5 Everything Crash'

[Okwui] Enwezor tells us that he flew all over God's earth looking for artists to include In the exhibition, hut 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 Phao-phanit. Sam Taylor-Wood and Mark Wallinger. These are all accomplished and successful artists whose work is already doing the rounds. I f 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?

T HUS FAR, NO MOMENT IN RECENT HISTORY has comc closc to re­

plicating anything like the broad range o f exhibition acfivity involv­

ing Black artists in the iqSos.^ (To some extent, the initiatives o f

artists and activists themselves must be differentiated from a more insfitu-

tionai 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 proacfive.

' "Everything Crash," a popular reggae song by I'he Ethiopians, was released in

Jamaica in 1968. I'he song bemoaned the political paralysis and widespread labour

unrest of the time. Most significantly perhaps, the stmg lamented the fioundcring 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 momin" can't

come gixxl a evenin".

^ Eddie Chambers. "Johannesburg: A Review of the Second Johannesburg Bicn-

nale," Art Monthly 212 (December 1997-January 1998): 17.

^ For di.scussion of this activity, see Eddie Chambers, "Black Visual Arts Acfivity In

England 1981-1986: Press and Public Responses."

220 T H I N G S D O N E C H A N G E ^ S .

with no primary regard for what mainstream galleries were or were not

doing."* Likewise, when the grouping o f cultural activists headquartered in

Brixton, south London, established themselves as Creation for Liherafion,

they did so wholly without primary reference to governmental ethos or arts-

ftjnding mechanisms? Instead, in both instances, these inifiatives were devel­

oped as a means of giving platfonns to a greater range o f Black artists. Those

were diflferent days. Artists did not tend to presuppose that Arts Council fund­

ing had to be secured in order for them to undertake substantial projects. Con­

versely, the Arts Council's engagement with 'ethnic arts' and all o f its subse­

quent incarnations was still very much in its infancy.^ 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 inifiatives (such as they were)

were regarded by many Black people themselves with indift'erence, suspicion,

or hostility. Much o f the exhibition activity generated by Black artists them­

selves, across a range o f 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 o f time, projects initiated by

Black artists themselves had ended, or in some instances, crashed and bumed.

Equally fatally, galleries themselves were not inclined to repeat or confinue

the sorts of engagement with Black artists that had led to exhibifions such as

Into the Open or From Tsvo Worlds. For most Black artists, these two devel­

opments were a twofold setback from which many of them, in tenns of their

profile, never recovered. In tallying up the fortunes o f Black-British artists

over the period o f this study, we can venture the blunt summary that a limited

number o f winners have advanced into prominence, at the expense of a far

greater number of losers, who have retreated from view. But this is not neces­

sarily anything out o f the ordinary. The art world has always been reluctant to

deviate from a relatively narrow grouping o f 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

o f these two favoured categories. The art-world star system has gradually,

•* See Chambers, "Black Visual Arts Activity in England. 1981-1986."

' See Chambers, "Black Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981-1986."

* For a substantial discussion ofthc history ofthc Arts Council's involvement with

Black artists, see Richard 1 lylton. The Nature of the Beast,

/ ^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 2 2 1

over a period o f several decades, become hegemonic and (the fortunes of the

likes of McQueen, Of i l i , and Shonibare aside), this system has ultimately dis­

advantaged the majority o f Black artists, curtailing their chances o f achieving

significant career success. One o f the most important reasons for this is the

way in which there has been a discernible convergence o f curatorial agendas

among the country's art galleries. In the period of the late 1970s and early

1980s, there was a wide range o f visual arts venues, which were - despite the

generally poor profile o f Black artists in these galleries - exhibiting a similar­

ly broad span of artists' pracfice. The extent o f 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 authorifies or nafional and regional fijnding

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 dif­

ferent 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 o f the same artists. These art spaces were

in many ways reflected in the range o f professionals or semi-professionals

charged with mounting exhibitions there - again despite the generally poor

prospects o f 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 o f arts

personnel, reflecfing the plurality o f galleries. Again over time, and again

with little exception, this range o f personnel has clustered around a much

more limited range o f like-minded people who now invariably refer to them­

selves as curators. Here we have to recognizee the 'professionalizing' o f the

visual arts and the ways in which the proliferation of curating courses has

detrimentally narrowed the range o f preferences and sensibilifies among gal­

lery 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

222 THINGS DONE CHANGE ,^

has been transformed from an anthology to an argument. Most generally, we sec a shift from patronage to curatorship - symptomatically the selectors of The British Art Show 5 arc for the first time called, by their preference, cura­tors.*'

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 twentx-five years. Ii is symptomatic that the selector of Tlie 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 professional-ization of the curator in Britain was the founding in 1992 ofthc Royal Col­lege of Art MA in Visual Arts Administration: Curafing and Commissioning Contemponuy Art.

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 ftrameworks, 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 repefition of their group-level successes. We need also to consider that, despite the relafively 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 acfivity involving Black artists in the 1980s.'

With regard to the 1980s, several cautionary notes should be struck. Main­stream gallery activity involving Black artists sometimes came across as

' 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.

' Godfrey. "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000." 31 ' See Chambers. "Black Visual Arts Activity In England, 1981-1986." esp. Chapter

Two, "Black Art; For and Against."

2 2 2 T H I N G S D O N E C H A N G E A^

has been transformed from an anthology to an argument. Most generally, we

see a shift from patronage to curatorship - symptomatically the selectors of

TIte British Art Show 5 are for the first time called, by their preference, cura­

tors.'

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 Hie British Art Show 1 was a critic and that Uvo 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 professional-ization of the curator in Britain was the founding in 1992 of the Royal Col­lege of Art MA in Visual Arts Administration: Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Art.'

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 o f people, who tend to congregate curatorially

around the same sorts o f artist. With few exceptions, Black-British artists are

clear losers in these changes. Worse stil l, the dominant cultural, political, and

intellectual climate seems largely unconducive to the emergence of new gene-

rafions o f Black artists, outside o f existing frameworks, structures, and patho­

logies. From different quarters we have witnessed the stacking-up of fomii-

dable factors that have historicized earlier generations o f Black-British artists

and militated against repetition o f their group-level successes. We need also

to consider that, despite the relafively increased academic attenfion being paid

to Black artists in recent years, no moment in recent history has come close to

generating anything like the variety o f argument, opinion, and debate that cir­

culated around exhibifion acfivity involving Black artists in the 1980s.'

With regard to the 1980s, several cautionary notes should be stnjck. Main­

stream gallery activity involving Black artists somefimes came across as

' I'ony Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000," in The British

An Show 5 (cxh, cat.; London: National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre,

2000): 20.

' Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000." 31

' See Chambers. "Black Visual Arts Activity in England. 1981-1986," esp. Chapter

Two, "Black Art: For and Against."

222 T H I N G S D O N E C H A N G E AJS\

has been transformed from an anthology to an argument. Most generally, we

sec a shift from patronage to curatorship - symptomatically the selectors of

Hie British ,4n Sliow 5 are for the first lime called, by their preference, cura­

tors.'

In a footnote to this, Godfrey states:

The rise of the curator, someone who organizes exhibitions as their profes­

sion, is a key development in the last twenty-five years. It is symptomatic

that the selector of The British An Sliow 1 was a critic and that two of the

three "selectors' of The British An Show 5 should describe themselves, whol­

ly or in part, as freelance curators. A defining moment in the professional-

ization of the curator in Britain was the founding in 1992 ofthc Royal Col­

lege of Art MA in Visual Arts Administration: Curating and Commissioning

Contemporary Art.'

