‘In the early years of Thatcherism, the Midlands was a really interesting place,” says artist, curator and academic Keith Piper, citing its harsh encounters with recession and industrial blight. “It was a very particular kind of landscape, out of which a very particular kind of creativity began to emerge.”
One notable byproduct was the establishment of the Blk Art Group in Wolverhampton. Made up of young Black art students including Piper, the collective instigated conversations about racism and visibility in art while promoting a distinctly Black British political identity. Though the group only lasted for five years, it is now considered a cornerstone in the development of the Black arts movement and an early meeting point for many who would go on to become internationally renowned figures in the art world.
More than forty years on, five of its founding and key members have returned to the city for a rare group exhibition of their work. The More Things Change… at Wolverhampton Art Gallery offers a renewed look at the history of the Blk Art Group, while spotlighting the works created by its members since.
Spread across three rooms, the exhibition features more than 30 artworks from the early 1980s onwards, spanning installation, textiles, film, photography, mixed media and collage. Seminal pieces such as Claudette Johnson’s Trilogy series command the space. Created between 1982 and 1986, the three large paintings place Black women centre stage, challenging western art history’s tendency to obscure them. Meanwhile, the garish caricatures of colonial narratives by Piper and the late Donald Rodney feel particularly striking in the dimly lit gallery.
Several of the works now belong to the gallery, but most are on loan from other galleries and private collections, including some of the artists’ own homes. Bringing them together here marks a “significant moment” for Wolverhampton, says co-curator Ian Sergeant: “It represents the expertise of the city and its contribution to British art history.”
It also feels special to Marlene Smith, one of the featured artists who joined the Blk Art Group as a teenager. She finds the incorporation of Rodney’s work particularly moving. “There’s interesting conversations happening between the pieces,” she says. “It’s like getting together with old friends.”
In the centre of the first gallery sit three displays of archive material from the lead up to Pan-Afrikan Connection, a 1983 exhibition of work by young Black artists at Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Alongside press releases and flyers, handwritten letters from members of the group to the curators offer an intimate insight into their decision-making process, from the selection of the artworks and layouts to the transport arrangements. It’s an exciting glimpse into the young artists’ agency and determination to be seen on their own terms.
As well as highlighting these beginnings, the exhibition also feels like a living history. Visitors can trace the artists’ creative journeys by way of their diversions into new techniques and themes. Janet Vernon’s dyed fabrics from the 90s hang alongside a cabinet of abstract, nature-inspired jewellery that she has crafted from copper over the last year, while Piper’s more recent works in film play on loop adjacent to his early mixed media pieces.
Smith has begun using fondant icing in her creative practice and her delicate sugar impressions of doilies are included in the show. It’s a resource she plans to work with a lot more in the future. “I’m really fascinated by the obvious links between sugar, plantations and the history of my parents and my own ethnicity,” she says, “but also as a general geographical, geo-political statement around what history is.”
Alongside the new commissions are reimaginings of past works, such as Smith’s 1985 sculptural installation, Good Housekeeping I. Originally created in response to the police shooting of Dorothy “Cherry” Groce at her doorstep earlier that year, the work depicts a Black woman beneath the words “My mother opens the door at 7am she is not bulletproof.”
It’s been four decades since this work was displayed at the ICA, but Smith believes its message will continue to resonate with a new audience. “I feel as though that conversation about police brutality and how the police behave is still a conversation that we’re having. If anything, it’s renewed and got more traction than it did in the 1980s,” she says. “Similarly to the way that the wider public responded to the George Floyd murder, I think that they’re also responding to questions that are being asked about what our police force is doing and who is in it.”
Revisiting the artwork has been a positive rather than painful experience for Smith, who has used the same household materials this time round: chipboard, chicken wire, jay cloths and plaster. “It’s been really good to feel the plaster between my fingers and to be getting really messy with it because I haven’t been making work like that since then,” she says. “Just to remember through synapses what it felt like to make it in the first place.”
Like Good Housekeeping I, many of the featured works engage directly with the socio-political context of the time they were created. With its newspaper-clipped portraits framed by singed wallpaper, Piper’s Thirteen Dead (1982) is a pointed call for justice for the teenage victims of the New Cross Fire, while other pieces by Johnson and Rodney confront issues of representation, racism and empire. The messages are poignant, but it is important that critics and audiences acknowledge the artistic merit too, says Sergeant.
“Yes, some of the work addresses really important themes, but that’s not all they were doing,” he asserts. “In fact, there’s some amazing levels of technique and expertise.”
Accordingly, he hopes visitors will take time to engage with and reflect on the works. The third room acts as a resource and gathering space, complete with music and reading material selected by the featured artists and co-curators, and the exhibition will be complemented by a public programme of workshops and discussions.
“This is work that is multidimensional,” he continues. “I think that’s what has been missed in the past.”
• The More Things Change… is at Wolverhampton Art Gallery until 9 July.
