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Keith Piper (artist)

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Keith Piper
Born1960 (age 63–64)
Malta
NationalityBritish
EducationTrent Polytechnic; Royal College of Art
Known forBLK Art Group
Websitehttp://www.keithpiper.info/

Keith Piper (born 1960)[1] is a British artist, curator, critic and academic. He was a founder member of the groundbreaking BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students, mostly based in the West Midlands region of the UK.[2]

Early life and education

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Piper was born in Malta – a British colony at the time – to a working-class family of African-Caribbean heritage: his father, originally from Antigua, had gone to England in the 1950s, settled in Birmingham in the West Midlands, and been posted on Malta's military base just before Piper's birth.[3] Six months old when he arrived in Britain, Piper was raised in and around Birmingham.[4] He was first attracted to art as a response to the industrialised, decaying landscape of his youth. Quoted in his monograph Relocating the Remains (1997), he recalls being "interested in the aesthetics of peeling paint, rust and dereliction and the multi-layered look of fly posters when they become torn off".[4] Piper went on to attend Trent Polytechnic, where he gained his B.A.(Hons) degree in Fine Art in 1983, before graduating with a master's degree in Environmental Media at the Royal College of Art in London.[4]

Career and works

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The Black Assassin Saints (1982), Acrylic on stitched unstretched canvas.

Although Piper’s early and student work made use of traditional fine art media such as paint and canvas (as in The Body Politic, 1983),[4] from the late 1980s he became primarily associated with technically innovative work that explored multi-media elements such as computer software, websites, tape/slide, sound and video within an installation-based practice.[5]

Piper first came to public attention when, in 1982, while still a student, he joined Eddie Chambers, the late Donald Rodney and Marlene Smith in what came to be known as the BLK Art Group. Their politically forthright exhibition The Pan-Afrikan Connection garnered media attention as it toured to Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham; King Street Gallery in Bristol; and The Africa Centre in London. In 1983-84 a second touring exhibition, The BLK Art Group, was held at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry, Battersea Arts Centre in London and, again, the Africa Centre.[6]

However, the group's critique of institutional racism in and beyond Britain's art world[7] became a part of the impetus that led to The Other Story, a seminal survey of African and Asian artists at London's Hayward Gallery in 1989 as well as the founding of the Association of Black Photographers and the establishment of Iniva, the Institute of International Visual Arts – some of which have exhibited Piper's work.[8] His photography was recognised in the 1992 survey by Ten.8 magazine.[9]

Piper continued to practise throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, exhibiting work in prestigious galleries and museums around the world, including, in 1999, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York,[10] in 2007, the Victoria and Albert Museum,[11] and, in 2012, Migrations at Tate Britain.[12] In 1998, Piper, along with Ramona Ramlochand collaborated on an exhibition called The Night Has A Thousand Eyes at the Ottawa Art Gallery. It included a collaborative installation between the two as well as their own separate ones.[13]

Examples of Piper's work are held in numerous public collections, including the Arts Council Collection[14] Tate[15] and the Manchester Art Gallery.[16] His 'Untitled' (1986) painting acquired by Manchester Art Gallery was re-interpreted in 2022 for display as a central work in their Climate Justice Gallery.[17]

In 2002, Keith Piper was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Arts at Wolverhampton University[18] and has taught for several years as a Reader in Fine Art at London's Middlesex University.[19]

In 2015–16, Piper's work (You Are Now Entering) Mau Mau Country (1983) was featured in the six-month exhibition No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 held at the City of London's Guildhall Art Gallery.[20][21][22]

In 2017, Iniva, presented a solo exhibition of Piper's work at Bluecoat, Liverpool. Entitled Unearthing the Bankers Bones,[23] it featured large-scale painting, installation and digital works that address anxieties about the impacts of globalisation. Lending its title to the exhibition, the centrepiece of the show is a 70th Anniversary Commission for the Arts Council Collection with Iniva and Bluecoat, consisting of three synchronised high definition video projections, which depict a narrative of economic and social collapse. This was Piper's first monographic show since the retrospective Relocating the Remains,[8] produced by Iniva in 1997.[24]

