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...