2. Le Rodeur: The Lock, 2016 Revenge – A Masque in Five Tableaux 7. Fishing, 1987 9. Mr Salt’s Collection – The Ballad of 3. Le Rodeur: Exchange, 2016 4. Ankledeep, 1991 Fishing was originally part of a larger the Wing series, 1989 After completing this most recent 5. Five, 1991 installation: a cast of cutout painted This work was first shown as part characters roaming across gallery walls. of Himid’s solo exhibition The Ballad series, the artist realised that these 6. Carpet, 1992 interiors were the odd, empty rooms Collectively titled Restoring the Balance, of the Wing at Chisenhale Gallery, of her earlier Plan B paintings, now 8. Unwrapped but not Untied, 1991 these figures appeared within the London, in 1989. It displays the artist’s first retrospective exhibition influence on her practice of populated with a full cast of characters, Himid asserts: ‘After the mourning New Robes for MaShulan, a caricature, particularly eighteenth- and always with a glimpsed view of comes revenge.’ Revenge is at once collaboration with Maud Sulter held at century satirical cartoonists such the sea. They reflect Himid’s complex a monument to the victims of the Rochdale Art Gallery in 1987. In Sulter’s as James Gillray, George Cruikshank 1. Freedom and Change, 1984 personal relationship to water and the transatlantic slave trade, a critique of 10. Bone in the China: Success to the curatorial text, ‘Surveying the Scene’, and William Hogarth. The painting sea: ‘I have never been able to swim the patriarchy, and a space for dialogue. Africa Trade, c.1985 ‘Discourse is a primary tool against the she declared: ‘The show does not stand references the vast collection of properly and am very frightened of This series is a lamentation, an act of weapons used to marginalise and write in isolation. Its roots are in the collective antiquities amassed by the renowned This work was included in the group the sea and of drowning. I used to mourning transfigured into a new phase. out of history our contribution / she Black struggle of our history. […] We British Egyptologist Henry Salt exhibition Palaces of Culture: The Great constantly look at new ways of ‘The women are always talking, who writes herstory rewrites history.’ will remember those who are seen to (1780–1827), and with its numbered Museum Exhibition at Stoke-on-Trent City painting it as if it had never been sometimes to each other. […] They have – Maud Sulter, 1990 die at the hands of the state but also objects alludes to British colonial Museum and Art Gallery in 1987. It painted. The reading of narratives several strategies, they expand to fill Freedom and Change is a bold example bear witness and will testify to the lives trading routes, overseas excavations, depicts various items referencing the about/by people being taken forcibly the situation. The women take revenge; of Himid’s ‘rewriting of history’, as and the deaths of so many others collecting and connoisseurship. As museum’s collections. The words from west-coast Africa to the coasts their revenge is that they are still here proposed by the poet, and whose lives touch ours. The warrior Maud Sulter wrote in 1992 of this ‘Success to the Africa Trade’ are taken of America in trading ships to be later they are still artists, that their creativity artist Maud Sulter, via the reference takes many guises. The educator series: ‘the paintings playfully from an eighteenth-century - used as slaves made an impact during is still political and committed to to Picasso – the epitome of masculine uses many tools.’ illuminate the role museology plays in produced punchbowl, on display in the the early part of my painting career.’ change, to change for the good.’ painterly energy. These women are contemporary cultural consumption. Stoke-on-Trent ceramics gallery at the – Artist’s statement, 1992 personifications of freedom and Historical “truths” are questioned time of the exhibition. Part of the text change: they look to the future by and ancient fables reworked.’ inscription reads: ‘Our memories/our embracing the past, yet overturning heroines/our contributions/our creativity’. oppressive colonial histories. By It is a declaration of ownership and quoting a painting from Picasso’s 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. of reclamation, an intensely personal ‘return to order’ neoclassical period quest for some kind of reparative justice. (1918–25), Himid comments on the 7. rampant political conservatism at 15. 16. the height of the Thatcher era. 1.

