night in Eldorado (exh.), 104, 195, 196, 215; & Keith Piper, “The Next Turn of the Screw,” 104, 177, 178, 179 Rolfe, Nigel, 87 Room at the Top (exh.), 49, 139 Rose, David, 172 Rosenblum, Adi, 139 Rothenstein, Sir John, 51, 203 Row, Amrit, 140 Roy, Chinwe, 93 Royal Academy of Arts, 38, 62, 65, 75, 76, 77, 95, 102, 131, 186, 207, 208,

Samra, Sarbjit, 141 Sanderson, Lesley, 140 Santoni, Gérard, 113 Santos, Jorge, xli, 23 Sapong, Johnny, 253 Sarkis, 151 Scratch the Surface (exh.), 92 Sculptors and Modellers (exh.), 38 Searle, Adrian, xxx, xxxiv, xlv, 2, 97, 150, 152, 158, 187, 188 Second World Black & African Festival of Arts and Culture, 256 Seddon, Peter, 87 Sedira, Zineb, 215, 217 Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection (exh.), 102 separatism, 13, 19 Serota, Nicholas, 40, 189, 201, 239; & Gavin Jantjes, xix, xlvi, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 201, 208 Serpentine Gallery, xxx, 111, 115, 120, 121, 125, 126, 144, 168 Service to Empire (play by Maud Sulter), xliii, 51 Seth, John, 217 “Seven Bitches Tossing Their Pussies Before the Divine Dung” (Chris Ofili), 155

“Seven Rages of Man, The” (Keith Piper), 182 Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa (exh.), 250, 251 210 Royal College of Art, xxii, xxiii, 127, 144, Sewell, Brian, 46, 138 Shabazz, Menelik, dir., Blood Ah Goh 150, 185, 222 Royal Family, portrait commissions of, Run, 72, 73, 74 93 Shankland, Stefan, 111, 121 Rumsfeld, Donald, 56 Sheffield City Council, 13 Rush, Michael, 153, 154, 156 Shemza, A.J., xxxvii Rushdie, Salman, 67 Shepherd, Jessica, 95 Russel, Trevor, 64 Shifting Borders (exh.), 239 Ryan, Veronica, xx, xli, xlii, xlviii, 10, 21, Shimizu, Kumiko, xxxvii 38, 40, 42, 46, 48, 49, 141, 209, 225, Shit Sale event (Chris Ofili), 146, 147, 246, 247, 257 148, 150 Shocks to the System (exh.), 194 Saatchi Gallery, xxvii Shoga, Folake, 141 Saatchi, Charles, xxvii, 62, 102, 127 Shonibare, Yinka, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, Salzburger Kunstverein, 151 xxviii, xxx, xxxii, xxxv, xxxvi, xl,

296 [Yinka Shonibare, cont.] xliii, xliv, 11, 70, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84, 89, 90, 92, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107–12, 114–25, 126, 136, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 154, 156, 167, 168, 184, 187, 190, 191, 192, 193, 200, 215, 217, 219, 221, 228, 229, 230, 234, 237, 238, 245, 252, 255, 259; pleasure of aesthetics, 85, 86; Britannia decorated, 190, 192; “Caryatid Figures Rafia Colour Motif,” 110; Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 143–44; “Global Underground Map,” 125–27; “Installation,” 115, 117, 118, 120; “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle,” xliv, 89, 123; “Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2001,” 190–91; Yinka Shonibare: Double Dress (exh.), 119; Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch (exh.), 106, 117, 118, 119; Yinka Shonibare: Recent Paintings (exh.), 107, 291 “Shostakovich 3rd Symphony Opus 20” (Aubrey Williams), 204 Showroom, The, London, 243 Sikand, Gurminder, 141 “Sikandar” (Hew Locke), 90 Simba, Lee Hudson, xli Simmons, Gary, 110 Simpson, Barry, 6 skin colour, as identity marker, xviii, xx, xliii, 19, 22, 35, 71, 163 Skinner, Frank, 95 Sky at Night, The (Patrick Moore, B B C ), 176

“Sky at Night, The” (Tam Joseph), 173– 75, 179, 216 Slater, Nigel, 95 slave trade, 92, 180, 182, 183, 234, 252 —See also: Middle Passage slavery, 180, 181, 182, 183 —See also: plantations Smith, Marlene, 1, 32, 195, 225; & Keith Piper (as co-curators), xlii, 15, 16, 40– 41

Smock, Sue, 257 “So What” (Miles Davis), 161 Social Exclusion Unit, 63, 199

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Socialist Realism, 18 Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, 13 Solanke, Adeola, 38, 41, 42, 43 solo exhibitions, xxiv, xxv, xxix, xxx, xxxii, xxxviii, xliii, 4, 13, 15, 22, 30, 38, 41, 97, 99, 107, 111, 119, 126, 131, 153, 156, 194, 195, 223, 233, 245, 246, 252, 256 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 250 Sonia Boyce: Recent Work (exh.), 248 Soul II Soul, “Keep on Movin’,” 64 South Asian artists, xv, xvi, 27, 28, 29, 201, 228, 247, 248, 249 South Asian immigrants, 200 South Bank Centre, xxxvii, 30, 97, 140, 142, 153, 166, 194, 205, 212, 213, 222

