Africa95

Last updated

Africa '95 or Africa 95, styled as africa95, was a Britain-wide celebration of African music, art, dance and poetry that was held over several months during the last quarter of 1995, with more than 60 arts institutions throughout the UK participating in related events. It was chaired by English businessman Sir Michael Caine, with Clémentine Deliss as artistic director, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal. [1]

Contents

Background

Taking place over several months in 1995, particularly during the last quarter of the year, the africa95 initiative involved a wide range of events and the participation of more than 60 arts institutions in the UK, and including the visual and performing arts, cinema, literature, music and public debate, as well as programmes on BBC television and radio. [1]

The Los Angeles Times reported on 26 December 1995: "Since August, and continuing through January, Britain has been playing host to the most comprehensive expression of African culture ever assembled. At dozens of prestigious venues in 25 cities—from Royal Albert Hall and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and the Tate Gallery in Liverpool—visual art, drama, dance, music and scholarly symposiums are being offered up under the Africa 95 umbrella." [2]

The key art exhibitions during africa95 were the Royal Academy's Africa: the Art of a Continent, curated by Tom Phillips (running from 4 October 1995 to 21 January 1996), [3] Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa (curated by Deliss) at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and Big City at the Serpentine Gallery, London, curated by Julia Peyton-Jones. [4] The book Africa: The Art of a Continent, edited by Tom Phillips, was published to coincide with africa95. [5]

"The African Prom" was held at the Royal Albert Hall in September, [6] a gala concert for africa95 with five of the African continent's biggest musical stars – Youssou Ndour, Khaled, Baaba Maal, Salif Keita and Lucky Dube – filmed for BBC Television. [7]

The season also encompassed "africa95 Nigeria", a series of workshops in that country. [1]

Papers relating to the africa95 festival are held at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) Archives, University of London. [1] [8]

Legacy

A decade after africa95, curator and cultural historian Gus Casely-Hayford initiated Africa 05, the largest African arts season ever hosted in Britain, of which he was director. [9] He said in reference to africa95, "It was fantastic. ...You could see African art displayed without the ethnography for the first time – people were engaging with it as art, at last. Suddenly it was obvious there was an African art history which had been neglected." However, his aim with Africa 05, which took place over a period of 12 months with the involvement of more than 150 cultural organisations, including the BBC, [10] was to create "sustainable change in the way the art world – and the public – thinks about Africa. ...We don't want this just to be about one year." [11]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Phillips (artist)</span> English artist (1937–2022)

Trevor Thomas Phillips was an English visual artist. He worked as a painter, printmaker and collagist.

Alexander Robert Nairne is a British art historian and curator. From 2002 until February 2015 he was the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Lowery Stokes Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz Scholder, Romare Bearden, Joyce J. Scott and others. She served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She has frequently served as a guest curator, lectured internationally and published extensively, and has received many public appointments. Sims was featured in the 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Ulrich Obrist</span> Swiss art curator, critic and historian (born 24/5/1968)

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of The Interview Project, an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is also co-editor of the Cahiers d'Art review. He lives and works in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Anthony Morrison</span>

Keith Anthony Morrison, Commander of Distinction (C.D.), born May 20, 1942), is a Jamaican-born painter, printmaker, educator, critic, curator and administrator.

Berry Bickle is a Zimbabwean artist who resides in Maputo. Born in Bulawayo, Bickle attended the Chisipite Senior School in Harare. Later, she attended the Durban Institute of Technology, where she obtained a national diploma in fine arts, and South Africa's Rhodes University, where she obtained a master's degree in fine arts. Bickle was a founding member of Bulawayo's Visual Artists' Association.

Matthew Higgs is an English artist, curator, writer and publisher. His contribution to UK contemporary art has included the creation of Imprint 93, a series of artists’ editions featuring the work of artists such as Martin Creed and Jeremy Deller. During the 1990s he promoted artists outside the Young British Artists mainstream of the period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Njami</span>

Simon Njami is a writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Remfry</span> English painter

David Remfry is a British painter and curator. He served as the Eranda Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2016 to 2018 and as a competition judge for the Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award in 2021. In 2023 he coordinated the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. A retrospective of Remfry’s work, curated by Dr Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker, is planned for 2025 at Beverley Art Gallery, East Riding.