10. 8. 20. 22. 19. 18. 17. 9. 25. 13. 12. 11. 23. 14. Plan B, 1999/2000 25. Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Upper Gallery 11. Everybody Is 24. Service, 2007 21. 12. The Glare of the Sun Himid defines Swallow Hard: The Piper Gallery Lancaster Dinner Service as ‘an 13. Yellow Pool Middle Galleries intervention, a mapping and an The Plan B series was produced as the excavation. It is a fragile monument to result of two month-long residencies in an invisible engine working for nothing in an amazingly greedy machine. It St Ives, where Himid used a lifeguard 14. Metal/Paper, Beach House, 1995 Kangas 21. – Sea: Wave Goodbye Say Negative Positives, 2007–ongoing remembers slave servants, sugary food, hut as her studio. Looking out to the Hello, 1999 beach and sea, she completed The Beach House paintings, first 15. Shelter in the Shade of Deep 22. Negative Positives (x20) mahogany furniture, greedy families, hundreds of preparatory works on exhibited at Wrexham Library Arts Friendship, 2011 Painted at the same time as Plan B, 23. Negative Positives (x14) tobacco and cotton fabrics but then paper. The resulting paintings depict Centre in 1995, are a biographical the Zanzibar canvases are diaphanous, mixes them with British wild flowers, 16. Safety is the Lost Territory, 2011 24. Negative Positives (x27) imaginary spaces that contain echoes fusion of many experiences, journeys light-filled works whose abstraction elegant architecture and African 17. Reminder of an Ancient Fetish, 2016 of real places, contorted by multiple and places, including Ghana, Zanzibar, belies a very emotional and personal For ten years, Himid has over-painted patterns. […] This work is not a perspectives and spatial distortions. Lytham St Annes, Los Angeles and 18. Freedom and Change, 2016 story. Himid’s father died of malaria in her regular newspaper to highlight memorial but more an encouraging Cuba. In the artist’s text Beach House Zanzibar, her birthplace, when she was incentive for everyone committed to The initial impression of peace, 19. Have Courage in the Crisis/Set images of black people that she feels she writes: ‘I was born on an island in just four months old. In respect of his restoring the balance, revealing the stillness and tranquillity in these Yourself Free, 2016 are implicitly prejudicial. It is a form paintings masks the creeping incursion the Indian Ocean and lived for the first family’s traditions, her mother spent a of visual research, examining visual truths and continuing the dialogues.’ of war and trauma. With this series, four months of my life two hundred 20. The Source of the Tears is Long Run period of 40 days and 40 nights alone, culture through artistic means, to Himid has claimed: ‘Everything shifted; yards from the beach in a house at Beit Dry, 2016 mourning. The interlocking diamond- provoke a conversation about how the safe ideas became more el Ras in Zanzibar. When my mother This series of works on paper is named shaped patterns evoke the mosquito racial biases (subconscious or dangerous and the risky strategy and I arrived in England on Christmas after the everyday cotton garments long nets and shutters of the room in which conscious) persist in maintaining became the blueprint.’ Despite a Eve, 1954, we flew into Blackpool manufactured and worn by women in her mother spent that time. The out-dated power relations. Please ask our Visitor Assistants if you preoccupation with the sea, the Airport. One grandmother had waved East Africa. Their influence reached the memories and sounds of the island Acknowledging the profound feelings have any questions. composition of Yellow Pool focuses good-bye with the sound of the warm nineteenth-century textile production in infuse the abstract shapes and liquid of anger and frustration that underline on sharp angles, illusionary space, sea around her; another welcomed me the north of England, an industry that colours of blue, green, white, grey and this daily process of reading, selecting This exhibition guide is available in a illogical perspectives, and a room to her seaside home in the chilly north relied heavily upon cotton from slave turquoise. Himid has described the and making visible, Himid explains: large print format. Please ask at the empty of people. of England.’ plantations in the southern United making of these paintings as ‘an ‘The invented and borrowed patterns Information Desk located in the cafe. States. Himid’s painted Kangas feature exercise in speed, daring, calm on each page are painted to highlight thought-provoking aphorisms devised and panic.’ this strange and inappropriate use of by the artist or taken from the abolition people as signifiers and finally to vent and civil rights movements, echoing the my spleen. Everyday in Britain even Swahili sayings often incorporated into the “liberal” press is simultaneously the printed fabric designs. visualising and making invisible black Invisible Strategies is supported by Designed by narratestudio.co.uk peoples’ lives.’ Strategic Touring fund. Cover images: Lubaina Himid, (Top) Freedom and Change, 1984. (Bottom) Swallow Hard: Lubaina Himid, Zanzibar – Sea: Wave The Lancaster Dinner Service, 2007. Courtesy the artist & Hollybush Gardens. Goodbye Say Hello, 1999. Courtesy the

artist & Hollybush Gardens.

