Making Histories Visible

The Making Histories Visible Archive at UCLan is now closed.

All archive material is currently being donated to a national organisation for future free access and research. Further announcements on where to access the collection will be made in the coming months.

Sculptor Veronica Ryan has won this year's Turner Prize!

Ryan creates sculptural objects and installations using containers, compartments, and combinations of natural and fabricated forms to reference displacement, fragmentation and alienation.

Ryan was nominated in recognition of her major exhibition Along a Spectrum at Spike Island, supported by Freelands Foundation, and for her Hackney Windrush Art Commission.

Ryan was nominated alongside Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard and Sin Wai Kin. The Turner Prize 2022 exhibition is currently presented at Tate Liverpool until 19 March 2023.

Freelands Award 2022 announced:

Artist Everlyn Nicodemus and the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh have won the seventh annual Freelands Award!

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will present Nicodemus’ first UK museum show from September 2024 to May 2025 in Edinburgh, where the artist has been based for fifteen years. Since the 1980s, Nicodemus has made cycles of paintings, collages and works on paper that explore violence against women, personal trauma and the isolation and dehumanisation of living within structural racism. Over the next two years, she will create a new series of large-scale oil paintings at her studio to be exhibited alongside historic works.

Everlyn Nicodemus (b. 1954, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania) is an artist, writer and curator who lives and works in Edinburgh. Her experience of racism and cultural trauma has prompted the creation of a unique body of work encompassing paintings, textiles, poetry, collaged 'books' and mixed-media assemblages. Having lived and worked across Europe, she has taken an active involvement in community life, making visible the shared traumas and oppression of women. Her scholarship on African modern art and trauma studies has also informed her practice.

Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists announced!

£600,000 awarded to new recipients of Awards for Artists 2022:

Visual Artists: Vanley Burke, Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye, Trevor Mathison, Libita Sibungu, Alberta Whittle.

Composers: Laura Bowler, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Sarathy Korwar, Mariam Rezaei, Orphy Robinson.

Awards for Artists supports visual artists and composers at a pivotal moment in their careers. Each award offers recipients £60,000 over three years – with no obligations or conditions as to how the money is used. Not only the largest award in the UK, this ‘no strings attached’ approach sets the awards apart from other schemes by giving artists the time and freedom to develop their creative ideas and to further their personal and professional growth.

The Awards reflect the Foundation’s strong belief in the value of artists to society, and the vital contribution that they make to our culture. This year’s recipients span a broad spectrum of visual arts practice and composition, including Mariam Rezaei’s pioneering turntablism; Sarathy Korwar’s heady mix of South Asian jazz and Indian classical music; Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye’s exploration of the intersections of writing, scenography and performance; and Vanley Burke’s intimate photographs documenting the lives of Black British people.

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine

The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER

21 October 2022 – 23 April 2023

McNish was the first Caribbean designer to achieve international recognition and one of the most influential and innovative textile designers in the UK. Drawing on extensive new research, this exhibition explores McNish’s extraordinary career and her transformative impact on mid-century design, along with her enduring influence today. Highlights include items from McNish’s recently uncovered personal archive – much of which has never been seen before. Also on display will be examples of McNish’s original designs alongside her most celebrated textile and wallpapers.

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine is a touring exhibition from the William Morris Gallery, London, and has been curated by Rowan Bain, Principal Curator at the William Morris Gallery and Rose Sinclair, Lecturer in Design Education at Goldsmiths, University of London. Althea McNish: Colour Is Mine is part of a three-year research, exhibition and archiving project generously supported by the Society of Antiquaries through its Janet Arnold Award.

Larry Achiampong: Wayfinder

MK Gallery

15 October 2022 - 15 January 2023

900 Midsummer Blvd

Milton Keynes, MK9 3QA

British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong works in film, sculpture, installation, sound, collage, music and performance. His work draws on popular culture and his communal and personal heritage.

Included in his first major UK solo show to date is Achiampong’s debut feature length film Wayfinder, as well as a large presentation of his Pan African flags, life-sized Relic Traveller figures and Glyth collages. It will also reveal some of his influences from video games to the landscape paintings of JMW Turner.

Admission from free - £11.50

On the Tip of My Tongue - Lauren Craig

Listening Walks across Plymouth, UK

From 26 October - until February 2023

FREE

On the Tip of My Tongue is artist Lauren Craig’s response to five interviews between curator Lorna Rose and creatives of colour in Plymouth, as part of the Spaces to Speak project.