Clémentine Deliss is a London-born curator, researcher and publisher.

Contemporary African art is commonly understood to be art made by artists in Africa and the African diaspora in the post-independence era. However, there are about as many understandings of contemporary African art as there are curators, scholars and artists working in that field. All three terms of this "wide-reaching non-category [sic]" are problematic in themselves: What exactly is "contemporary", what makes art "African", and when are we talking about art and not any other kind of creative expression?

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yacouba Konaté</span> Ivoirian curator and academic

Yacouba Konaté is an Ivorian curator, writer and art critic. He is a professor of philosophy at the Université de Cocody in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

The Dakar Biennale, or Dak'Art - Biennale de l'Art Africain Contemporain, is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Dakar, Senegal. Dak'Art's focus has been on Contemporary African Art since 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lubaina Himid</span> British artist and curator (born 1954)

Lubaina Himid is a British artist and curator. She is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire. Her art focuses on themes of cultural history and reclaiming identities.

Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Kinsey</span> Welsh artist (born 1942)

Christine Kinsey is a Welsh artist, author and curator, now based in Pembrokeshire. She was the co-founder and artistic director of Chapter Workshops and Centre for the Arts, Cardiff, now called Chapter Arts Centre.

Julie Crooks is a Canadian curator, researcher and instructor. She has been the head of the department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario since its founding in 2020.

Thiagarajan Kanaga Sabapathy, better known as T.K. Sabapathy, is a Singaporean art historian, curator, and critic. Sabapathy has written, researched, documented, and supported contemporary visual art in Singapore and Malaysia for four decades. He has held positions at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological Institution, and National Institute of Education as a lecturer of art history. Sabapathy further established and headed pioneering art research facilities in Singapore, such as the Contemporary Asian Art Centre (2001–2004) and subsequently, Asia Contemporary (2015–).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoé Whitley</span> American art historian and curator

Zoé Whitley is an American art historian and curator who has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate galleries, and the Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which ARTnews called one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Freddy Tsimba is a sculptor and visual artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has made sculptures from bullet casings collected on Congolese war battlefields. One of his artwork entitled Au-delà de l'espoir was commissioned by the municipality of Ixelles in Brussels and installed on the corner of Chaussée de Wavre and Longue-Vie street in Matonge district.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "africa95 Archive". Archives Hub.
  2. ↑ Attias, Elaine Mitchell (26 December 1995). "An Intercontinental Showcase for Africa : Britain Is First Stop for the Most Comprehensive Expression of African Culture Ever Assembled". Los Angeles Times.
  3. ↑ van Leyden, Nancy (1996). "Africa95. A Critical Assessment of the Exhibition at the Royal Academy (Africa95. Évaluation critique de l'exposition de la Royal Academy)". Cahiers d'Études Africaines. 36 (141–142, Images): 237–241. doi:10.3406/cea.1996.2011. JSTOR   4392677.
  4. ↑ "WHY AFRICA? The curators of three major Africa '95 shows explain their aims" . The Independent . 16 October 1995. Archived from the original on 2009-10-26.
  5. ↑ "Publications – Africa: The Art of a Continent". Tom Phillips. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
  6. ↑ "AFRICAN SUMMER The African Prom". Radio Times. 21 September 1995. p. 82. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
  7. ↑ Cathcart, Jenny (2019). "19: African Music on BBC TV | The African Prom". Notes from Africa: A Musical Journey with Youssou N'Dour. Unbound Publishing. ISBN   9781789650488.
  8. ↑ "Black History Month 2014: Archives of africa95". Special Collections, SOAS Library. SOAS University of London. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  9. ↑ Busby, Margaret (10 January 2005). "Vision for change". New Statesman . Retrieved 4 March 2021.
  10. ↑ "Arts Council England Makes Two Key leadership Appointments". Arts Council England. 5 December 2006. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
  11. ↑ Duff, Oliver (19 November 2004). "The rich art of Africa goes on show to dispel 'caricature' of a dark continent". The Independent.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.