View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE EXHIBITIONS provided by UCA Research Online Black artists in 1980s Britain Nottingham by RICHARD HYLTON since the publication of Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain in 2005, there have been a number of exhibitions that have singled out the 1980s as a special dec- ade with regards to black artistic practice. In 2011–12 Tate Britain’s Thin Black Line[s] re- staged three exhibitions organised during the 1980s by Lubaina Himid, while in 2011 Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield offered its own retrospective view with BLK Art Group 1983–1984. Furthermore, Tate Liverpool’s Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic in 2010, No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery 67. Durbar Hall, in 2015 and last year’s Black Art in Focus at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, designed by Bhai Wolverhampton Art Gallery have, in various Ram Singh and John ways, drawn attention to the 1980s. Lockwood Kipling. 1890. The Place Is Here at Nottingham Con- temporary (to 30th April) is the latest and their Victorian heyday, hardly surprising as ant’s essay, Alice Kipling emerges from the the largest exhibition on the work of black Caspar Purdon-Clarke, first keeper of the In- shadows of anonymity as a trenchant jour- British artists in that decade. In fact, in many dia Museum and Oriental section of the South nalist, adventurous decorator and superbly ways it is the show that Shades of Black never Kensington Museum, may have had the same skilled embroiderer. Julius Bryant, studying was, since the earlier project materialised only effect in mind. Huge screens show films of the Kipling as a sculptor (Chapter 4), seizes the as a conference and book. However, like its two cities that enhance the illusion of walking opportunity to glimpse other British sculp- progenitor, the current exhibition raises more through the streets of Bombay and Lahore. tors at work in Bombay. The Journal of Indian questions than it answers. The enduring leg- Ill health cut short Kipling’s time in India, Art, founded in 1884 and published in Lon- acy of Thatcherism, the inner city riots, the and on settling in London in 1893 he estab- don, provides an exemplar for the important miners’ strike, AIDS and Section 28 go some lished himself as an expert on the fashionable topic of Victorian lithographic illustration; way to explaining the appeal for looking back Indian style of decoration. His design for an colour plates from the magazine demonstrate at the politics of the 1980s. While this is fer- ‘Indian’ embossed and painted dado (a tech- the quality of this type of printing (Chapter tile ground, why a black artists’ show and why nique like the popular Lincrusta) was bought 10). Since it is difficult to adequately convey now? Nostalgia? Or does today’s absence of for the Museum by Purdon Clarke (no.210). the effect of the Durbar of 1877 (Chapter 7) oppositional politics and counterculture ne- Two important royal commissions and the two royal decorating commissions cessitate recycling the past? How does such a crowned Kipling’s efforts to promote the (Chapter 15) in the context of an exhibition, show relate to a mainstream gallery that is still traditional arts of India: the Billiard Room the catalogue is essential reading. It may be reticent in its support for all but a handful of at Bagshot Park, Surrey, for the Duke and rash to claim that it contains all there is to black British artists? Duchess of Connaught, and the Durbar know about Kipling senior, but it certainly The Place Is Here brings together painting, Hall at Osborne House for Queen Victoria seems that way. sculpture, photography, printmaking and (Fig.67).4 Bagshot is an extraordinary show - video produced by over thirty artists and case for Indian wood-carving. Possibly in- 1 The exhibition later moves to the Bard Graduate collectives, and we are told by the organisers spired by Elveden Hall in Suffolk, home to Center Gallery, New York (15th September 2017–7th that it ‘evokes some of the urgent and the deposed ruler of the Punjab, Maharaja January 2018). Catalogue: John Lockwood Kipling: Arts wide-ranging conversations taking place Duleep Singh, a childhood friend of Arthur, and Crafts in the Punjab and London. Edited by Julius between black artists, writers, thinkers and Duke of Connaught; but it was the Duke’s Bryant and Susan Weber. 