Although possibly unintended, these changes tended to l imit, rather than

foster, the plurality through which Black artists o f the 1980s sought and

gained exhibition exposure. The galleries o f the country have by and large

pursued the same 'white cube' aesthetic and, in a kind of systemic feedback,

are now njn 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 stil l, the dominant cultural, political, and

intellectual climate seems largely unconducive to the emergence of new gene­

rations o f Black artists, outside of existing frameworks, structures, and patho­

logies. From different quarters we have witnessed the stacking-up of fomi i -

dable factors that have historicized earlier generations o f Biack-Brifish artists

and militated against repetifion 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 o f argument, opinion, and debate that cir­

culated around exhibition acfivity involving Black artists in the 1980s.

With regard to the 1980s, several cautionary notes should be struck. Main­

stream gallery activity involving Black artists somefimes came across as

' Tony Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000," in The British

.4n Show 5 (exh. cat.; London: National Touring Exhibitions, South Bank Centre,

2000): 20.

' Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000." 31

' See Chambers. "Blaek Visual Arts Activity in England, 1981-1986," esp. Chapter

f wo, "Blaek Art: For and Against."

A^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 223

benevolent gestures and frequently came about as a result o f political pres­

sure, on occasion from fijnding bodies anxious to see some sort o f nod to­

wards greater diversity in the programming o f the institutions they funded.

Furthermore, most o f the large-scale group exhibitions involving Black artists

were mounted by galleries that declared these exhibitions to be opening man­

oeuvres - hopefijlly, 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 ex­

posure 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 fiuitful for Black-British artists, quantifiable

activity was modest. Between 1981 and the end o f the decade, a significant

number of galleries in the capital and across the country had little to do with

Black artists. And o f those that did, their attenfion was often fleeting. One

researcher, Juliette Jarrett, focusing on the mixed fortunes of the Black

woman artist, warned against too generous a reading o f the 1980s:

it would be a mistake 10 give the impression thai there were many exhibitions

by Black women during the 1980s. From 1980 to 1990 there were only eight

solo exhibitions by Black women in mainshream galleries.

Although Jarrett did not directly provide the source of her bald stafistic, 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 o f these have taken place in one gallery in a span o f

four years."' ' Richard Hylton presented another stark assessment o f the for­

tunes o f Black artists, in the middle o f what has widely been reported as being

'their' decade.

" Lubaina Himid. who had been responsible for organizing The Thin Black Line

exhibition at the ICA in 1985. had claimed: "The GLC [Greater Ixmdon Couneil] had

threatened to withdraw its considerable contribution to the ICA if something black did

not appear in that financial year." Her claim was made in "Mapping: A Decade of

Blaek Women Artists 1980-1990." in Passion: Discourses on Black Women's Crea­

tivity, ed Maud Suiter (Hebdcn Bridge: Urban Fox. 1990): 65.

" Juliette Jarrett. "Creative Space? The Experience of Black Women in British Art

Schools." in Recon.slrucling Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism: Writings on

Black Women, ed. Delia Jartctt Macauley (London: Routiedge. 1996): 123.

'** Lubaina Himid "Mapping: A Decade of Blaek Women Artists 1980-1990." 67.

224 T H I N G S D O N E C H A N G E / ^

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 Couneil 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 Blaek artists were re­ceiving a derisors share of the pie. Ihis view was. at least within the confines of these meetings, not held solely by advisors of Ethnic Minority Arts Ofti-cers: "Elizabeth MeCiregor fsie] of the Art department agreed Ihat the Black Art profile in and around the London areas was particularly low. despite this being the area of highest aetivitx.""

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 o f Black artistic achievement. Much like

the framing of the Harlem Renaissance, the 'critical decade' of the 1980s

shines as a beacon o f achievement, in constant need o f fuelling with acknowl­

edgement, appraisal, even adulation.''* Two of the most recent manifestafions

o f this were offered up in the summer o f 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 mate­

rial and a selection o f art works, her curatorial interventions o f the 1980s,

which centred on the multiple practices o f Black women artists.'* Running

" Minutes of the Monitoring Committee (Ethnic Minority Arts Action Plan) Held

on Wednesday 8 October 1986. point 2. ACOB/32/22, box 1 0(3 . Arts Council of

Great Britain archive. Victoria and Albert Museum. Quoted in Richard Hylton. 77ie

Nature of the Beast, 64.

'•* Critical Decade was a Tcn.S Photo Paperback. Subtitled "Black British Photo­

graphy in the 1980s." the issue (2.3) was published in Spring 1992.

" 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 Contemporarx

Arts (1985) - marked the arrival on the British art scene of a radical generation

of young Black and Asian women artists. JTiey challenged their collective in­

visibility in the art world and engaged with the social, cultural, political and

aesthetic issues of the time.

y^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 225

largely concurently with Thin Black Line(s) was BLK ART GROUP 1983-

1984. The card announcing the exhibifion described the exhibifion 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 govcmmcnt was on the rise and the Brixton riots were shaking London, the Blk Art (iroup emerged as a creative force in Britain.

This exhibition will feature significant works which xverc acquired for Shef­field during the 1980s, but which have rarely been seen since. It will also explore the important role that regional galleries, including Sheftleld's, played in supporting and promoting black British art at a lime when many public art institutions were reluctant to engage xviih the political subject matter.

The exhibition opened on 7 September and was programmed to continue

"unfi l 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 o f the 1980s has,

perhaps inadvertently, distracted from the task o f seeking ever-greater and

fhis dispiax features a selection of key works by some ot these artists. At their core is a conceptual refraining of the image of black and Asian xvomcn 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 wonks on display have been lent by the Arts Council and from

artists" private collections. TTiey 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 Boycc. Chila Burrnan. Jean Campbell. Jennifer Comrie. Margaret Cooper.

Elizabeth Eugene, Lubaina Himid, Claudelte Johnson, Mumtaz Karimjcc.

Cherry Lawrence. Leslee Wills. Houria Niati, Ingrid Pollard Veronica Rxan.

Marlene Smith, Maud Suiter and Andrea lelman.

This display has been devised by artist Lubaina Himid M BE, Professor of Con-

temporar>' Art at the University of Central Lancashire, with curator Paul Good­

win.

— From http://wxvxv.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?vcnucid= 1 &roomid=7237

(accessed 29 August 2011).

226 THINGS DONE CHANGE / ^

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 198GS - 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 intensitx', changing the nature and perception of British culture irreversibly.'*

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."" Such fijlsome and fancifiil 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 Brifish culture has been irreversibly changed amounts to a sense of a mission having been accomplished; no ftirther 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 Livenpool's creafive hub, the Bluccoat, 25 years after first exhibiting there."" A more measured, albeit dispiriting, assessment of the legacy of Black artists of the

'* From the back cover of Shades of Black,

" Courtney J. Martin, "Brixton Calling,"/4/-/Jo«r«o/(Spring 2007): 119. " Media release for Sonia Boyce, Like Love (Liverpool: Bluecoat Gallety, 30

Januaiy-28 March 2010).

y^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 227

1980s was offered by Niru Ratnam, for whom Britain's 'Black Ar t ' "advo­

cates" were part of a temporary, surface phenomenon."

With the "Black British cultural renaissance"""* of the 1980s being remem­

bered, 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 o f 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 o f these artists. As Gen Doy wrote, "at the end

of the twenfieth century, black visual culture is seen by some cultural crifics

and historians as something which took place in the 1980s.""'

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 relafively large

group shows, substanfial individual exhibitions o f an artist's work were a

rarity. Lubaina Himid noted, when commenting on the impression of the

1980s as a bountifijl period for Black artists.

The pervading impression is therefore of a great proliferation of exhibifions of black artists [sic] work, huge numbers of artists, but no real expanding of an individuals [sic) boundaries."

