Latest news with #LubainaHimid
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lubaina Himid has a chance encounter and Ai Weiwei takes to the streets – the week in art
Lubaina Himid With Magda Stawarska: Another Chance EncounterAn installation exploring the letters of early 20th-century modernist Sophie Brzeska, plus new paintings by Yard, Cambridge, from 12 July to 2 November Sculpture in the CityJane and Louise Wilson and Ai Weiwei reveal new public sculptures for this summer art trail. City of London sites from 16 July until spring 2026 Emma TalbotBirth, death and everything in between are explored in this show that centres on an installation inspired by Greek tragedy. Read more here. Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until 5 October The Power of DrawingDavid Hockney, Tracey Emin and many more artists and celebs (including King Charles) celebrate the Royal Drawing School's 25th anniversary. Royal Drawing School, London, until 26 July Emma AmosThis artist who was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and trained in 1950s London, made expressive, political paintings. Alison Jacques gallery, London, until 9 August A giant mural, titled Wall of Shame, has launched in New York, to remind people of the alleged crimes committed by more than 1,500 Maga loyalists on the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, who were then pardoned by Donald Trump. Read more here. The Bayeux tapestry will return to Britain for the first time in 900 years Ed Sheeran's Jackson Pollock homage has energy but no truth Kew Gardens will host the largest outdoor exhibition of Henry Moore's sculptures Ozzy Osbourne collaborated with chimpanzees on abstract expressionist paintings Nell Stevens asked, what if every artwork you've ever seen is a fake? London's Design Museum is hosting a utopia of self-weaving grass and psychedelic dolphins Indigenous Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray brings a sense of wonder Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion Kourtney Roy makes tourist snapshots look sinister Artists are finding inspiration in a parlour game Saint Luke by Jacopo di Cione and Workshop, c.1365-70 The apostle Luke was the first Christian artist, it was believed in the middle ages. As well as writing a Gospel, he found time to portray the Virgin Mary from life – a story that understandably fascinated artists because it gave them an excuse to depict themselves and their craft. Is this a self-portrait of Jacopo di Cione? It doesn't seem to show Luke painting Mary – that would become a speciality of 15th-century Flemish artists who loved depicting Luke's studio in lifelike detail. Instead, here he has a book and pen. He may be writing his Gospel. But his keen gaze suggests he is drawing in ink, for sketching was a popular practice in medieval Florence where this was painted. Either way, in medieval thinking, he is not just depicting what he sees. His hand is instead guided by supernatural powers. National Gallery, London If you don't already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@
Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Connecting Thin Black Lines review — the invisible women of British art
The Thin Black Line, at the ICA in 1985, was a modest landmark. Curated by the artist Lubaina Himid (who was appointed OBE in 2010 and won the Turner prize in 2017), the exhibition focused on a group of black and Asian British female artists and represented a challenge to their collective invisibility in the art world. As Himid described them, 'eleven of the hundreds of creative black women in Britain', barely acknowledged by the artistic establishment. This new ICA show, again curated by Himid, brings together works made by those same 11 women in the intervening decades, highlighting their connections — the photographers Ingrid Pollard and Brenda Agardappear in Claudette Johnson's imposing painted triptych, for example — and indicating the accuracy of Himid's remark in 1985, 'We are here to stay.' Several of the artists have risen to prominence in recent years. Sonia Boyce represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2022; in the same year Himid was the subject of a big exhibition at Tate Modern and Veronica Ryan won the Turner prize. Johnson was the only painter nominated for it last year; Chila Kumari Burman, whose exuberant neons stealthily explore stereotypes and perspectives of Britishness, has a new large-scale commission at the Imperial War Museum North until the end of August. This ought to feel like a triumph, a victory lap. So why doesn't it? • Read more art reviews, guides and interviews Partly because this show is not big enough. It's true that, taking the main gallery on the ICA's ground floor, it's an improvement on the original 1985 show. That occupied only the corridor (euphemistically described as the 'concourse') that leads from the entrance on The Mall to the bar — much to the chagrin of the artists, who quite reasonably felt they were still being marginalised; the title of the show was a wry nod to this. • Turner prize winner 2024 — Jasleen Kaur's car in a doily is a new low But having seen shows extended into the airy galleries upstairs on Carlton House Terrace, it was still a bit disappointing to find this occupying so bijou a space. I didn't know the work of Jennifer Comrie, whose striking pastel and collage drawings