Donald Gladstone Rodney 1961-1998

Donald Rodney was, as I have twice previously mentioned in Art Monthly, ‘one of the most interesting artists of his generation’. The statement needs repeating – and remembering – because Donald Rodney produced his art by refusing to let sickle-cell anaemia – the frequently debilitating disease of the blood, from which he suffered – get the better of him.

As an artist, Donald Rodney was widely respected. His work, from his earliest days as an art student at Trent polytechnic, right through to his recent one-man show at South London Gallery, had distinctive qualities, that marked Donald Rodney out as a practitioner of unique ability and sensitivity…

From 1982 onwards. Donald Rodney exhibited widely, returning to college (Slade School of Fine art, 1985-7) to secure his MA. By the mid-late 1980s Donald Rodney had begun to make considered and considerable use of discarded hospital X-rays within the work he was producing. While he could not escape or conquer his sickle-cell, he refused to declare himself a victim of it. His use of X-rays was not to draw attention to the blood disorder that was slowly corroding his body. Instead, he used X-rays as a metaphor to represent the ‘disease’ of apartheid, the ‘disease’ of police brutality and the ‘disease’ of racism that lay at the core of society…

…By the mid 1990s Donald Rodney had, with the help of his partner Diane Symons and close friends such a Virginia Nimarkoh, perfected his ability to direct and produce a range of work from his hospital bed. The result of this included Othello (‘Care and Control’) and the magnificent, engaging body of work that formed his ‘9 Night in Eldorado’ exhibition at South London Gallery in September and October of last year.

Donald Rodney was loved, respected and admired not only as an artist but as a partner, as a relative, as a hospital patient and as a friend to many, many people. It hardly seems adequate to write that his premature death is a tragic loss…

The above extracts are from "Donald Gladstone Rodney 1961 - 1998", an obituary written by Eddie Chambers, in Art Monthly, Number 215, April 1998: 21