Skip to main content
Read page text
page 14
Hilary Lloyd ‘Theatre’ Sunday 24 September to Saturday 23 December 2017 Focal Point Gallery Elmer Square Southend-on-Sea SS1 1NB www.fpg.org.uk ‘Art History is written by Pansies about Sunflowers and Water Lilies ’ ‘ The Critic as Artist’ curated by Michael Bracewell and Andrew Hunt Miles Aldridge, Stephen Buckley, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Lucienne Cole, Dexter Dalwood, Kaye Donachie, Donna Huddleston, Travis Jeppesen, Gareth Jones, Scott King, Linder, Bertie Marshall, Malcolm Mclaren, Katrina Palmer, Alessandro Raho, Simeon Solomon, Cally Spooner Reading Museum 7 October 2017 – 27 January 2018 Ernest Hemingway, Cahiers d’Art, 1934 Abel Auer ‘ How a Black Void Replaces the White Cube and a Painting Moves from the Fine to the Performing Arts’ The Rising Sun Arts Centre 7 October – 11 November 2017 Miles Aldridge, Like a Painting #1, 2005 Reading International www.readinginternational.org Rochelle Goldberg, Veit Laurent Kurz, Stefan Tcherepnin and friends ‘Ante Phylloxera’ South Street Arts Centre / Jelly 7 October – 11 November 2017
page 15
| FEATURES 02 | 1974 On? ing Go What’s Hendricks Lley Bark From Black Art and the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement and the Black Atlantic, to Black Power and back again. The UK’s most prestigious public art galleries are seemingly taking it in turns to present their blockbuster black art exhibiton. Never has black art history had it so good. ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’ at Tate Modern and ‘The Place is Here’ at Nottingham Contemporary (before travelling to South London Gallery and MIMA, Middlesbrough) are the latest exhibitions which in dif erent ways fixate on narratives of the past. But do these exhibitions of er new insights and bring us any closer to really knowing the artists they profess to celebrate? Or, alternatively, are they symptomatic of the obligatory once-in-a-decade AfricanAmerican exhibition or the black British survey? Are the politics behind these shows more significant than the politics within them? Does a fixation on black artists and the past reflect an institutional ruse for not dealing with black artists in the present? ‘Soul of a Nation’ is but the latest in a number of recent historical exhibitions which identify the 1960s as a significant period and starting point for reconsidering work by primarily African-American artists. It enters a field populated by other shows initiated and toured across the US, including the Walker Art Center’s exhibition ‘Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art’ in Minneapolis in 2013, ‘The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965 to Now’ at Chicago’s MCA in 2015 and, this year, ‘We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 196585’ at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Notably, ‘Soul of a Nation’ also comes hot on the heels of ‘Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the 1960s’, an earlier exhibition organised by the Brooklyn Museum in 2014. Staged to mark the 50th anniversary of the US’s Civil Rights Act of 1964, ‘Witness’, more than any other of the recent crop of exhibitions, anticipates these later shows, not least the crossover in themes and a similar line-up of artists, including Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, David Hammons, Jae BLACK ART UK/US RICHARD HYLTON DISCUSSES THE RISE IN THEMATIC SHOWS OF BLACK ARTISTS Is it time to move beyond survey shows featuring the same artists and nostalgic recreations of the 1960s to engage with contemporary black art in less instrumental ways? OCT 17 | ART MONTHLY | 410 | 13 |

Page Text

View plaintext

| FEATURES 02 |

1974

On?

ing

Go

What’s

Hendricks

Lley

Bark

From Black Art and the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement and the Black Atlantic, to Black Power and back again. The UK’s most prestigious public art galleries are seemingly taking it in turns to present their blockbuster black art exhibiton. Never has black art history had it so good.

‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’ at Tate Modern and ‘The Place is Here’ at Nottingham Contemporary (before travelling to South London Gallery and MIMA, Middlesbrough) are the latest exhibitions which in dif erent ways fixate on narratives of the past. But do these exhibitions of er new insights and bring us any closer to really knowing the artists they profess to celebrate? Or, alternatively, are they symptomatic of the obligatory once-in-a-decade AfricanAmerican exhibition or the black British survey? Are the politics behind these shows more significant than the politics within them? Does a fixation on black artists and the past reflect an institutional ruse for not dealing with black artists in the present?

‘Soul of a Nation’ is but the latest in a number of recent historical exhibitions which identify the 1960s as a significant period and starting point for reconsidering work by primarily African-American artists. It enters a field populated by other shows initiated and toured across the US, including the Walker Art Center’s exhibition ‘Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art’ in Minneapolis in 2013, ‘The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965 to Now’ at Chicago’s MCA in 2015 and, this year, ‘We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 196585’ at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Notably, ‘Soul of a Nation’ also comes hot on the heels of ‘Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the 1960s’, an earlier exhibition organised by the Brooklyn Museum in 2014. Staged to mark the 50th anniversary of the US’s Civil Rights Act of 1964, ‘Witness’, more than any other of the recent crop of exhibitions, anticipates these later shows, not least the crossover in themes and a similar line-up of artists, including Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, David Hammons, Jae

BLACK

ART UK/US

RICHARD HYLTON DISCUSSES THE RISE IN

THEMATIC SHOWS OF BLACK ARTISTS Is it time to move beyond survey shows featuring the same artists and nostalgic recreations of the 1960s to engage with contemporary black art in less instrumental ways?

OCT 17 | ART MONTHLY | 410

| 13 |

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content