are weird and compelling, and would have liked to see more of it. There's just one sculpture by Ryan, a bit tantalising, a bit lost. Sulter's Zabat series, of nine photographic portraits of black women as muses of the arts from Greek mythology, have power individually, but a bigger selection — there's just one Polyhymnia (Portrait of Dr Ysaye Barnwell) — would be even more impactful. Here we all are, it says, still making work, still complex and exciting, still almost none of us recognised names outside the art world — a frustration acknowledged by Himid in the accompanying guide. But it doesn't have room to say much more than that, to expand our knowledge of these artists beyond reminding us they exist. How much has changed, really? ★★★☆☆ICA, London, Jun 24 to Sep 7, Follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We thought we were being naughty!' The thrilling show by Black and Asian women that rocked the art world
It is November 1985 and in a corridor of London's ICA, a pivotal moment in British art history is about to take place. Curated by Lubaina Himid, The Thin Black Line displays work by 11 Black and Asian women artists, hung on the walls of the museum's narrow walkway – to signify just how they've been marginalised. Their work – which explores social, cultural, political, feminist and aesthetic issues – comes as a shock to the stuffy art establishment. Critics dismiss it, or deride the works as 'angry'. And yet this show, placing Black women artists firmly at the centre of contemporary British art history, will come to be seen as a turning point, paving the way for future winners of the Turner prize (Himid) and Venice Golden Lion (Sonia Boyce). Forty years on, the ICA is revisiting the show with Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985–2025, building on its legacy with new and old works from the original artists, and new contributors. Here, some of them reflect on the original exhibition, the reaction it received, and how the art world has changed. Sutapa Biswas: The 1980s were a charged time politically, socially and economically. I arrived at art college in 1981 with a great degree of understanding about the histories of the empire and how it impacted my parents. They were born in what was called British India. They experienced partition and genocide and were displaced. It was a complex time in the UK, too. In my community in west London, the Southall Youth Movement, an antiracist group, had burned down the Hambrough Tavern where skinhead bands played. Marlene Smith: I was a student, studying for my BA at Bradford School of Art. By the time I joined the BLK Art Group, an association of young Black artists, I was already thinking about my identity in relation to feminism. I was not the only Black person studying, but I was one of few. I was certainly the only person trying to make work with political overtones. Jennifer Comrie: I was living through a really interesting time: the Troubles, the miners' strike, Thatcherism, apartheid in South Africa. My work reflected this. Art for me has always been a wayto garner a better understanding of myself and the world around me. Ingrid Pollard: I was doing various jobs, and signing on for benefits. I was a cleaner. I was a gardener for the council. There weren't any rosy aspirations to be an artist. I had been doing screen-printing in an evening class and then a job came up in this feminist print shop in London, which I got, much to my surprise. There was a dark room there, so I started doing photography. Sutapa: One day on my university course, I was confronted by a painting by Turner titled The Slave Ship. My tutor was talking about the expressionistic nature of the brushmarks. I was sitting there thinking: 'What about what's in the water?' That moment, coupled with what I heard in another lecture, made me think: 'We're talking about class and gender – but we're not talking about race.' Marlene: My painting tutor didn't like what I was doing. He was not at all convinced that art could, or should, be political. So when Lubaina showed up and stood in front of my work and had a conversation with me, it was totally transformative. Jennifer: When Lubaina came in to my studio by chance and looked at my work, she was intrigued and asked if I would be interested in showing it. Initially I was unsure. I did not realise how pivotal this chance meeting would be. Sutapa: I found out Lubaina was doing a talk and went along. I introduced myself and said: 'I'm a student at the University of Leeds. I'd love to interview you.' When I submitted my dissertation, I invited Lubaina to do a talk at the university. There, she saw my painting Housewives with Steak-Knives and the video work Kali. 'I'm organising this exhibition,' she said. 