602 pp. incl. 700 col. + 31 institutions in the UK in the 1980s, which time as commander of the Meerut Division b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2017), £50 (HB). ISBN 978–0–30022–159–6. of the Indian Army, when he visited the 1883 2 Calcutta Exhibition (illustrated in the show William Morris was later severe on the British intervention in art and craft teaching in India; see with blown-up views of the displays), and P. Hoffenberg: ‘Kipling as Conservationist: “The his trip to Lahore in 1884 that brought the Journal of Indian Art and Industry”’, ibid., pp.281–99. project for Bagshot Park into focus. In the 3 R. Skelton: ‘The Indian Collections 1798–1978’, interest of speed (woodcarving done in India the burlington magazine 120 (1978), pp.297–304. meant that work at Bagshot dragged on for 4 Bagshot Park is a private royal residence, but a years) the intricate decorations made by Bhai similar decorative scheme can be seen by the public. Ram Singh for Osborne House were carried After the Colonial and Indian exhibition of 1886, Lord out in cast plaster and carton pierre in London.5 Brassey acquired the Durbar Hall used for receptions The catalogue is substantial and goes by the Prince of Wales and had it remodelled as an where the exhibition cannot, with seventeen extension to his London house in Park Lane; it is now in Hastings Museum & Art Gallery. chapters and a mass of new material follow- 5 The taste for ‘Indian’ boudoirs was satisfied by ing Kipling’s career in minute detail. As a importers such as Charles Holme and, from 1875, 68. A Fashionable Marriage, by Lubaina Himid. 1986. biography it has the merit of seeing the art- Arthur Liberty’s Oriental Warehouse and the Multimedia installation, dimensions variable. ist’s famous son, Rudyard, in relation to his domestic decorative work of the specialist firm H. & (Courtesy of Matthew Birchall and Tao Lashley- father, rather than vice versa. In Barbara Bry- J. Cooper of London. Burnley; exh. Nottingham Contemporary). the burlington magazine • clix • april 2017 333 LAY_Exhibs_APRIL17.indd 333 20/03/2017 17:37 EXHIBITIONS was an equally influential figure during the period, the inclusion of a work by him from the early 1970s, For Oluwale (1971–73), seems as perplexing as the omission of others, such as Tam Joseph’s UK School Report (1983) and Denzil Forrester’s Three Wicked Men (1982). In addition to over one hundred works of art, the exhibition draws on several differ- ent archives and libraries, including the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive, the Stuart Hall Library and the Asian & Afri- can Art in Britain Archive (Chelsea College of Arts Library, London). Material includes posters, letters, catalogues, invitation cards, journals, press clippings and videos and pro- vides some historical context to this period, 69. Destruction of the National Front, by Eddie Chambers. 1979–80. Screenprints, as displayed 82.7 by 239.2 cm. presented in display cases and on the walls in (Tate, London; exh. Nottingham Contemporary). each of the exhibition’s sections. The Lon- don-based Black-Art Gallery (1983–c.1995) explored identity and representation, racism Pastoral Interludes (1988) and Keith Piper’s exhibition posters were designed at a time and colonial legacies’. As the first generation painting The Body Politic (1983). Rodney’s when exhibition publicity up and down of British-born black artists emerged from self-portrait, constructed from x-radiogra- the country relied more heavily on printed Britain’s art schools, they became involved phy imaging, offers a somewhat melancholic matter. Designed by the artists themselves in an unprecedented explosion of visual arts but dynamic depiction of pain as a physical (such as Donald Rodney, Eddie Chambers activity in the 1980s, exhibiting in public and psychological condition, whereas John- and Keith Piper), these are brilliant works galleries, shops, theatres and artists’ studios in son’s more traditional, dexterous figurative in their own right. The presence of such ar- London and beyond. The exhibition presents works present an upbeat celebration of the chival material makes it surprising that no a significant number of works produced by black female body and identity. Pollard’s al- catalogue accompanies the exhibition, giv- artists during the formative stages of their art luring hand-tinted, photo-text work con- en its historical perspectives and the fact that schooling or careers. siders the relationship between the black publishing has been something of an Achilles The display is organised around ‘four over- body and the English landscape as a means of heel for the history of black artists in Britain. lapping groupings’, each of which is named challenging Englishness as essentially white, For a relatively brief moment in the 1980s, after a work included in the show: Signs of while Piper’s powerful figurative and text- black artists’ exhibitions were transform- Empire by Black Audio Film Collective, We based painting juxtaposes a white female ative events, unique and important, often Will Be by Lubaina Himid, The People’s Ac- nude with a black male nude to explore sex- devised by artists themselves.