Making Waves: Black Artists and 'Black Art' in Britain from 1963-1982

Making Waves: Black Artists & ‘Black Art’ in Britain from 1963 – 1982’ is a threeyear research project that will uncover and interpret a crucial period in thefractured and unfinished history of Black artists in Britain and British art morebroadly. It will trace the history of African and Asian artists in Britain between the1st Commonwealth Biennale (1963) and the First National Black Art Convention(1982) and examine the development of discourses around the implications of andpossibilities for ‘Black Art’ in Britain. During this period, debates around theintersections of race, nationality and aesthetics set against the background of,what art historian Kobena Mercer has called, London’s ‘post- colonialinternationalism’ laid the foundations for what would become the British Black ArtsMovement of the 1980s. Bringing together oral histories, archival research andthe sustained visual engagement of iconology, this project will redress the extantelision of pre-1980s voices from a still emerging narrative of Black creativeproduction in twentieth century Britain