'I would love to include your work.' Marlene: The show was coming up, but I had no idea what to make. Then Cherry Groce was shot [during a police raid on her Brixton home]. So I made Good Housekeeping – a larger than life painting of a woman leaning against a doorway. Behind her outstretched arm is a framed photograph of my sister's birthday party. Above that image, painted on the wall, are the words: 'My mother opens the door at 7am. She is not bulletproof.' I was thinking about Cherry Groce as a middle-aged single mum. Sutapa: The rhetoric was so racist in Britain. So I began to think about performance as strategic intervention. That's what emerged in Kali. But it also has a presence in Housewives with Steak-Knives. It's not a static piece, settled against the wall. It sits forward and looks as if it's going to fall on top of you. Jennifer: Coming to Terms Through Conflict, a work I put in the show, questions identity: northern, Jamaican, British, Black, Christian, etc. Untitled continued this journey. Its broken stitching is intentional, representing a refusal to be contained or defined by social constraints – church, family, anyone. It's a visual declaration of freedom. Marlene: Jenny had this beautiful singing voice. I remember her singing as we were installing. Even when I think of it now, it chokes me up. I remember Sutapa climbing up and writing the words for my work in black paint. Ingrid: It was fun installing it all. We thought we were being slightly naughty, because it was a well-known gallery. It was only later that I understood the ramifications, the politics of what Lubaina was trying to organise. Helen Cammock [participant in new show]: I was 15 when that exhibition was at the ICA. I wasn't interested in art then. It wasn't on my radar until 2005, when I did a photography BA. I had bought some books that contained Ingrid's work. Postcards Home [her photography book about England and the Caribbean] was on my desk while I wrote my dissertation. The images moved me. I was sad. I was angry. I found beauty. Marlene: The response to The Thin Black Line, in terms of art criticism, was pretty appalling. The critics came to it very defensively, rather than looking at what the work had to say. Sutapa and I wrote a piece for Spare Rib magazine, talking about the lack of useful critique around Black artists. Sutapa: The reviews were reduced to questions of identity and that became a platform for white guilt. But the real issue was avoiding the language of our practice, in the way that you might talk about the language of David Hockney's work or Helen Chadwick's. We weren't being afforded the same level criteria. They weren't dealing with the aesthetics of our practice. Helen: It's not a new thing. It happens now. This notion that you're angry. That you're didactic. It's a marginal experience and people aren't interested in it. The whole framing of the show undermined the quality of its ideas, of its potential to shake people's ways of thinking and seeing. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion Marlene: You would expect a show like The Thin Black Line to create opportunities, but the opposite happened. If you examine the YBAs, there was a synergy with what had happened earlier with the Black Arts Movement; it's striking that they seemed to be using our methods of DIY. However, they were not including the Black artists in their projects. Ingrid: There was never a time, after, when I wasn't making art. I wasn't ill. I didn't have children. I was teaching as a way of keeping a regular income. I didn't have to deal with the aspirations of a gallery representing me. Those things were very alien. Marlene: In 2011, Tate did a show looking back at The Thin Black Line. And then Graves Gallery stumbled across work by the BLK Art Group and did a show. So that felt like something was happening. Over the last 10 years, it feels like there's been a resurgence of interest in the Black Arts Movement because, despite its significance, it has not made it into discussions of art history. Amber Akaunu [in the new show]: I studied art and art history at Liverpool Hope University from 2015 to 2018. I didn't really learn about Black art history. I feel a bit of pain when I find out about things I didn't know. I started a magazine with another artist in the course called Rooted. We just felt there was a big gap in knowledge. Sutapa: After the show, I continued to work. I showed with Vito Acconci, Tania Bruguera, Doris Salcedo and Louise Bourgeois at Iniva in London. In 2004 I had a show there that was not nominated for the Turner. Where is my retrospective at the Tate? Where is Claudette Johnson's? I have not received accolades for my recent exhibitions at the Baltic and Kettle's Yard. Ingrid: Getting recognition came after a long period of work, 20 to 30 years. I was surprised to be nominated for the Turner. It raises your public profile. The media had ignored me and a lot of artists for 40 years. Marlene: I had a solo show called Ah, Sugar in2024. At the opening, Lubaina introduced me to the curators from the ICA and said that this new exhibition, Connecting Thin Black Lines, would be coming up. It was a surprise, exciting. Helen: I was looking at the complete lineup. Their voices weren't heard before – and now they are being heard more loudly than ever. Amber: Lubaina hosted a lunch for some of the artists who were going to be in this new show. I just sat there and soaked everything in. It was shocking – but touching – to hear their stories. A lot of these artists have gained so much success, but you can still hear the hurt. I related so much. Some 30 to 40 years on, I'm having similar experiences. I remember curating an exhibition over four days, and showing some work for Black History Month, and we weren't paid for it. Ingrid: A lot of the young students I speak to are still complaining: lack of recognition, opportunities. Things change, but they remain the same. My advice is you need a gang. You can't do it on your own. It takes a village to make an