The retrospective Body Politics – Work from 1982–2007 was shown from October to December 2019 in Wolverhampton Art Gallery.[3][25]

In 2022, Piper created the exhibition Jet Black Futures which was presented at the New Art Gallery in Walsal from January 12-April 24. It was "a set of mixed-media digital montages printed onto white material and intended to serve as protest banners."[26]

Viva Voce, a site-specific commission for the Rex Whistler Room at Tate Britain, opened in 2024.[27]

Multimedia installations and project

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  • Viva Voce, 2024 - The Rex Whistler Room, Tate Britain[27]
  • A Fictional Tourist in Europe, 2001
  • The Mechanoid's Bloodline, 2001
  • The Exploded City, 1998
  • Four Frontiers, 1998
  • Message Carrier, 1998
  • Robot Bodies, 1998
  • Relocating the Remains, 1997
  • The Fictions of Science, 1996
  • Four Corners, A Contest of Opposites, 1995
  • Reckless Eyeballing, 1995
  • Terrible Spaces, 1994
  • Exotic Signs, 1993
  • Transgressive Acts, 1993
  • Another Step into the Arena, 1992
  • Tagging the Other, 1992
  • Trade Winds, 1992
  • A Ship Called Jesus, 1991
  • Step into the Arena, 1991
  • The Devil Finds Work, 1990
  • Chanting Heads, 1988
  • Diaspora Wallchart, 1987

References

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  1. ^ Meigh-Andrews, C., 2013. A History of Video Art, pp. 291. A&C Black.
  2. ^ Chambers, E., 2011. Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain, Rodopi.
  3. ^ a b Chemam, Melissa (25 October 2021). "Keith Piper: on the history of the Black Art Group". Art UK. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d Chandler, David, & Kobena Mercer, 1997. "Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains", Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva).
  5. ^ White, M., 2006. The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship, MIT Press.
  6. ^ Pauline de Souza, "Rodney, Donald Gladstone (1961–1998)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
  7. ^ Owusu, K., 2000. Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader, Psychology Press.
  8. ^ a b "Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains Exhibition | 18 Jul 1997-27 Feb 2000". Iniva. 9 March 2017.
  9. ^ "Critical Decade: Black British Photography in the 80s", Ten.8 vol. 2, no. 3, 1992.
  10. ^ "'Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains'". New Museum Digital Archive.
  11. ^ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (9 February 2007). "Uncomfortable Truths Review". The Independent.
  12. ^ Jonathan Jones (31 January 2012). "Migrations exhibition review". The Guardian.
  13. ^ Marks, L. U. (April–June 1998). "Keith Piper and Ramona Ramlochand: Ottawa Art Gallery, September 25 - November 23". Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine. 90: 47–8 – via Gale.
  14. ^ "Art UK - National Collection page".
  15. ^ "Tate's artist page for Keith Piper".
  16. ^ "Manchester Art Gallery page for Keith Piper".
  17. ^ "Climate Justice". Manchester Art Gallery. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
  18. ^ "Keith Piper doctorate page at Wolverhampton University". Archived from the original on 24 March 2014.
  19. ^ "Keith Piper bio page at Middlesex University". Archived from the original on 24 March 2014.
  20. ^ "Sonia Boyce & Keith Piper featured artists in No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990", ADRI, Middlesex University London.
  21. ^ Emily Labhart, "No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990", 27 September 2015.
  22. ^ Lola Okolosie, "We are here because you were there: a retrospective of black British art", New Humanist, 7 December 2015.
  23. ^ "Unearthing the Banker's Bones Keith Piper Exhibition | 01 Apr-11 Jun 2017". iniva. 20 December 2016.
  24. ^ Keith Piper Biography"Peoples Directory, Iniva".
  25. ^ Page, Laura (10 October 2019). "Keith Piper: Body Politics.Work from 1982 – 2007". Wolverampton Art Gallery. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  26. ^ Malik, A. (1 March 2022). "Keith Piper: Jet Black Futures: New Art Gallery, Walsall, 14 January to 24 April". Art Monthly. 454: 27 – via EBSCO.
  27. ^ a b Marshall, Alex (12 March 2024). "An Artist's Response to a Racist Mural Walks a Fine Line". The New York Times.
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