Kobena Mercer's appraisal of Black artists' achievements reflected something

o f the pathology whereby modest and sporadic undertakings took on the

" Niru Ratnam. "Chris Ofiii and the Limits of Hybridity." See quotation above, p.

206-207.

~° Media release for Sonia Boyce, Like Love (Liverpool: Bluecoat Gallery. 30

January-28 March 2010). Ihe notion of a cultural renaissance had previously been

given an airing by Leslie Primo; collapsing several decacfes, and several generations of

artists, into one moment (sec long quotation, p. 106 above).

" Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture, 242.

" Lubaina Himid, "Mapping: A Decade of Black Women Artists 1980-1990," 67.

228 THINGS DONE CHANGE / ^

semblance of something more substantial."'* He cited cities such as Bristol,

Liverpool, and Manchester as having "long-standing" track records in show­

ing Black artists' work.""* 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 picttjre 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 arc cvcrjxvhere involved in the contcmporarx culture life ofthc nation. Cities such as Bristol, Liverpool. Manchester, and Bimiingham 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."

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 UK, Mercer's upbeat assessment is profoundly at odds xvith 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 noxv inflected by many shades of'black'.""

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 1N1V 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 direcfion of 'cultural diversity', having been a member of the cultural-diversity advisory and moni­toring committee ofthc Arts Council and subscquenfly joining the Board of Trustees of IN IV A. (Shonibare's work was used to decorate the cover of the

'* Kobena Mercer, •'' Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day': Reflections on Aesthetics and Time," in "Black" British Aestiietics Toda\\ ed. R. Victoria Arana (Newcastle upon Tync: Cambridge Scholars. 2009): 66-78.

-" Mercer, " ' Diaspora Didn't I lappcn in a Day'." 66. *̂ "• Diaspora Didn't Happen In a Day'." 66.

"* •••Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day'," 67. Within this claim, Mercer had incor­porated a reference to Siiades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, ed. David A. Bailey. Ian Baiicom & Sonia Boyce (Durham NC; Duke UP & London: 1NIVA/AAVAA,2005).

Ayh. Everything Crash 229

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 incon-ectly reproduced at 90 degrees clockwise. ). 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 INIVA notwithstanding. Ofili, through the imagery and iconography of his projects such as Freedom One Day and Freeness, appropriated potent symbols of Blackness and Black liherafion, but, for the most part, this ap­propriation was little more than a cross between marketing tactic and adver­tising strategy."

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

"' Cultural Diversity Action Plan, Arts Council of England. March 1998.

^' Chris Ofili. Freedom One Day, exhibition and catalogue. Victoria Miro Gallcrx, 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 fiag of Marcus Garvcy and his UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Associa­tion), particularly active throughout the xvorld 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, Garvcy's UNIA flag resonated with associations of Black Power, Black struggle, and dia.sporic 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 pan, a motif of the outline of the African continent coloured in with the UNIA 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 CD, 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.

2 3 0 T H I N G S D O N E C H A N G E yy%.

evolution of the black arts scene during the 1980s and 1990s, and the trans-

Atlantic component of this has been especially important."

Mercer proceeded to cite 1997's New York exhibition. Transforming the

Crown, But beyond that particular endeavour, and exhibitions such as Inter­

rogating Identity (1991) and Eclectic Flavour (1998), there was little in the

way o f transatlantic curatorial activity involving Black artists, over and above

the blessed few. Mercer nevertheless felt able to claim that " 'b lack British

art' has now become a recognisable strand in contemporar>' art."'" In apprais­

ing the fortunes o f Black-British artists, the casual stirring into the mix of

Of i l i et al. is highly problematical, as their work can more properly be re­

garded as standing outside of, rather than alongside or as part of, the general

pracfice o f Black-British artists. Furthermore, the rising fide that bore Shoni­

bare, McQueen, and Of i l i to fame most certainly has not had the effect of

l i f t ing all boats.

Along with Black artists' ftustrafions at a lack o f substantial exhibition op­

portunities, 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 o f racial or ethnic difference. Continuing his

upbeat assessment, Mercer contended "Black arts professionals are among

decision-makers in 'Bri t ish' institutions of art and culture in a way they cer­

tainly were not twenty or thirty years ago." "The opportunities," Mercer de­

clared, "are exhilarating," though he qualified this; "fresh anxieties inevitably

accompany such an unprecedented moment."" Although Mercer proceeded

to raise questions and doubts, the fulsome and unequivocal nature of his as­

sessment 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 o f 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 institufions.'"

" ' Mercer. " ' Diaspora Didn't I lappcn in a Day'," 67.

°̂ ••• Dia.spora Didn't Happen in a Day'." 67. 31 , " • Diaspora Didn't 1 lappen in a Day'," 67.

^̂ For a discussion of the poor levels of mainstream gallcrx employment for Blaek

people, see Eddie Chambers, "Whitewash," Art Monthly 205 (April 1997): 11-12.

A^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 231

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 o f themselves, are more able to exhibit the work o f

Black artists than are white curators. But, historically, it has often been the in­

dependent Black curator or project organizer who has facilitated the showing

o f Black artists' work . " Beyond projects governed by notions o f ethnic and

racial difference, the Black curator has neither profile nor field o f operations.

This point is o f immeasurable importance when appraising the fortunes o f

Black-British artists, because there currently exists a system of separate de­

velopment among the U K ' s arts institutions. Black artists are to be served

through the endeavours o f London projects such as Rich Mix, the Bemie

Grant Arts Centre, and Rivington Place. Beyond London, Black artists are to

be served - again, so it would seem - by activifies of the New Art Exchange

in Nottingham. Concurrent with the rise o f such art(s) centres, there has been

a diminishing presence of Black artists in mainstream galleries. To put it

blunfiy, 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 o f

the country's 'white" art galleries. Such a desperate state o f affairs has not

been known in Britain since the 1970s.

Over the past several decades, many inifiafives have aimed at bringing into

existence new generations of Black curators and other visual arts profes­

sionals, from the Arts Council's Black Visual Artists Trainee Scheme, o f 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 fol­

low 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. Aspir­

ing Black curators and other arts professionals should, o f course, not be pre­

sumed to have worth only as far as the promotion o f 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

" For discussion of this activity, sec Eddie Chambers. "Black Visual Arts Activity in England 1981-1986." esp. chapter 4, ••JTie First Exhibitions, the Earliest Responses."

232 THINGS DONE CHANGE A^

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. INIVA, 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 opportunifies of Black people in the arts, concluded that "Black arts profes­sionals are among decision-makers in 'British' institufions of art and culture in a way they certainly were not twenty or thirty years ago."* Even allowing for the fleeting installing of Gus Casely-Hayford as director of INIVA (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-govemmental 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' anVists, and other practitioners and prac-fices 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 sfill some years olT. 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 insfitufional 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 discriminafion or unequal tteatment.** 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-bom 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 escalat-

** Mercer, "'Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day'," 67.

" For a subslantial discission ofthe historx' of the Arts Council's involvement with Black artists, see Richard Hylton, The Nature ofthe Beast,

y^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 233

ing programme o f separate development for Black artists in Britain, More

than a quarter o f a century, and many millions o f pounds later. Black artists in

Britain ended up with not much more than a few building-based initiatives,

the most Imjxirtant o f which are the aforementioned Rivington Place in Lon­

don 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.**

The plethora o f Arts Council-sponsored research, report writ ing, commit­

tee work, and no end o f publications reflecting its embrace (indeed, what

looked at times like its championing) o f cultural diversity in its various guises

has drifted in two directions. First, Black people must constantly be provided

with training opportunities, separate and disfinct from those available to white

people; secondly. Black arts activity needs separate homes in which to be pre­

sented and through which Black and other communities o f people can be

engaged. Together with other inifiatives, the compulsory adopting o f equal-

opportunity policies by galleries was intended to be a significant step on the

joumey 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 relafively heady days of the 1980s, when Black artists'

work was featured in a range o f exhibitions, taking place in what now has the

appearance o f a broad range o f venues, as a consequence o f initiatives taken

by a wide variety o f people. The end of the large-scale group or survey show

may have been no bad thing. But we have seen relafively little by way o f a

corresponding proliferation of integrated gallerx' programming with a range o f

solo exhibitions, from modest 'debuts' through to more substantial affairs,

perhaps in the manner o f Keith Piper's Rehxating the Remains (which was,

in point of fact, organized and funded by IN IVA) . * * Outside of the favoured

artists such as Of i l i et al., and outside o f 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 inifiafives, such as Black His-

*'• Mindful ofthe decidedly mixed fortunes of a number of arts-based building pro­jects (such as those referred to in chapter 2 of this study). Richard Hvllon 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 (Tlie Nature of tlie Beast, 131).