Craig worked with the audio recordings to create a public art interactive sound piece to be shared across Plymouth city centre.

Audiences can engage in these free listening journeys by following the GPS routes on their smartphones, specifically mapped for this project. The listening journeys are a way for the creatives’ voices to be heard within central Plymouth, reflecting the energy of their practices and the plurality of their experiences. Craig was commissioned by Lorna Rose and Ella S. Mills, working together as ‘talking on corners’. The central aim of the commission was for Craig to work with the interviews in a way that balanced the emotions of the stories, with Black and Brown joy and creativity.

Lauren Craig in conversation with curators Lorna Rose and Ella S. Mills

October 27th 2022,  Plymouth Barbican Theatre 

More details here: 

Art 360 Foundation

Curators announced for Artists Legacies in the Museum project:

Tosin Adeosun, Lauren Craig, Alinta Sara

Artists’ Legacies in the Museum is an ambitious project run in collaboration with the International Curators Forum, engaging independent curators and museum curatorial teams with the archives of Vanley Burke, Donald Rodney and Maud Sulter, to help recalibrate how museums collect, share and preserve art and cultural heritage for the present and future.

The insights and perspectives of independent curators are central to the working ecology proposed by the Artists’ Legacies in the Museum project. They will be supported by mentors, the ICF and Art360 to create and deliver Study Days which surface and reposition artists’ archives within contemporary contexts. This will be an opportunity for emerging curators to grow in their practice, deepen their knowledge and develop practical skills that will serve their work in the future.

Art360 Foundation website

Images credits: Vanley Burke in the Archive, 2021. Photo © Clare Hewitt

Maud Sulter in front of ‘Les Bijoux at her exhibition Jeanne Duval: A Melodrama’, National Galleries of Scotland, 2003. Photographer: Gordon Terris. Reproduced with kind permission of the Glasgow Herald, Herald and Times Group.

Ingrid Pollard Three Drops of Blood

Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Devon, EX14 1LX

6 August 2022 to 29 October 2022

The exhibition includes photography, print, mixed media, text, found objects and an extensive project archive. It is the culmination of a two-year research project which has seen Pollard travel across Devon. Drawing on her interests in classification, systems of knowledge, leisure, trade and money, Pollard has honed in on botanical gardens, ferns and the unique historical collections of books at the Devon and Exeter Institution. Part of Pollard's research involved exploring the representation of botanicals in local lace making, including the renowned Honiton lace.

Curated by talking on corners.

Look out for the programme of coordinating events, talks and workshops:

20 August: Evening with award-winning folk singer and Paul Hamlyn recipient, Kate Young 24 September: Artist and curator talk: Ingrid Pollard and Dr Ella S. Mills in conversation 29 October: Talk with Liz Wells, Emeritus Professor, School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Plymouth October: Creative Writing Workshop with Louisa Adjoa Parker

In the Black Fantastic

Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London

Until 18 September 2022

An exhibition of 11 contemporary artists from the African diaspora, who draw on science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism to question our knowledge of the world.

In the Black Fantastic is curated by Ekow Eshun and features the artists Nick Cave, Sedrick Chisom, Ellen Gallagher, Hew Locke, Wangechi Mutu, Rashaad Newsome, Chris Ofili, Tabita Rezaire, Cauleen Smith, Lina Iris Viktor and Kara Walker.

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine

William Morris Gallery

London, E17 4PP

Until 11 September 2022

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine is a landmark retrospective of one of the UK’s most innovative textile artists and the first designer of Caribbean descent to achieve international recognition.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, McNish (1924-2020) moved to the UK in 1950, completing a postgraduate textiles degree at the Royal College of Art and rising to prominence as a  Black female designer. Drawing on extensive new research and her personal archive, Colour is Mine explores McNish’s extraordinary career, her transformative impact on mid-century design and her enduring influence today.

Open Tuesday - Sunday, 10am - 5pm 

Free admission 

Revisiting the Work of Black Artists in Scotland through New Collecting

Gallery of Modern Art

Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow, G1 3AH

Exhibition runs until 3 July 2022

Revisiting the Work of Black Artists in Scotland through New Collecting showcases artworks from Glasgow Museums’ collection and has been co-curated with the independent curatorial duo Mother Tongue. In 2018, Mother Tongue proposed a research affiliation with Glasgow Museums to highlight existing work by Black artists in the Glasgow Museums' Collection - Timespan by Tam Joseph was a key focus for the project. As this affiliation developed Mother Tongue proposed series of new acquisitions across varied media which would address historical and contemporary gaps in the collection. 