South London Gallery, 104, 195, 196 Southampton City Art Gallery, 130, 144, 168

Southwark Council, 196 Souza, Allan de, xlii, 16, 110, 140, 177, 178, 242 Souza, F.N., xxxvii, 210 Spalding, Julian, 19, 22 Sparks, Dionne, 140 Spencer, Madge, xli Spinelli, Marcelo, 101, 146, 147 Spitalfields, 28, 249 “Spread Out Ron Kitaj” (Frank Bowling), 184, 185 St Martin’s School of Art, 150 St Matthew’s Meeting Place, Brixton, 257 Stallabrass, Julian, xxxi, 94, 100, 103, 126, 127, 132, 133, 137, 143, 144, 147, 166, 168 Stanislaus, Grace, 112, 113 star curator, xxxix, 243 state multiculturalism (David Cameron), 67, 68 Stedelijk Museum, 153 Stephen Lawrence Centre, 135, 136, 198, 254

Stephen Lawrence Gallery, 135 stereotypes, 194 Steyn, Juliet, 31 Stezaker, John, 139



297

I n d ex

Stockley, Beth, 249 Stoke on Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, 38, 140 Storr, Robert, xliv, xlv, 168, 169 Straw, Jack, 129 Stubbs, Michael, 139 Studio Museum in Harlem, 119, 140 sugar production, in Caribbean, 180, 183 Sulter, Maud, xlii, xliii, 1, 23, 51, 100, 140, 141, 217, 225; “Portrait d’une Négresse (Bonnie Greer),” 86; Service to Empire, xliii, 51 survey exhibitions, xx, xxxviii, xli, 1, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 39, 40, 50, 105, 213, 223, 233, 249, 257

Sus (Barrie Keefe), 131 Sus Law, 131 Sutapa Biswas: Recent Paintings (exh.), 247

Sutherland, Graham, 210 Swaine, Jon, 122, 123 Sweden, 217, 250 Syed, Alia, 215 Tabrizian, Mitra, 104 Tachikawa, Mari, 111, 121 Tafari, Danijah, 141 Tallentire, Anne, 217 Tam Joseph: This is History (exh.), 42, 111

Tanzania, xv, 102 Tariq Alvi (exh.), 249 Tate & Lyle, 180, 183 “Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2001” (Yinka Shonibare), 190–91 Tate Britain, 131, 152, 179, 180, 184, 190, 191, 197, 198, 206, 224 Tate Gallery, xxviii, xlvi, 38, 51, 80, 114, 129, 179, 180, 183, 184, 185, 187, 189, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 212, 224, 240, 246 Tate Liverpool, 251 Tate, Sir Henry, 180, 183 Tawadros, Gilane, xvii, xviii, 81, 82, 179, 239, 241

Taylor–Wood, Sam, xxxiv, xxxix, 115, 126, 131, 219 Tegala, Simon, 217 Telman, Andrea, 225, 257 Tenyue, Wayne, 6 textiles, 27, 28, 29, 78, 80, 83, 85, 89, 106, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 125, 143, 144, 154, 190, 191, 248 —See also: faux-African materials Thame, Gerard de, 48 Thatcher, Margaret, 13, 53, 61, 63, 64, 74 Thin Black Line, The (exh., 1985–86), xli, xlii, 23, 25, 46, 49, 157, 166, 185, 206, 223, 224, 225 Thin Black Line(s) (exh., 2011–12), 185, 206, 224 “Things Done Changed” (Notorious B.I.G.), xlix Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, 213 Third World Cop (Jamaican film), 97 Third World, 43, 47, 75, 97, 116, 214, 244

Thomas, Shanti, 139 Thompson, David, 98 Thorp, David, 195 Three Songs on Pain, Light and Time (Black Audio Film Collective), 179 Tillmans, Wolfgang, 188 To, Mayling, 217 tokenism, xxiv, 41 Torres, Francesc, 151 Toure, Sekou, 5 Townsend, Chris, 154, 155, 242 Trade Routes: History and Geography (exh.), 114, 245 traditional crafts, 27 Trafalgar Square, as artworks site, xliv, 78, 89, 90, 99, 123, 265 —See also: Fourth Plinth Project Transforming the Crown: African, Asian, and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996 (exh.), 105, 140, 230 transnationalism, 239 Trinidad, 242 Trophies of Empire (exh.), 40 Tropicana, Carmelita, 141 Turk, Gavin, 126

298 Turner Prize, xxv, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xliv, xlv, xlvi, 3, 92, 99, 105, 114, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 136, 138, 144, 150, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 196, 200, 207, 210, 211, 212, 216, 218, 239, 255 two worlds thesis (Gavin Jantjes), 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45, 240 Tyson, Mike, 194 Uddin, Shafique, xx, xlii, 31, 38, 214 Uganda, xv, xlviii Ugwu, Catherine, 141, 153, 157 “U K School Report” (Tam Joseph), 23 “Union Black” (Chris Ofili), 151, 192, 193

