Get Up, Stand Up Now


Dynamic exhibition at Somerset House looking at 50 years of Black creativity in the United Kingdom and beyond. 

The show was curated by artist Zac Ove inspired by the work of his father Horace who documented the rise of Black Power in the UK in films and photographs. There were lots of his father’s photos in the show. The rest was arranged over five themes, motherland, dare to change the world, masquerade, imaginary landscape and mothership.

I thought the show struggled to tell two stories. One stream was telling the story of Black life in Britain over the last 50 years while the second looked at the response to this by contemporary artists. There was a lot of good archive material but it wasn’t well explained and I’m going to have my usual moan about labels. In this case what is the point of putting wordy labels in a small font at ground level!

It was the contemporary art which stood out for me including the work shown here by Sanford Bigger in which African style wooden figures cast the shadow of a well-known photograph of Black Panthers at a news conference. I loved a clear Afro comb in a musical instrument case with the sound of cutting hair over attached headsets. It was called “Ice Pick” and the label said it was a sign of disentanglement.

I think my favourite work was Richard Mark Rawlings comment on the role of sugar and colonialism in Black history which showed a Black fist coming out of a tea cup which had been designed in England, made in China and sold by Amazon. I also loved Cosmo Whyle’s “Guess Who’s Coming Together”, mussels shells on yellow life jackets.

Closed on 15 September 2019

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