artist. Helen: It happened to be a really monumental experience for me being in a show called Carte de Visite with Claudette Johnson and Ingrid Pollard in 2015. I think it encapsulated what's happening now, the interconnectedness across generations. Marlene: It was a real privilege for me to exhibit with them in the first place. And it's a real privilege to be reunited. It's always nerve-wracking when you make new work. There's a bit of an echo between the piece I've made this time and the 1985 piece. This piece is probably more gentle. Amber: The film I'm showing is about motherhood and friendship. It's a documentary style that that explores my childhood being raised by a single mum in Toxteth, Liverpool. Jennifer: It's incredible to see the works being recognised again after 40 years. It genuinely feels like a few moments ago we were setting up the works in the ICA's corridor. Ingrid: I'm hoping the exhibition annoys a lot of people in the art world. When they had an opportunity to engage with these artists, they didn't take it. So it's like: 'See what you missed out on, mate.' Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985-2025 is at the ICA, London, until 7 September
Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists: A victim of its own noble ambition
Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists at the progressive Pallant House Gallery aims to celebrate the relationships between artists and the artistic representation of these relationships. A simple enough concept, one would have thought. I was excited for my visit down to Chichester, enticed by the promise of many and various works – there are more than 130 works on show, including paintings by British establishment icons such as Lucian Freud, Cedric Morris, David Hockney, Paula Rego and Celia Paul. The exhibition opens with flair. Viewers are greeted by a selection of colourful figures from Lubaina Himid's 1994 installation Vernet's Studio, set against a bright lemon-yellow wall. These life-size, painted wooden cut-outs of formidable female artists from times gone by were initially exhibited as part of a 26-piece show where viewers were invited to walk among the carnival of characters and see how many they could name. Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo, sternly gazing out beneath her bushy brow, is the most instantly recognisable of the menagerie. English op art painter Bridget Riley is more subtly represented by a contoured abstract form emblazoned with her characteristic stripes. Each of the figures in this delightful yet dysfunctional ensemble are based, in terms of pose and composition, on figures from Horace Vernet's painting The Studio (1820-1), and so Seeing Each Other opens with a neat double entendre. British artist Lubaina Himid has not only created entertaining and interrogative portraits of female artists, but she has also modelled these cut-outs on a 19th-century artist's depiction of his own studio. But dexterity and wit quickly dissipate as you enter the first room of the exhibition entitled: Artistic Bohemia, where the likes of Roger Fry, Nina Hamnett and Augustus John are both maker and muse in various works depicting the circles of London's art schools in the early 20th century. The most telling portrayal is a painting by John Currie, depicting himself and his fellow Slade students, alongside the proprietor of their favourite Soho hangout, the Petit Savoyard. Currie's Some Later Primitives and Madame Tisceron (1912) shows his cohort through the highly stylised lens of an early Renaissance fresco: one can imagine the chirrupings of mutual sycophancy that went on into the small hours at that café. But poor old Currie was no Piero della Francesca. It was in the room entitled 'Intimate Relationships' that my ability to digest the connections between the artists, sitters and styles began to flounder. Curatorship is not only about telling a story, but also about making sure that the works being used to tell that story are aesthetically cohesive and visually harmonious. Just because two people loved each other, and created art works of each other, it doesn't mean that those two works should hang next to each other on an exhibition wall. And when there are over five or six such groupings in a room, the mixture of works on show begins to feel akin to the chaos of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. I looked around at the cacophonous hodgepodge of works on the walls and felt as though I had been abandoned at a party full of strangers, only I didn't have a drink, and everyone at the party was inanimate. The concept of this Pallant House exhibition reads very well on paper: a chance to be immersed in the great relationships between some of the brightest (and lesser known) stars of the British art establishment of the past century. However, the multitudinous diversity of works on display leaves the viewer dizzy – fewer, more impactful displays might have been better. For example, an intimate nook late in the exhibition, dedicated to the School of London, juxtaposes portraits of Lucian Freud asleep by Celia Paul, and Paul by Freud – it is one of the most vulnerable juxtapositions in the show. In these moments, the brilliance of the exhibition's curatorial vision is fully apparent. But Seeing Each Other is a victim of its own ambitious intentions. All in all, the show is, at best, good in parts.