This exhibition brings together new acquisitions and existing works from Glasgow Museums’ collection, reflecting complex dialogues around race, Empire, independence and post-colonial legacies. Co-curated with independent duo Mother Tongue, the acquisitions draw upon their research collating a chronology of Black artists living, studying, working and exhibiting in Scotland, from the 1860s onwards. These acquisitions - spanning 1963 to 2019 - were supported by an Art Fund New Collecting Award, and are presented alongside a new commission from Barby Asante.

Featuring Barby Asante, Tam Joseph, Donald Locke, Maud Sulter, Lisandro Suriel, Alberta Whittle, Aubrey Williams, Matthew Arthur Williams and Ajamu X

More information here

Alberta Whittle and Ingrid Pollard in conversation with Ekow Eshun

Part of the Art + Environment Series of on-line events

Wednesday 8 June 2022

5-6pm

This event will be exploring the connection between the legacies of colonialism and the climate emergency.

For more information and to book your ticket visit:

www.dacs.org.uk

Hurvin Anderson and Duro Olowu: In Conversation

Thursday 26 May 7pm 2022

Whitechapel Gallery 77-82 Whitechapel High St London E1 7QX

An evening event with the artist and painter Hurvin Anderson, in conversation with fashion designer and curator Duro Olowu. They will discuss their inspirations and their collaborations over the years, alongside Hurvin’s selections from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation.

Tickets and more information:

Whitechapel Gallery

Carbon Slowly Turning: Movement, Energy, Landscape Conference

MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Blvd, Milton Keynes, MK9 3QA

6 May 2022 

10am - 6pm

On the occasion of the Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning exhibition, MK Gallery and the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art are collaborating on their third conference.

The conference is imagined as a conversation with the exhibition, using the exhibition as a point of departure. At times, Pollard’s work will be directly referenced and, at others, ideas and strands of dialogue will emerge and escape from it. We are interested in thinking about movement, and the connections between the histories of art, energy, body cultures, landscape, geology, physiological aesthetics both historically and in the present. The movement of the body in space and through time has preoccupied Pollard across her career, whether she is working with photography, kinetic sculpture or ceramics. Bodies, both real and metaphorical, are perpetually set in motion – twisting, turning, bowing, walking, dancing, sweating, punching – engaging with ideas and questions about ecology, temporality, race and gender as they move across the landscape.

Speakers include: Evan Ifekoya, Richard Hylton, Gilane Tawadros, Liz Wells,  Ella S. Mills, Cora Gilroy- Ware, Sheena Calvert, Ajamu X, Jackie Kay and Ingrid Pollard.

Book your ticket here

The conference is also available to attend online

Simone Leigh: Sovereignty 

USA Pavilion at Venice Biennial 2022

The 59th International Art Exhibition will take place from 23 April to 27 November 2022 in Venice, Italy.

Simone Leigh: Sovereignty features a new body of work made for the United States Pavilion, in Venice Italy. Her large-scale sculptural works join forms derived from vernacular architecture and the female body, rendering them via materials and processes associated with the artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora. Sovereignty commingles disparate histories and narratives, including those related to ritual performances of the Baga peoples in Guinea, early Black American material culture from the Edgefield District in South Carolina, and the landmark 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. 

With a series of new bronzes and ceramics both outside and inside the Pavilion, Leigh intervenes imaginatively to fill gaps in the historical record by proposing new hybridities.

Alberta Whittle: deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory

Scotland + Venice 2022 for the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

23 April – 27 November 2022, Docks Cantieri Cucchini.

Alberta Whittle has been commissioned to develop new work which will represent Scotland as a collateral event at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia at the Arsenale Docks, S. Pietro di Castello. 

Working in film, sculpture, print, performance and installation, Whittle’s work is often made in response to current events and draws on her research into the African diaspora and the decolonisation of Western histories.  Major themes include colonialism, xenophobia, climate change and the global pandemic.

The project is commissioned by the Scotland + Venice Partnership and is a multi-partner project initiated by Glasgow International and supported by Glasgow Life.