'* For details on Relocating the Remains (1997), see fn 8 above, p. xxiii.

234 THINGS DONE CHANGE

tory Month or Abolition 200.*** 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 nofions of 'racial", 'cultural", or 'ethnic' 'difference' or 'signification'. Given the Brifishness of so many artists involved in this story, given (he 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 ofthe 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, 77»e Arts

Britain Ignores, was published.*'* 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."*" 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"*' 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 insfitutional insistence that those perceived as being 'different' needed correspondingly different treatment, attention, and fi/inding structures. The publisher's marketing description stated:

*̂ It wa.s meniioned in chapter 2 that artists such as Sonia Boyce and Yinka Shoni­bare undertiKik 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 anniversaiy ofthe abolition ofthe 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.

'̂ Nasccm Khan, The Arts Britain Ignores.

*** From the book's back cover. *' Richard Hylton, 77ie Nature ofthe Beast, 40.

Ay^ Everything Crash 235

Richard Hylton ofters 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 intemationalism" in the 1990s and "culturally diverse arts" in the twenty-first centurv', Hylton's study ainsiders how, despite such changes to nomenclature, overly benevolent and prescriptive attempts at in­culcating cultural divcrsirv within the visual arts today reprise much ofthe outmoded thinking dating back to the 1970s.

Through in-depth research and analysis, this study a.ssesses the extent to which certain policies and initiatives might have assisted or hindered the pro­gress of Black artists w ithin 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.*^

Unlike a subsequent report on the alleged 'boxing-in' o f Black artists released

several months later. Hylton's study elicited no fomi of public response from

the Arts Council.

Some two months later, Sonya Dyer released her own, somewhat damning

assessment o f 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 o f finan­

cial figures that, i f correct, gave an indication of the Arts Council's commit­

ment to implementing its cultural-diversity strategies;

In 2002. ACE [Arts Council England] designated £29 million to black, Asian and Chinese-led organisations from its lottery-funded .Arts Capital Programme. ACE has committed 10 percent of its Grant for Arts awards to

black and ethnic minority artists and arts organisations. 43

*" Sec. for example, htlp://wvvw.bath.ac.uk/icia/archive/the-naturc-of-thc-beasl/ (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 diverslrv policies in the arts are doing exactly what their label suggests; dividing people," http;//w'ww.splkcd-online.com/index.php?/sitc /reviewofbooksarticle /3359/ (accessed 3 April 2011).

** Sonya Dyer, Boxed In: How Cultural Diversity Policies Constrict Black Artists (Manifesto Club, Artistic Autonomy Hub. May 2007), http://www.mani festoclub

236 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE y ^

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 £lO

mil l ion, 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 o f Black arts professionals brokering power from privileged posi­

tions. Dyer claimed that "many black and minority ethnic artists are [...] cut

o f f 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 o f the wider network

of powcrbrokers in the mainstream art wor ld" (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 i : ) - Dyer argues that govem-

ment-led targets fail to get to grips with the real reasons why BME 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

o f race" (29) w i l l only stigmatize them and keep them apart from the main­

stream (see also 17, 24).

Dyer's report elicited a number o f resjjonses, including a qualified reproof

from Niru Ratnam, a former programme manager of Inspire, and a defen-

.com/fllcs/noxnoiNPRlN I .pdf (accessed 3 April 2011): 5. Further page references

in this paragraph arc in the main text.

** Manifesto Club for Freedom In Everyday Life, "'Boxed In: Comments and

Views" (May 2007). http://ww'w.manifestoclub.com/aa-diversity-comments (accessed

3 Apr i l 2011).

Ay%, Everything Crash 237

sively worded rebuttal fium the Arts Council itself.** Dyer in turn sought to counter, point by point, the Arts Council's rebuttal, in what amounted to an addendum to her original report.**' In addition to the range of arguments ad­vanced in Hylton's The Nature ofthe Beast and Dyer's Boxed fn, there were other voices raised in criticism of what was perceived to be problematical Arts Council attitudes towards Black artists.**

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 Black-British 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 intema-fionalism 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"*' and that

The global dimension of the process whereby international recognition has been conferred upon "'blaek British artists'" has been a crucial aspect of the evolution of the black arts scene during the 198QS and 1990s, and the trans-Atlanfic aimponent of this has been especially important.*

Certainly, the newspaper and magazine life-sryie 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:

1 went to Chicago for the weekend for the opening ofthc new wing ofthc Art Institute of Chicago, designed by Renzo Piano and also for the opening of a piece of mine. Girls, Tricky, in the new wing.'**

*' Arts Council England, "Re: Boxed in: how cultural diversity policies constrict black artists" (18 May 2007). hHp://www.manifestoclub.com/files/aceresponse.pdf (accessed 3 April 2011).

** "Sonya Dyer responds to Arts Council England" (23 May 2007), hnp;//www .manifcstoclub.com/aa-divcrsity-acc (accessed 3 April 2011).

*•* See Niru Ratnam. Decibel: Running To Stand Still, Spin Cycle (Bristol: Spike Island/Systcmisch. 2004): 69-76. and Rasheed Araeen, ""[Polemic:] Decibel ~ Inver­ted Racism?" An Monthly (May 2007): 39.

*' Kobena Mercer,""" Diaspora Didn't 1 lappen in a Day"," 67.

*' Mercer,"'" Diaspora Didn't 1 lappcn in a Day"." 67 "* "My week: Steve McQueen 7 Days." Observer (31 May 2009): 40.

238 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE A^

As mentioned in chapter 3, Shonibare's own " M y 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."*' Isaac Julien had

also been the subject o f 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 intemafion-

alism. "1 then walk across Bioomsbury, which makes me realize that it is

already fall. That sounds very American, but after l iving 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."** And so it

goes on.

But the intemationalism in which these artists delighted was very much a

two-way process. Artists from beyond die 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 ofthe first

British Art Show and its later incamatlons towards the new millennium,

Godfrey could easily have pointed out another factor, in his essay "British Art

and The British Art Show J976-2000," written for the catalogue of The Brit­

ish Art Show 5 (2000).** 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 cosmopoli­

tanism o f cities such as London, Paris, and New York, but the pace at which

artists travelled and set theinselves up in other parts o f the world accelerated

during the 1990s. Encouraged in part by cheaper flights, many people respon­

ded 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 o f Europe. Another factor was the changing nature of British

higher education, including its art schools. Intemafional students (or foreign

" "My week. Yinka Shonibare Artist" Daily Telegraph Review (12 July 2008): 5.

'^ "Isaac Julien in London," Guardian Weekend (22 October 2005): 9.

