Africa 05 (2005)

Keith Piper, Donald Rodney and the Artists' Response to the Archive (2006)

Ali Kazim (2006)

Barbara Walker (2006)

The Importance Of Being Lady Lucy (2007)

Black British Photography (2007)

Port City (2008)

Next We Change Earth (2008)

Keith Piper, Donald Rodney and the Artists' Response to the Archive

When it comes to ideas of the artist as archivist, Donald Rodney would take some beating. Rodney, who died in 1998, was a prolific collector of newspapers, magazines, books, gadgets, and much much more. In fact, Rodney was a collector of stuff, stuff that took many forms. Amongst the 'stuff' he had amassed was a collection of globes of the world. All sorts of sizes and all sorts of ages. Being bed-bound and hospitalised for weeks and months at a time did not prevent or limit Rodney's compulsion to get his hands on and collect an almost bewildering assortment of material. For her contribution to the catalogue to accompany Rodney's 9 Night in Eldorado exhibition, artist Virginia Nimarkoh created an exhaustive inventory of the 'Contents of [his] Bed space, Kings College Hospital, 29.5.97'. Nimarkoh divided Rodney's impromptu, bedside archive into a number of sections: Books, Computer Games, CDs, Equipment, Magazines, Materials, Newspapers and finally, Videos. Rodney's newspaper stash included the previous day's Evening Standard, as well as recent and current copies of The Guardian and The Sun newspapers.

Rodney's scrapbooks were full, not only of sketches and ideas for work, but also full of clippings of newspaper articles that interested him. In this regard, he found The Sun to be an invaluable source of material, as much as, if not more so than The Guardian or any other newspaper or magazine. Rodney would comb his newspapers not just for stories or articles on Black people, but more importantly, he would scour these newspapers for indications of the ways in which 'race' was animated. A wide range of articles and news stories tickled, exorcised and intrigued him. He was for example, interested in the ways in which Mike Tyson, one of the towering personalities of the 1980s and 1990s was consistently caricatured and vilified within sections of the mass media as a near sub-human beast and an incorrigible delinquent. Likewise, the ways in which certain newspapers caricatured young Black males as inherently inclined to criminality was of great interest to him. Further to this, the interplay between 'race', 'immigration' and the Black British experience fascinated him. With both cynicism and wit, Rodney would make good use of his newspaper cuttings, and frequently, these articles, cartoons and pictures made their way into his artwork.

Piper was, even by 1981, a highly skilled and effective user of archival material. An artist with a particularly keen eye, he sourced an astonishingly broad range of material for the making of his art. The range of imagery and paraphernalia Piper sourced for his work included many images from the ongoing history of the fight against apartheid. Throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s, the struggle against the racist system of apartheid consumed the creative and political energies of many people. Within this context, Piper produced numerous works that sought not only to expose the barbarity and criminality of apartheid, but also the hypocrisy of apartheid's friends, in the upper echelons of British society. To this end, Piper made good use of the hugely important archive of images chronicling the victims of - and resistance to - apartheid. Similarly, Piper sourced a number of images from documentation of the years of the transatlantic slave trade, which occurred between the 17th and 19th centuries. But Piper was also interested in decidedly local concerns and to this end also sourced his imagery from British contexts. Indeed, one of his collaborations with Rodney was a 1987 exhibition called Adventures Close To Home.

Politically, these were heady and difficult days for Black people. Piper knew how to visualise the trauma and dynamism of the times and to this end, he produced some remarkable work. One particular example is his 1981 mixed media piece, '13 Killed'. 1981 was the year of the New Cross Massacre, in which thirteen Black youngsters, attending a birthday party, lost their lives in a suspicious house fire. This was an horrific incident that galvanised the Black community, acutely increasing its sense of identity and purpose. Mystery surrounded the cause of the fire and, in Black circles at least, speculation was rife. There were those who felt that the fire pointed to the work of racist arsonists. After all, arson attacks on the homes of Black and Asian people were not uncommon. In other quarters, an accident or the malicious work of a disgruntled party-goer were cited as possible causes. One thing however, was certain. The aftermath of the tragedy threw into sharp focus an apparent widespread indifference shown to the deaths by the mainstream news media, and important religious or political figures of the day. Even the Queen had no declaration of condolences for the bereaved. This comprehensive expression of indifference deeply offended many within the Black community. Furthermore, there existed the disturbing perception that any efforts made by the police to establish the cause of the fire, or to apprehend possible suspects, appeared unconvincing. In the aftermath of the fire, there existed the sobering realisation that the British establishment appeared indifferent to the sufferings and traumas of Black people.

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