peculiar interior of spaces refuge and poised escape, halfway is and rhythmically abstracted; Say Hello to asense of on the danger horizon; wherehues and the fiery forebodingviews of water(1995), speak expansive and vibrant palette, including exhibitionThe features numerous paintings that explore Himid’s Twitter/Instagram: @mao_gallery, YouTube: @mao_gallery, Twitter/Instagram: Oxford Art Modern Oxford, Art Modern our channels: social Facebook: Explore Contemporary.Nottingham Lubaina Himid's work is also presented at Spike Island, Bristol, and mother’s home in England. journey, four aged months, from in Zanzibar to her birthplace her of of echo abiographical journey the artist’s making: own formative and feared. series These of paintings are also connected by acts fromoften observed awatchful distance, respected its dangers work over It is anear the constant decades. last two presence, sea and poeticThe abstractions of it are woven throughout Himid’s architecture, blocks of abstract patternand waters. choppy invoke Himid’s recurring iconography of vessels, classical theatrically figures staged dramatic,in ambiguous settings that slavecentury ship. Mysterious rooms are populated with series, new painting between safety and peril. evocative These sites are revisited in a

(1999), where the experience of the artist’s homecoming (1999), Le Rodeur . For Himid, these characters take take characters these . For Himid, Plan B (2016), named after a nineteenth- a after named (2016), Five Zanzibar Wave –Sea: Goodbye (1999), which imagines (1999),

Metal/Paper, Beach House Beach Metal/Paper,

women not enter the arena wielding this weapon. […] Paint […] weapon. Paint this wielding arena the enter not women surfaces. on colour and pigment used always have we ours, is bodies fabric.’ our on on homes our of inside and outside On the artists non-artists and women, for painting of This recovery alike, identity, of sense emotions, colour: the of power the in located is provokes. colour attraction that seductive and painting is seen in the intense dialogue taking place in the 1920s 1920s the place taking in dialogue intense the in seen is painting of scene bistro Parisian through not oppression, of experiences their to response in action violence possible making survive by and to continuing by but conversations.new of colonial arena this into black figures forgotten By reinserting of imperialism cultural tackles the Himid prestige, and power twentieth-century of territory male white the and history painting proposes traditions painterly grand, of Her reclamation modernism. to history, of readings new and representation, of forms alternative – ‘the formation ‘canon’ Western against a weapon as painting use always and support selective a too of aesthetic and symbolic it. defines Pollock Griselda art the as historian history’, selecting the of centre the at are ‘Paintings 1991: in As explained Himid artist the can which with tool the about art,dialogues are they should Why then prophecy. and illusion of arena the enter

Hollybush Gardens. Hollybush Courtesy the artist & artist the Courtesy

1984. (detail), Change, and Freedom Himid, Lubaina

(1991–92). retells the history retells European of painting, Revenge Revenge – A Masque in Five Tableaux – A Masque in Five Revenge

Asserting political action through the medium of paint, Himid’s Himid’s paint, of medium the Asserting through action political (as black women of artists erasure the against out speaks work Artists collections. and that exhibitions subjects) as public and from museums, and galleries in shown not about, who are talked not are than more of course the Over made invisible. are argues, Himid thirty exhibition-making artistic and her sought has practice years, engageto with the often-overlooked and museums of histories hidden the Kingdom, retrieving while United the in galleries and figures black historical of stories and skills contributions, contemporarytheir counterparts. addresses series this a 12-part as installation, exhibited Originally survival peoples African and of trauma the of narratives historical vivid colours in fabrics and vessels monuments, depicting by and patterns. two of black perspective the from architecture and sculpture periods – historical different across travel who time women, history of form This new strategising. always talking, always I am not a painter in the strictest sense sense strictest the in a painter not I am a uses who strategist political a … I am visual language to encourage conversation, Himid – Lubaina change argument, sequence Himid’s from works are exhibition heart the this At of of paintings

Courtesy the artist & artist the Courtesy Hollybush Gardens. Hollybush

#LubainaHimid 2007. (detail), Service, Dinner Lancaster The Hard: Swallow Himid, Lubaina