" Tony Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000."

y^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 239

students, as they were then more commonly known) had always been a pres­

ence at British universities and polytechnics. But as higher education, under

pressure from governmental parsimony, adopted more and more explicit busi­

ness practices, universities increasingly began to market themselves to pro­

spective, higher-paying students all over the world. Consequently, those with

the economic means, or whose families were thus endowed, were able to avail

themselves o f a British (art) college education while bypassing many o f the

obstacles which had traditionally kept them out of the IJ K, or prevented them

from considering the UK as a destination of choice for their studies. Nicholas

Scrota saw fit to comment on this developing intemationalism:

In Britain we live in a society that, broadly speaking, welcomes newcomers. Opening doirrs to ea>nomic 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 carK years ofthe 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." *

Furthermore, the language o f intemationalism had been proliferating in

sections of the art world since the beginning of the 1990s. Talk of globaliza-

fion, migration, shifting borders, imagined communities, transnationalism etc.

had indelibly seeped into the discourse o f contemporary art, and prettN much

everybody - artists, curators, writers, collectors - wanted to avail themselves

o f some of these new and supposedly exciting ideas.** Particularly important

in this regard was the work of the Arts Council-sponsored Institute o f New

** Nicholas Scrota ""Foreword." The Turner Prize and British Art (London: Tate 2007): 9.

** By the late 1990s, the discourse of these new altitudes to intemationalism was well established. See, for example, Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migra­tion: Giobaiizalion. Deterritorializalion and Hybridity (Oxford: Polity. 1999). and Changing Slates: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globalisation, ed. Gilanc Tawadros (Ixmdon: INl VA, 2004). See also exhibitions such as Imagined Communi­ties, a touring exhibition, organized by Andrew Patrizio. National Touring Exhibitions, and Richard 1 lylton, which opened its nationwidc tour at the Oldham Art Gallery, 27 Januaty-24 March 1996. One ofthe earliest exhibitions to encourage Its audiences to consider the interlinked issues of migration, ligation, citizenship, and identity was Shifting Borders, curated by Richard Hylton and featuring photography, mixed media film, and installation works by twelve artists from Europe, Eaing Art Gallery. New­castle upon Tyne, 20 Augusl-18 October 1992.

240 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE / ^

Intemational 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 gallcrv 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 I'hursday [27 August 1992J, 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 divcrsirA", it feels that they have not kept pace with the achieve­ments of black artists in the West.**

The intemationalism of I N I V A was laid out and discussed in position papers,

reliant to a large extent on the input and thinking o f the South African-bom

artist Gavin Jantjes. A number of years earlier, another significant visual-

arts initiative involving Black artists, the exhibition From Two Worlds, had

also relied heavily on Jantjes" thinking and ideas. Much ofthe 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 Apri l 1986, during which he stated " A contemporary black visual art is

an innovative synthesis o f two worlds."

The next step in the development o f IN1V A was a conference in 1994

and a subsequently released volume o f proceedings. The marketing synopsis

of Global Visions stated:

'* Dalya Alberge, " ' Artists of colour" gallery redraws the cultural map," TTie Inde­

pendent (25 August 1992): 3.

'* The Independent, in its article announcing the launch of INIVA: noted that

" INIVA ha.s come about after extensive research by Gavin Jantjes, the artist, and

Sarah Wason [senior visual arts oflicer at the Arts Council]""; Dalya Alberge, '"Artists

of colour" gallcr> redraws the cultural map."

" Gavin Jantjes, "Black Artists White Institutions: Talk delivered at the East Mid­

lands Arts Conference (12.4.86)." Artrage 15 (Winter 1986): 36. Jantjes" paper was re­

printed as "Art & Cultural Reciprocity: Talk delivered at the East Midlands Art Con­

ference on 12 April 1986." in The Essential Black Art (1988). 42-45.

" "A New Intemationalism": a two-driy symposium at the Tate Gallcrv. London on Wednesday 27 and Ihursday 28 April 1994. This was the first intemational sym-

242 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE A^

It is important to reiterate that, in a great many respects, the traffic of inter­

nationalism 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 ofthe European Union (EU) has meant that other EU citizens can live and work in London, or elsewhere, just as Britons can go to France, or Gcnnany or Spain. Even a.s Prime Minister Blair pro­claimed the emergence of "CIKJI Brilannia" in ihe late 1990s, harnessing pop culture to the promotion of one political vision of national identity, some of our foremost artists were heading ofl' to live and work elsewhere: lacita Dean to Berlin: Hannah Collins to Barcelona; Steve McQueen to Amster­dam; Lucy Orta to Paris.*'

McQueen to Amsterdain (and for that matter, Tariq Alvi to the Netherlands,

Zarina Bhimji to Berlin, and Chris Of i l i to Trinidad**) notwithstanding,

Black-British artists can in important respects be thought of as net losers

rather than net beneficiaries o f London's new intemationalism. As I pointed

out several years ago,** the process by which Black artists were sidelined in

deference to intemational exhibitors had been in place since the late-igSos.

At that time, intemational 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 USA, but such exhibitions tended to be

'whi te ' 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 o f favour, as artists from Africa, South Asia, China, and such

parts o f the world became, albeit fleetingly, more attractive. Exhibitions such

as Art From South Africa relied heavily on anthropological/curatorial frame­

works whereby a particular country was trawled, in an effort to supposedly

identify and present the 'best' and most representative bodies of work by

" Chris Townsend, New Art From London, 16.

** During the period of this study, other artists moved abroad. These included Allan

de Souza to the USA, and Shahccn Mcrali to Bcriin. (,3 Eddie Chambers, ""True Colours," Versus 2 (1994): 28-29.

A^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 243

artists from the country in question. In time, such exhibitions, drawn from

areas such as India and Aboriginal Australia, were presented in galleries in

London and elsewhere in the country.* These were decidedly 'exotic" show­

ings, which allowed domestic gallery-going audiences the opportunity to see

bodies o f work they might not otherwise be able to access. Such exhibitions,

however, were to some extent stymied by the notion that supposedly dis­

interested white curators claimed the privilege of selecting and introducing to

British audiences the art o f 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 o f curatorial product.) The pathology o f these now old-

fashioned intemational exhibitions was heavily reliant on Britain's stubbom

perception of itself as a monocultural society with a largely monocultural

body of British artists on which to draw. In this sense, international exhibi­

tions 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. In­

deed, the galleries that were most enthusiastic in programming the intema­

tional exhibition were oftentimes those from which Black-British artists found

themselves most consistently excluded.*'

Jean Fisher offered a candid assessment of the failings o f these exhibitions,

and proposed a bold explanation for their proliferation:

Typical in this regard was ,4rt From South Africa, which was originated by the Museum of Modem Art, Oxford, and was shown there 17 June-23 September 1990. It then loured to venues in Warwick, Aberdeen. London. Bolton, Stoke on Trent, and Nottingham, bettvecn October 1990 and Jul\ 1991.

** Richard Hylton observed that "By the mid-1990s, exhibitiores featuring artists from the Indian Sub-continent. Latin America and Australia became a relatively com­mon feature of gallery exhibition programmes" (The Nature of tlie Beast. 110). Such exhibitions included Aratjara: Art ofthe First Australians, Hayward Gallery. London, 23 July-10 October 1993: Critical Difference: Contemporary Art from India was an Aberysrwyth Arts Centre touring exhibition in collaboration with The Showroom, Ixmdon, During 1993 it toured to a number of venues in England and Wales, including Camden Arts Centre, 28 May-4 July 1993.

