Today, around a million British people are of Caribbean descent, reflecting a history of post-war migration that essentially begins and ends with the Nationality Act of 1948 and the Immigration Act of 1972 - the so-called Windrush Generation. For many, London in particular was where the cultural archipelago of the Caribbean came together for the first time - communication and travel between the islands being difficult. This British-Caribbean connection gave rise to a diverse, complex and exciting wealth of Black cultural forms. At one end of the spectrum, British-Caribbean art is abstract, symbolist and at times cosmological; at the other it is socially realist, with many other positions in between or off that spectrum. Where art is engaged with changes in society, it evokes a community's struggle to forge an identity and livelihood for itself in an environment that often proved hostile. Other works evoke deeper historical experiences, in particular the traumatic after-images of plantation slavery and its legacy in culture and society.
This comprehensive volume brings together key writings on the interrelationship of Britain and the English-speaking Caribbean nations, focussing specifically on the art of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain from the 1920s to today. Combining classic writings with some newlycommissioned contributions, it explores intersecting areas of Black- British cultural production and reflects the diversity of the Black-British experience. With contributions from a range of scholars, Liberation through Imagination is an invaluable sourcebook for those interested in the rich and diverse field of postcolonial British-Caribbean art.
This fascinating book traces the connection between Britain and the Caribbean in the visual arts from the 1950s to today, a social and cultural history more often told through literature or popular music.
With its multi-generational perspective, it reveals that the Caribbean connection in British art is one of the richest facets of art in Britain since the Second World War, and is a lens through which to understand the Caribbean diasporic experience in all its social, cultural, psychological and political complexities across generations.
Featuring around 40 artists - among them Aubrey Williams, Frank Bowling, Althea McNish, Donald Locke, Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien, Black Audio Film Collective, Lubaina Himid, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Steve McQueen, Alberta Whittle, and many more - it includes a variety of works mostly by UK-based African-Caribbean artists, but also by artists who were not originally from the Caribbean but who relocated there or have made important work about it. Arranged chronologically it sheds light on a number of themes such as Caribbean modernism, social and political struggles, subculture and its policing, the front room as a private and public space, after-images of slavery and the Middle Passage, and syncretic and creolised metaphor and allegory (carnival, folklore, new world religions). Readers will find themselves charting a course between two worlds: London or other urban localities in the UK and images of formerly British Caribbean nations.
With contributions by a variety of authors, including Paul Gilroy and fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, Oceans Apart presents post-war British art history in its global and transnational dimensions, and reveals how these were shaped by the struggle against Empire and its legacies.
