Art / Black Arts Movement
Turner Prize nomination for Lubaina Himid’s Spike Island show
Artist Lubaina Himid has been nominated for the Turner Prize 2017 for her widely-acclaimed trio of exhibitions – including Navigation Charts, the solo exhibition that Spike Island recently curated for Himid, alongside Invisible Strategies at Modern Art Oxford and Himid’s participation in the group exhibition The Place is Here at Nottingham Contemporary.
Known primarily as a painter, Himid has made significant contributions as a curator, archivist and writer focused on the experience of the black diaspora in Britain over the past 30 years. She was a member of the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s, and her work is politically critical, tackling questions of race, gender and class.
Himid is a steadfast advocate for the contribution that black artists have made to visual art in Britain. To celebrate her ongoing legacy, Spike Island, Modern Art Oxford and Nottingham Contemporary presented simultaneous exhibitions in early 2017, while works selected from these exhibitions are later touring to firstsite, Colchester and Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston.
is needed now More than ever
Spike Island’s exhibition focused on three long-standing concerns for Himid: migration, labour and creativity. It brought into dialogue major works from the past 20 years and was anchored by Naming the Money (2004), a spectacular installation of 100 life-size, painted figures only shown once before in its entirety.
The work portrays a mass gathering of African slave/servants from the courts of 18th Century Europe, including ceramicists, herbalists, dog trainers, toy makers, drummers, dancing masters, viola da gamba players, shoemakers, mapmakers and painters, while a recorded voice-over reveals their original names and true identities. Himid explores notions of invisibility and belonging or, as the artist herself stated, “what it means to make the best of a life unpaid and abused that may have been thrust upon you.”
Pic: Lubaina Himid, Naming the Money (2004) Installation view, Navigation Charts, Spike Island (2017). Courtesy the artist, Hollybush Gardens and National Museums Liverpool: International Slavery Museum. Photograph by Stuart Whipps
Read more: Preview: Lubaina Himid, Spike Island
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