Past Event
Artist Lubaina Himid discusses three seminal exhibitions she curated in early 1980s London: Five Black Women at the Africa Centre (1983), Black Women Time Now at Battersea Arts Centre (1983-4) and The Thin Black Line at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1985).
These shows introduced a radical generation of young Black and Asian women artists to the British art scene, challenging their previous invisibility. Himid was one of the pioneers of the Black Art movement, which offered a forum for black artists exploring the social and political issues surrounding black history and identity. She is joined in conversation by curator and Director of TrAIN Paul Goodwin.
Organised in partnership with Afterall, Exhibition Histories is a regular series of talks at the Whitechapel Gallery focusing on contemporary art exhibitions from the past fifty years that have changed the way art is seen and made. The series is inspired by the Exhibition Histories books published by Afterall.
In association with Afterall and TrAIN
Lubaina Himid is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. Over the past 30 years she has exhibited widely, both in Britain and internationally, with solo shows that include Tate St Ives, Transmission Glasgow, Chisenhale London, Peg Alston New York and St. Jorgens Museum in Bergen. Himid represented Britain at the 5th Havana Biennale and has shown work at the Studio Museum in New York, Track 17 in Los Angeles, the Fine Art Academy in Vienna and the Grazer Kunstverein.
Her work can be found in public collections including Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Arts Council England, Manchester Art Gallery, The International Slavery Museum Liverpool, The Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham City Art Gallery, Bolton Art Gallery, New Hall Cambridge and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery.
Paul Goodwin is an independent curator, urban theorist and researcher based in London. His curatorial, research and writing projects extend across the interdisciplinary fields of contemporary art and urbanism with a particular focus on black and diaspora artists and visual cultures.
At the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, University of London, between 2006 and 2010 he directed Re-visioning Black Urbanism, an interdisciplinary research project exploring the multiple modalities of blackness and urbanism in cities such as London, Lisbon and Paris.
From 2008 to 2012 as a curator at Tate Britain he directed the pioneering Cross Cultural Programme that explored questions of migration and globalisation in contemporary British art through a programme of international conferences, workshops, talks and live art events. His curatorial projects include a number of internationally significant exhibitions including: Migrations: Journeys Into British Art, Tate Britain 2012; Thin Black Line(s), Tate Britain, 2011; Coming Ashore, 2011, Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, Portugal; Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic (consultant curator), Tate Liverpool, 2010; Underconstruction, Hospital Julius De Matos, Lisbon, Portugal, 2009. In 2013 he curated Charlie Phillips: The Urban Eye at New Art Exchange, Nottingham which was long-listed for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014.
Goodwin is curatorial director of the 3D Foundation international sculpture park and residency programme in Verbier, Switzerland and is a trustee of socially engaged art organisations Peckham Platform and no.w.here in London.