Gulf Today
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
SAF and Mudam Luxembourg host Nets for Night and Day exhibition
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) has announced the opening of the exhibition Nets for Night and Day by Lubaina Himid CBE RA and Magda Stawarska at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (Mar. 7 – Aug. 24). Following an initial presentation titled Plaited Time/Deep Water in Sharjah in 2023, Nets for Night and Day is the first full-scale European survey of the artists' collaborative practice. The exhibition, organised by SAF and Mudam Luxembourg, explores over a decade of creative exchange between British painter Lubaina Himid (b. 1954, Zanzibar), a leading figure of the British Black Arts Movement, and multidisciplinary Polish artist Magda Stawarska (b. 1976, Ruda Śląska, Poland), whose practice combines moving image, soundscapes, and screen printing. Conceived as visual and performance art, Nets for Night and Day unfolds memory narrated through paintings, drawings, sculpture, silkscreen printing, photography, and sound installation. Comprising over fifty artworks produced between the late 1990s and today, the exhibition invites visitors on a journey aboard ships, across carts, and into dreamscapes shaped by the artists' collective imagination, with a nod to the question of migration and movement, a critical issue of contemporary times. At the heart of the exhibition is a newly imagined presentation of Zanzibar (1999 – 2023), first shown in Sharjah. The series of nine painted diptychs by Himid narrates journeys — both real and imagined — to and from her birthplace, Zanzibar. Visitors will be greeted by the sound of rainfall, recorded from England to Zanzibar, off the coast of East Africa. The sonic backdrop, composed by Stawarska in dialogue with Himid, is a 38-minute multi-channel 'libretto' for the paintings. A voice-over, alternating between male and female voices, presents itself. Stawarska says that 'the process of listening is often at the core of my practice. I am interested in how sound triggers memories while simultaneously anchoring us in a place.' A mother's mourning in Himid's voice resonates through the sound installation, women's tears that fill the ocean. 'The result is often heart-wrenching,' says exhibition curator Dr. Omar Kholeif, SAF Director of Collections and Senior Curator. In another section, screen prints and patterns intertwine with paintings of ships and boats that bear multiple lives and histories, suggestive of diverse experiences and encounters. 'The idea of bringing boats into the story became very important,' says Himid. 'Boats are places of work, places of rescue, places to live, places for fun, but also places of deep tragedy and horror — places to escape to, places to escape from. I see them as temporary moving homes.' In happier contexts, boats could have been the camels of the sea, carrying Bedouin. Visitors here are invited to engage with paintings, photographs, and sculptures in a scenography relating to imaginary and real contexts of movement and travel. Travelling through time and space, works including Himid's evocative Sharjah Carts (2023) and Stawarska's moving image works in the Jardin des Sculptures, invite visitors to wander into dreamscapes, where they can add their own memories of real life experiences and imaginary movement. The location of the exhibition reflects the social and cultural contexts of Luxembourg, a country with a diverse immigrant community. Through the juxtaposition of memory, paint, sound and movement, the exhibition attempts to capture the poignancy of lived lives, revealing songs of longing and belonging, loss and gain and the power of memory to resuscitate history and selfhood. The exhibition is coordinated by Julie Kohn, Curatorial Assistant, Mudam Luxembourg and design is by Souraya Kreidieh, SAF Senior Collections Researcher and Spatial Designer. Himid CBE RA lives and works in the UK. For over four decades, she has depicted contemporary everyday life and aimed to fill gaps in art history. A painter, cultural activist, witness, storyteller and historian, in 2017, she won the Turner Prize, in 2023 the Maria Lassnig Art Prize, and the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize. Stawarska's multi-disciplinary practice combines moving image, sound, silkscreen prints and painting. She explores the connections between personal memory, place, and sound, often uncovering hidden and conflicting histories. Her work is in public collections including the Government Arts Collection, London, the Arts Council Collection, London and the SAF Collection. She lives and works in the UK. Through its exhibitions, publications and artistic and educational programme, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean fosters research and dialogue, tracing the changing nature of art and society. Like Luxembourg itself, the museum is located at the centre of Europe and has an outward-looking vision. SAF is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. It supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the culture of the region and encourages an understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation's core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications. Established in 2009, SAF is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons; all its exhibitions are free and open to the public. Hoor Al Qasimi is SAF President and Director.
