Black Women Time Now was a 1983 art exhibition at the Battersea Arts Centre in London, featuring the work of fifteen artists announcing themselves as Black Women. [1]
The exhibition, curated by Lubaina Himid, [1] was funded by the GLC. The participating artists were Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Claudette Johnson, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Chila Burman, Mumtaz Karimjee, Houria Niati, Jean Campbell, Andrea Telman, Margaret Cooper, Elizabeth Eugene, Leslee Wills, Cherry Lawrence and Brenda Agard. [2] A programme of theatre, film, music, poetry and dance accompanied the visual art exhibition. [1]
Black Women can be seen as an "active community of artists". [1] Himid had earlier curated the work of several of the same artists at 5 Black Women , a smaller exhibition at the Africa Centre. [3]
Into the Open, subtitled "New Paintings, Prints and Sculptures by Contemporary Black Artists", was an exhibition of art by black artists displayed at various venues in the United Kingdom in 1984.
Kimathi Donkor is a London-based contemporary British artist whose paintings are known for their exploration of global, black histories. His work is exhibited and collected by international museums, galleries and biennials including London's National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial, the 29th São Paulo Art Biennial and the 15th Sharjah Biennial. He is of Ghanaian, Anglo-Jewish and Jamaican family heritage, and his figurative paintings depict "African diasporic bodies and souls as sites of heroism and martydom, empowerment and fragility...myth and matter".
Rasheed Araeen is a Karachi-born, London-based conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer, and curator. He graduated in civil engineering from the NED University of Engineering and Technology in 1962, and has been working as a visual artist bridging life, art and activism since his arrival in London from Pakistan in 1964.
The BLK Art Group was the name chosen in 1982 by a group of five influential conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in England. Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Eddie Chambers and Donald Rodney were initially based in the Midlands.
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.
Eddie Chambers is a British contemporary art historian, curator and artist, who is Department of Art and Art History professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Maud Sulter was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer, educator, feminist, cultural historian, and curator of Ghanaian heritage. She began her career as a writer and poet, becoming a visual artist not long afterwards. By the end of 1985 she had shown her artwork in three exhibitions and her first collection of poetry had been published. Sulter was known for her collaborations with other Black feminist scholars and activists, capturing the lives of Black people in Europe. She was a champion of the African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and was fascinated by the Haitian-born French performer Jeanne Duval.
Sutapa Biswas is a British Indian conceptual artist, who works across a range of media including painting, drawing, film and time-based media.
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.
Claudette Elaine Johnson is a British visual artist. She is known for her large-scale drawings of Black women and her involvement with the BLK Art Group, of which she was a founder member. She was described by Modern Art Oxford as "one of the most accomplished figurative artists working in Britain today". A finalist for the Turner Prize in 2024, Johnson was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts the same year.
Five Black Women was an exhibition at the Africa Centre, London, featuring the work of British artists Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Houria Niati and Veronica Ryan held in 1983. The exhibition was organised by Himid, the first of several "widely respected" exhibitions she organised featuring Black women artists.
The Africa Centre, London was founded in 1964 at 38 King Street, Covent Garden, where over the years it held many art exhibitions, conferences, lectures, and a variety of cultural events, as well as housing a gallery, meeting halls, restaurant, bar and bookshop. The Africa Centre closed its original venue in 2013, and now has a permanent home at 66 Great Suffolk Street, Southwark, south London. It is a registered charity.
The Other Story was an exhibition held from 29 November 1989 to 4 February 1990 at the Hayward Gallery in London. The exhibition brought together the art of "Asian, African and Caribbean artists in post war Britain", as indicated in the original title. It is celebrated as a landmark initiative for reflecting on the colonial legacy of Britain and for establishing the work of overlooked artists of African, Caribbean, and Asian ancestry. Curated by artist, writer, and editor Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story was a response to the "racism, inequality, and ignorance of other cultures" that was pervasive in the late-Thatcher Britain in the late 1980s. The legacy of the exhibition is significant in the museum field, as many of the artists are currently part of Tate's collections. The exhibition received more than 24,000 visitors and a version of the exhibition travelled to Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 10 March to 22 April 1990; and Manchester City Art Gallery and Cornerhouse, 5 May to 10 June 1990.
Brenda Patricia Agard was a Black-British photographer, artist, poet and storyteller who was most active in the 1980s, when she participated in some of the first art exhibitions organized by Black-British artists in the United Kingdom. Agard's work focused on creating "affirming images centred on the resilience of the Black woman," according to art historian Eddie Chambers.
Joseph Adekunle Olubo, was an artist and book illustrator active in the 1980s. He participated in some of the first art exhibitions organized by Black British artists in the United Kingdom. Olubo was one of 22 artists included in the 1983 inaugural exhibition, Heart in Exile, at The Black-Art Gallery, an art space in London which worked with artists of African and Caribbean backgrounds.
Young In Hong is a visual artist from Seoul, Korea, based in Bristol, England. Hong graduated with an MA and a PhD in Art from Goldsmith College in London UK in 2012. From 1992 to 1998, she studied Sculpture at Seoul National University. Hong currently works from her studio at Spike Island in Bristol and is represented by PKM Gallery in Seoul. She teaches at Bath School of Art as Reader in Performance and Textiles.
Nina Edge is an English ceramicist, feminist and writer.
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.
Amanda Bintu Holiday is a Sierra Leonean-British artist, filmmaker and poet.
Paul Goodwin is a British independent curator, urban theorist, academic and researcher, whose projects particularly focus on black and diaspora artists and visual cultures. He is Director at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London.