*' For a discussion of this, see Eddie Chambers, "Makonde," Art Monthly 129 (Sep­

tember 1989); 18-20. r

244 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE y ^

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 merropolis. In Britain, a glance at recent exhibition reviews touching on such themes as "New Art from China (or India, Cuba, etc.)," is enough to eonfimi the suspicion that the esthetic concerns oi" individual artists continue to he neglected in favor of redundant assumptions about ethnicity or poorly informed comparisons with Westem Modernism. Why ihis continues to oc­cur may seem puzzling, hut one factor that must be taken into account is the impulse of some poorer nation.s to '"exoticizc" themselves in order to gain a stronger footing in the Westem art market. While many exhibitions arc quick to contextualize non-Westem work wilh anthropological anecdotes, historical context is usually missing from the equation. Without it, we cannot help but fail lo understand the trajectory of global Modemism as it has evolved out­side the West.**

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.'*

As mentioned, by the mid-jggos the nature of intemational 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."" Intemational 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 ofthe notion of hybriduty, Niru Ratnam noted that the "shift from" what he called "the didactic work ofthe late J97OS 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 polifics of representation', where the black experience was

94-70

' Jean Fisher, "Seven stories about modem art in Afiica." Artfomm (January 1996):

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

Ayh. E v e r y t h i n g Crash 245

primarily diasporic and centred on the 'process o f unsettling, recombinafion,

hybridization and "cut-and-mix" ' ."'^

It was at this moment that the art world began to take increased notice o f

biennales and mega-exhlbitions 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 estab­

lished in the mid-1980s, and the Johannesburg Biennale, which took place

twice in the 1990s. In addition to presenting intemational group exhibitions

o f work by artists from several different countries, the British art world began

to stage increased numbers o f solo exhibitions by such artists. With even the

most unassuming and provincial o f gallery spaces in Britain seeking to avail

themselves of this latter-day intemationalism, all but the most favoured Black

artists found their chances of substantial gallery attention shrinking even fur­

ther, as more and more galleries sought to intemationalize their curatorial pro­

grammes, as a nod towards cosmopolitanism and diversity. The coterie of

freshly minted intemational curators emerging in the 1990s were interested in

few Black-British artists beyond such already familiar names as Bhimji ,

Julien, Locke, McQueen, Of i l i , and Shonibare. This limited horizon extended

to similarly limited numbers o f familiar names o f 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 o f work, from

the same sorts o f artists, time and again. In this regard, the artists mentioned

above were clear beneficiaries o f these shifts in international cultural politics,

away from what were regarded as worthy but dull approaches to art and poli­

tics: "the world of visual arts has realized that hybridity allows a release from

dreary identiry politics work and has embraced Of i l i with open arms." *

Richard Hylton summarized something of the impact and consequences o f

intemational dimensions on Black-British artists.

Although the •intcmatlonalising' ofthe visual arts programmes across Eng­

land may have reflected changes occurring within the intemational art world.

" Niru Ratnam, "Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity." 155.

" Africus: Jolianneshurg Biennale, 28 Februarv-30 April 1995: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale 1997, Trade Routes: History and Geography, 12 October 1997-18 Januar>' 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-Januar> 1998): 14-18.

" Niru Ratnam, "Chris Ofili and the Limits of Hybridity." 157.

246 THINGS DONE CHANGE A^

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 accommixiate artists of colour from abroad. '

Hylton went on to reiterate the sentiment that "there was a certain correlation between galleries' eagemess to display the work of artists from all comers of the world and the increasing obsolescence of Black artists to the English gal­lery system."'*

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 nanratives 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 ofthe 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 fJie 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

'* Richard I lylton. The Nature ofthe Beast, i ll .

'* Hylton. The Nature ofthe Beast, in .

A^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 247

with dead Black artists became another way for the art establishment to avoid

having to deal with Black artists who lived and breathed.

For several years, from the mid-1980s onwards, the Horizon Gallery dis­

tinguished itself as a substanfial exhibition space, located in central London,

in which visitors could expect to see work by practitioners o f 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 Bisivas: Recent Paintings (17 June-u July 1987). When the gallery

closed in 1991, a well-located venue dedicated to showing the work o f 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 o f about five and ten years respectively they provided

exhibition opportunities for significant numbers o f artists, albeit practitioners

representing different, demarcated constituencies. Notwithstanding the estab­

lishment of Rivington Place, the gallery-based home to I N I V A and Auto­

graph (Association o f Black Photographers), the closure o f 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 Afr ica Centre and

the Commonwealth Institute, again well-located central-London sites. The

Africa Centre, in Covent Garden, hosted several o f the most important exhi­

bitions that signalled the emergence o f a new generation of Black artists.

These included The Pan-Afrikan Connection'^ and Five Black Women

Artists:'' 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 prac-

" Several of INIV A's most substantial exhibitions to date Involved presenting ex­

hibitions of work by dead artists, such as Aubrey Williams at the Whiiechapel Art Gal­

lery (12 June-16 August 1998) and l.i Yuan-chia al Camden Arts Centre (26 January-

18 March 2001, before touring to other venues). For a critique of this, see Eddie

Chambers, ""Dead Artists' Societ>',"" Art Monthly 244 (March 2001): 15.

'* Eddie Chambers, FJominic Dawes, Claudette Johnson, Wenda Leslie, and Keith

Piper; 4 May-4 June 1982.

" Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Houria Niati, and Veronica

Ryan; 6 September-14 October 1983.

248 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE Ah,

titioners, as well as artists from other parts o f t he Commonwealth. Aubrey

Wil l iams had exhibited there, as had younger painters such as Denzil For­

rester (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 o f exhibitions, such as Woven Air.

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 o f the gallery would supposedly be addres­

sed and catered for. In addition to offerings such as Woven Air and Living

Woodf the gallery also served up fare such as Krishna The Divine Lovef-

(programmed during the year in which celebrations marking the fiftieth anni­

versary of Indian and Pakistani Independence took place) and, in 1999,

ooozerozerozenf' More recently, the gallery hosted Where Three Dreams

Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

While, for these types o f exhibition, the Whitechapel presented itself as some­

thing of a ' local ' gallery, these exhibitions often functioned as signifiers ofthe

London art world's capacity to embrace and demonstrate plurality. Such was

the Whitechapel Art Gallery's resistance to programming substantial exhibi­

tions by individual Black practitioners that, fol lowing Sonia Boyce's exhibi­

tion (in a gallery space on the upper level of the building) in 1988,'* it would

'* Woven Air; The Muslin 6) Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh, Whitechapel Art Gal­

lery. 4 Mareh-i May 1988. This was, according to the press release issued on 21 Jan­

uary 1988. a "major exhibition of historical and modern textiles from Bangladesh."

*' Living Wood: Sciiiplurai 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.

*' Krishna Tlie Divine Lover, a prrrduct of National Touring Exhibitions, was at the

Whitechapel Art Gallery 30 May-27 July 1997- It then toured on to venues in Hud-

dersficld. Sheffield, and Brighton, between August 1997 and Januarv-1998.

*' ooozerozerozero (10-31 July 1999). described on the cover ofthe accompanying

brochure as "british asian cultural provocation: music_art_[,l photography_filmJ.]

fashionmagic."

** Wiiere Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India. Pakistan and

Bangladesli, Whitechapel Art Gallcrv-, 21 January-ii April 2010

"* Sonia Boyce: Recent Work, Whitechapel Art Gallery. New Gallcrv-. 13 May-26

June 1988.

Ah, E v e r y t h i n g Crash 249

be a considerable number o f years before a l iving Black-British artist would

occupy the main gallery space proper.'*'

Typically, the large 'Asian' exhibitions periodically offered by the White­

chapel Art Gallery either contained greater numbers of contributors or show­

cased work that was, lo all intents and purposes, anonymous (or at least, the

name ofthe 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 o f exhibitions or established

and developed collections of work by artists o f 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 White­

chapel Art Gallery catalogue Woven Ait".

