Sonia Boyce, From Tarzan to Rambo: English Born 'Native' Considers her Relationship to the Constructed/Self Image and her Roots in Reconstruction (detail), 1987.
| Date: | Wednesday 30 March |
| Time: | 18:30-21:00 |
Curatorial resident Allison Thompson (Barbados) will be in discussion with artists Sonia Boyce and Harold Offeh as well as Sheena Rose (via skype) about self-representation and performing identities. The event will include screenings of recent work by the artists.
Biographies
Sonia Boyce came to prominence in the early 1980s as a key figure in the British Black Art scene and was one of the youngest artists of her generation to have her work purchased by the Tate Gallery. Her work is represented in several public collections and she has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and internationally including most recently at the 56th Venice Biennale, where she presented Exquisite Cacophony (2015) and the Villa Arson in Nice where she produced Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre(2016).
Sonia Boyce is Professor of Fine Art at Middlesex University in the School of Art and Design, Chair of Black Art and Design at the University of the Arts London (UAL), and Principal Investigator for the Arts & Humanities Research Council funded project “Black Artists and Modernism” (UAL/Middlesex University, London). In 2007, she received in collaboration with David A. Bailey and Ian Baucom, the History of British Art Book Prize (USA) for the edited volume Shades of Black: Art in 1980s Britain. In the same year she was awarded an MBE for her services to art.
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social practice, often employing humour as a means to confront the viewer with an assessment of history and contemporary culture. He studied at the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art, London. Offeh has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. Recent exhibitions and projects include: The Shadows took Shape, at the Studio Museum, Harlem (2013-14); Radiocity at Tate Britain, London (2014-15); and Just Like a Woman at the Abrons Arts Center, NYC, & Chelsea Theatre, London (2015). He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds where he is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University.
Sheena Rose is a contemporary Caribbean artist from Barbados. She graduated with a BFA degree from the Barbados Community College, and in 2014 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue her MFA in Studio Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Sheena has participated in numerous artist residencies and exhibitions throughout the Caribbean and internationally including the Havana Biennial (2012), the Jamaica Biennial (2015) and Venice Agendas at the Turner Contemporary (2015).