United Country Party, 176 unrest, inner-city /public / urban, 9, 82, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 182, 183, 219, 225, 226 —See also: rioting “Upper Room, The” (Chris Ofili / David Adjaye), xlvi, 196–98 Vaughan, Michael, 98 Venice Biennale, xxxviii, xlvi, 38, 47, 112, 113, 151, 154, 192, 197, 198, 207, 210, 211, 216 Victoria Miro Gallery, 127, 139, 197, 211, 229

video, 153, 188 violence, racist, xxxviii, xlix, 59, 74, 91, 129, 130, 132, 176, 177, 178, 182 Vogel, Susan, 113 Voorsanger, Jessica, 139 Wainwright, Leon, 204 Walker Art Center, 101 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 204, 205, 251

Walker, John, 53, 57, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 75, 94, 186 Walker, John A., 259 Walker, Kara, 107 Wallinger, Mark, xliv, 219 Walmsley, Anne, 181, 202, 203, 204 Walsh, Geraldine, 141

THINGS DONE CHANGE



Walvin, James, 180, 182, 183 Ward, David, 213 Ward, Ossian, 78, 102 Warhol, Andy, 149 Warren, Rebecca, 139 Wason, Sarah (dir.) , Chris Ofili, 152, 240

Watford Museum, 31 Watson, Lance, 257 “We Run Tings” (Red Dragon), 97 Wearing, Gillian, 186, 196 Weems, Carrie Mae, xxxvi West Indies Sugar Company (Wisco), 183

Westbourne Gallery, 9 Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (exh.), 248 ‘white cube’ aesthetic, 117, 222 White, Sir George, 90 Whitechapel Art Gallery, xix, xxi, xxiii, xxxvii, xlii, 14, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 41, 45, 79, 97, 203, 205, 208, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254 Whiteley, Brett, 98 Whiteread, Rachel, xxxii, xliv, 186 Whyte, Gregory, xli Wigram, Max, 139 Wilberforce, William, 92 Wilkins, Verna, 93 Wilkinson, Jonny, 66 Williams, Aubrey, xxxvii, xli, 141, 150, 165, 181, 186, 202, 203, 204, 205, 210, 216, 247, 248, 251, 256, 257; as curator, xlii; “Revolt,” 181; “Shostakovich 3rd Symphony Opus 20,” 204; Aubrey Williams (exh.), 165, 203, 204, 247, 256; Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire (exh.), 204, 205, 251; Aubrey Williams: Dreams and Visions (exh.), 205; Aubrey Williams: Now and Coming Time (exh.), 205 Williamson, Andrew, 139 Wills, Leslee, 225, 257 Wilson, Jane, 157, 159 Wilson, Louise, 157, 159 Windrush generation, 195



299

I n d ex

Wisco (West Indies Sugar Company),

Yass, Catherine, 191 yBa/Y B A (young British artists), xxvii, xxviii, xxxii, xliv, 65, 98, 104, 114, 115, 121, 126, 131, 139, 143, 151, 154, 158, 211, 253 Yeadon, John, 139 Yeates, Amy Powell, 94 Yinka Shonibare: Double Dress (exh.),

183

Wiszniewski, Adrian, 49, 139 Withers, Rachel, xxv, xxvi, xxix, xliv, 152, 198 Within Reach (Ofili), 211 Wolverhampton Art Gallery, xxii, xxv, 101, 122 W O M A D (World of Music Arts and 119 Dance), 33 Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch (exh.), womanism, xxii 106, 117, 118, 119 women artists, xxiii, xlvii, 1, 9, 25, 55, 57, Yinka Shonibare: Recent Paintings (exh.), 107, 108 64, 68, 69, 70, 80, 81, 92, 162, 186, young British artists, xxi, xxvii, xxxiii, 188, 189, 208, 212, 213, 223, 224, 225

114

Woodman, Edward, 107 Woodrow, Bill, xliv, 191, 196 Woodward, Clive, 66 Woolwich College, 135 World of Music Arts and Dance, 33 —See: W O M A D Worsdale, Godfrey, 144, 147, 148 Woven Air: The Muslin & Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh (exh.), 27, 28, 248, 249 Wu, Chin-tao, xxxiv, xxxv, 60, 61, 63

—See also: yBa/Y B A Young, Carey, xlviii Young, Lola, 69, 70 Young, Tony Moo, xli, 23 Younge, Gary, xxxv, 59, 76, 77, 95, 101, 133, 136, 152, 161, 208 Zambia, xlviii Zaya, Octavio, 219 Zephaniah, Benjamin, xxxiii, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 66, 69, 76, 77, 85 “Zero to Infinity” (Rasheed Araeen), 185 Zimbabwe, 33, 112, 144

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