The exhibition aims, firstly, to provide the local Bangladeshi community In Spitalficlds with a chance to review its own culture and particularly for young Bangladeshis growing up in this countr)' to see a significant expres­sion of their own background.*^

Apart from the arguably patronizing and reductive nature o f 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 o f their ethnicity."' For Black artists themselves, the consequences and

the implications o f this were to be catastrophic.

Whilst some municipal galleries may have seen such a poliey as supportive of both artists and communities, the implications of such an approach were arguably more problematic. I f certain exhibitions were deemed relevant for certain communities, taken to its logical etinelusion, this also implied that

71ar/<7 Alvi, Whitechapel Art Gallery; 12 Januarj--4 March 2001. Five years later, the gallery programmed David Adjaye: .Making I'ublic Buildings. Whitechapel Art Gallerv'. 24 Januar>-26 March 2006.

87 Beth Stockley, ""Preface." Woven Air catalogue, 6. *" For an appraisal of this, sec Richard Hylton. The Nature ofthe Beast, particularly

"Municipal Galleries." in the chapter "Publicly funded galleries, "survey" exhibitions and Black artists during the 1980s."

250 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE Ah,

without a discemible 'ethnic' aimmunity 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.*'*

Perhaps one o f the most poignant indications of the lopsided nature of ex­

hibitions 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 poctrj 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 too exquisite miniatures from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. 'Hie exhibition also features new or previously unseen work by Sutapa Biswas. Maqbool Fida llusain. Permindar Kaur. Dhruva Mistry- and Amrit & Rabindra K D Singh.""

The final sentence o f the news release stated: "Also showing at the White­

chapel during this period is Cathy de Monchaux."

In the manner o f 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 cumber­

some exhibitions that claimed a broad historical sweep. Much like the sorts of

'Asian' show mentioned above, these historical exhibitions frequently func­

tioned as signifiers o f the London art world's capacity to embrace and de­

monstrate plurality. Again, the Whitechapel .Art Gallery was home to several

such exhibitions, which included Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa '

' Richard 1 lylton. The Nature ofthe Beast. 89.

"""Krishna The Divine Ixjver Opens in London," National Touring Exhibitions

News Release.

"' "Krishna The Divine Lover Opens in London."

"̂ Seven Stories About .Modern Art in Africa (Whitechapel Art Gallery, 27 Septembcr-26 November 1995), described by one critic as "part of a multimedia jam­boree called "africags," was the first exhibition to attempt to provide a historical con­text for African Modemism": Jean Fisher. "Seven stories about modem art in Africa." Arlforum (January 1996); 94. ITie exhibition toured to MalmO Konsthall, MalmO. Sweden, 27 January--17 March 1996, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (SoHo), New York, mid-J une-mid-September 1996 (as printed in the catalogue).

y^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 251

and Back to Black: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary. 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 o f these artists' aspira­

tions 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 Ima­

ginary was one o f the flagship exhibitions of Africa 05.*** These africa

95/Afr ica 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 o f such exhibitions

has been Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic, held at Tate

Liverpool, 29 January-25 Apr i l 2010."** Beyond these bitty exhibitions

"' Back to Black took place at Whitechapel Art Gallery; 7 June-4 September 2005.

before touring to the New Art Gallery, Walsall.

"* As indicated in Chapter 4 of this study, Africa 05 presented itself a.s "'a scries 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 ofthe huge diversity of African arts and culture hy bringing them into the mainstream and encouraging Britain's arts institutions lo make links with artists from across the African continent and to reach out to African communities here in the UK" (http://www-.tate.0rg.uk/africa05/ (accessed 3 April 2011). Sec also ""AFRICA 05 Partner Activity," Issued November 2004. and "'Plans unveiled for Africa 05 - the U K "s biggest ever celebration of African cultures." press relea,se 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 Cldmcntinc FJcliss as its artistic director.

"* Afro Modern: Journeys through Ihe 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 Jan-uary-u April 2010; Liverpool: Walker Art Ciallery. 2010). and Sonia Boyce. Like Love (Liverprxil: Bluecoat (iallery; 30 January-28 March 2010). Both of these exhibi­tions are dealt with elsewhere in this study.

252 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE Ah,

(bulked out by slender contributions from large numbers o f artists) and com­

memorative programmes such as Abolition 200,"* the vast majority of Black

artists found themselves with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

During the period of this study, the nature o f 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 o f artists, dominated

by McQueen, Of i l i and Shonibare et al., concurrently found their stock rising.

The latter secured press attention unlike anything that Black artists of pre­

vious 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

Of i i i et al. presupposed, on the reader's part, an understanding of, or fami­

liarity with, these artists' pracfice, thereby leaving them free to indulge their

celebrity status. With an artist's pracfice no longer necessarily being the focus

o f press coverage, it was instead the very success of the artist that became the

essence o f this new type o f 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 dis­

cussed in earnest terms, reflecting the then dominant thinking - as Tony God­

frey put it, "To be an artist was a vocation, a serious, po-faced business."

Typical, in this regard, was an interview with Keith Piper that appeared in

City Limits in 1984," at the time o f the artist's solo exhibifion at the Black-

Art Gallery."" The two-page interview, conducted by Nigell Pollitt, centred on

the asking o f questions, by Pollitt, such as "When you talk about the need to

create a black visual aesthetic, it sounds as i f 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 pres­

ence of black artists, whatever the content o f their work, presents a threat, to a

** As mentioned in chapter 2 of this study, Abolition 200 was undertaken with the

aim of commemoraling the abolition of the slave trade by the British parliament in

2007-"'' Tony Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000," 20.

" Nigell Pollitt. "Piper at the gales of dawn. Visual Arts. Circuit: The Cream of

the Week," City Limits (6-12 July 1984): 13-14.

** Keith Piper, Past Imperfect. Future Tense, the Black-Art Gallery. 7 June-22

July 1984.

yih. Everything Crash 253

degree, to the art establishment?," and "Have you had critical reactions from people who would regard themselves as first Brifish, 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 ofthe 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."'***

At the time of his ICA 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."'*' 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 oft'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 1 come over I stay at my mum's and I'll see Johnny if he's around... We'll only go out to a parly if it's a good party. No celebrity bashes or events like that, because it's just not our thing."*'

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 ofthe arts, Munira Mirza, for example, was the subject of a "My week" feature in a June 2009 issue ofthe Observer, Described as "culture advisor to London mayor Boris Johnson," Mirza took the reader through her hectic but fiilfilling week, before musing on ways in which her position had influenced her attitude to London. "Since 1 began this job a year ago. I have become aware of a cultural revolution going

'** Tony Godfrey, "British Art and the British Art Show 1976-2000," 20. "" "How We Met: Steve McQueen and Johnny Sapong." The Independent on Sun­

day Magazine (7 February 1999): 52. 102, How We Met: Steve McQueen and Johnny Sapong," 52.

254 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE Ah,

on inside my own heart." Mirza went on to let the reader know that " I am

slowly falling in love with the suburbs."""

Mercer's decidedly upbeat summary of the multiple achievements of

Black-British artists had raised some concerns and disquiet about several pro­

minent aspects of the state of Black arts activity."** Mercer had opened his

musings by noting posifively that the architect David Adjaye, who had recent­

ly held an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, was "actually producing

three of the four new arts centres that wi l l be permanent 'homes' for the black

British art scene.""** This comment prompted readers to ponder on the ques­

tion of which individuals or forces had decided that what Black-British artists

needed to thrive and prosper were dedicated (or, some might suggest, segre­

gated) visual-arts spaces. Mercer was perhaps aware o f 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 o f 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?""**' 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," Mil lard oftered a downbeat assessment of these 'homes', including

the Bemie 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 lea dance and a visiting arts troupe. Not quite the home of ""nurturing. Inspiration, stimulation and challenge", as promised on the WCIH siie, and certainly no flagship. Let me repeat the figures. £15 million for an arts centre otYering 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."

"** "My Week: Munira Mirza," The Observer (7 June 2009): 38.

'** Kobena Mercer,""" Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day'." 67.

'** Mercer, """Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day'," 66. The three building projects,

designed and Adjaye, were the Bemie Grant Centre, the Stephen Lawrence Centre, and

Rivington Place, all in London.

'"*""" Dla.spora Didn't Happen in a Day"," 69.

Ah, Everything Crash 255

writes one bloggcr on the Deptford Dame webpagc. What is it for? Er, edu­cation. And something called ""incubator offices" in which businesses arc meant to do something called ""lis c work". No, 1 don't know what that is, and 1 don't think Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen does, either. She's said to be vco unhappy with how things arc."**

Mercer wondered i f the impetus for these assorted building projects, domi­

nated by Rivington Place, the combined home o f I N I V A and Autograph (the

Association o f Black Photographers), had gathered momentum just when the

fortunes and profile of Black-Brifish artists had begun to fade dramatically:

To raise such doubts is observe |sie] that the cureent 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 oft", 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 tcmi: jnstitutionalisation. On the one hand, without museums, collcetions, and institutions to preserve the materials of shared cultural history. the past Is vulnerable to selective erasure - a symbolic threat that the cultures ofthe 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 insutTicicnt passion for genuine public dialogue, debate, and disagreement about the overall '"direction" - or rather ""directions" in the plural - that the blaek British arts .scene is taking as a whole."*"

Although Mercer had. earlier, erroneously stated that Ofi l i had won the Tur­

ner Prize in 2002 (the correct year being 1998), he nonetheless suggested that

the successes o f McQueen, Of i l i , and Shonibare, which began in earnest in

the late 1990s, coincided with the beginnings of a questionable institution­

alization of the Black-British artist. Put in these sobering terms, Mercer's

doubts underlined the degree to which Of i l i et al. were going in one direction,

while the bulk o f Black-British artists were, or at least had the appearance of,

moving in a conceivably less favourable direction. Perhaps mindful of the ex­

tent to which these two directions indicated Black artists' decidedly mixed

fortunes, Mercer plumped for " i t may well be the case that the black British

arts scene is flourishing and floundering in equal measure,"

"*' Rosie Millard, ""Money for nothing," 14.

"*" Mercer,""" Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day"." 69, 109 ' ' Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day',"' 69.

256 THINGS DONE CHANGE Ah,

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.""" Collectively and individually, Black-British artists have, over an

extended period of time, had notable moments of success and achievement.

The decade ofthe 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.'"

Notwithstanding Prime'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.''" Later, in an altogether different space and time, thirteen London-based Black artists had exhibited together at Feslac 77, the 2nd World Black & African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos Nigeria in 1977-'" Within several

"" Mercer, " ' Diaspora Didn't Happen in a Day'," 69. " ' Leslie Primo, "Visual Arts 2: Artists. 2 Guyanese Artists," in The Oxford Com­

panion to Black British History, ed. David Dabydeen, John Gilmorc & Cecily Jones (Oxford & New York: Oxford U P, 2007): 502.

"M^or example, both of these artists had several important exhibitions at Grabowski Gallery in London in the early 1960s. Frank Bowling and Derek Basliier. Image in Revolt, 5 Octobcr-3 November 1962: Aubrey Wiliiams, 3-24 Januar>; 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 .ippointment With Six: Interna­tional Abstract Trends, Aran Arts Centre, 19 October-5 November 1966. Along with Williams, the exhibition included Owen Bamard, Pip Benveniste, Oswell Blakeslon. Max Chapman, and A. Oscar. In 1962, the Arts Council Collection obtained one of Bowling's paintings ("Birthday," 1962, oil on canva.s. 121.9 x 91.4cm), making it one ofthe first works by a Black-British artist to be thus acquired.

' " i n 1977, a group of Iz)ndon-based Black artists exhibited at Feslac'77. an inter­national festival of arts and culture from the Black world and the Afi-lcan Diaspora

/ ^ E v e r y t h i n g Crash 257

years of this, a new generafion o f 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

exhibifions,"* Looking back at the astonishing history o f Black-British

visual-arts practice, we could argue that its most pronounced moments o f

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 o f the 1980s generation o f 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 o f

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 o f assimilation that Keith

hosted by the Nigerian Government. Winston Branch, Mercian Cairena, IJ/.o F/gonu,

Amei Francis, (Emmanuel) laiwo Jegede, Neil Kenlock. Donald Locke. Cyprian

Mandala. Ronald MoiKiy, Ossie Mureay, Sue SmocL Lance Watson, and Aubrey Wil­

liams.

" * Five Black Women Artists at Ihe Africa Centre, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid.

Claudette Johnson, Houria Niati. Veronica Ryan (Africa Centre. 6 Septcmber-14 Oc­

tober 1983): Black Woman Time Now, Brenda Agard, Sonia Boycc, Chlla Burrnan,

Jean Campbell, Margaret Cooper. Elizabeth Eugene, Lubaina Himid. Claudette John­

son, Mumtaz Karimjee, Cherry Lawrence, Houria Niati, Ingrld Pollard, Veronica

Ryan, Andrea Telman, and Leslee Wills (Battersea Arts Centre, 30 Novcmbcr-31 De­

cember 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 Ex­

hibition (Brixton Art Ciallerv; 17 July-8 August 1984): 3rd Creation for Liberation,

Open Exhibition of Contemporary Art by Black Artists (GLC Brixton Recreation Cen­

tre. 12 July-3 August 1985): and Creation for Liberation 0/?en Exhibition: Art by

Black Artists, contributions by 46 artists (Brixton Village, 7 October-i7 November

1987).

258 T H I N G S D O N E CHANGE y ^

Piper meant when he wrote, in 1987, that "some o f us would argue that Black

Art, like Brixton, is undergoing a period of 'gentr i f icat ion' .""*

Piper's view o f this 'gentrification' navigates several readings ofthe emer­

gence o f Black visual artists in 1980s Britain. The first reading was that ar­

tists 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, refresh­

ing and belter 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 upim what has gone before. Preceding events arc more often than not

reacted against, denigrated as passe, or parodied as kitsch. Because of this art

changes rather than advances."*

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 o f those most-favoured 1980s Black artists,

a newly favoured body of Black artists took centre stage. I f change is to a

great extent a given, an inevitable part o f the human condition, then we can

perhaps expect that a new chapter in the history of Black artists in Britain, a

new era o f change, wi l l sooner or later - be upon us.

Again, looking back at the recent history o f Black artists in Britain, it is

difficult, though not impossible, to imagine individual artists, or groups of

artists, emerging at points in the ftiture, on pronounced counter-cultural plat­

forms. 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-develop­

ment initiatives ostensibly created to serve Black artists and Black people. By

the late-igyos, major artists such as Henry Moore had largely become an ir­

relevance to a generation o f 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

'' * Keith Piper. "Black Art: A Statement." in 77ie Essential Black Art (exh. cat.:

London: Chisenhale Gallcrx /Black Umbrella/Kala, 1988): 46.

" * Piper. "Black Art: A Statement," 46,

Ah, Everything Crash 259

to its counter-cultural sensibility."^ The rapid ascendancy ofthe 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.

Ah,

' See, for example. Panic Attack: Art in tlie Punk Years (exh. cat.. Barbican Art fiallerx; London: Mcrrell, 2007). See also John A. Walker, Left Shift: Radical An in 1970s Britain (Ixmdon: I.B. Tauris, 2001).