The Blk Art Group research project 2012

The Blk Art Group Research Project 2012 was set up by Keith Piper, in collaboration with curator Marlene Smith and artist Claudette Johnson to re-examine the historical archive and legacies of The Blk Art Group (1979-1984). This was an association of young artists, of which Piper, Smith and Johnson were all members (along with Eddie Chambers and the late Donald Rodney). During the early 1980s, the Blk Art Group collectively organized a series of exhibitions in venues including Wolverhampton Art Gallery, The Africa Centre, The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, The Midland Group, Nottingham, The Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry and Battersea Art Centre. They also organized a series of conferences and symposia, including the First National Black Art Convention in Wolverhampton in October 1982, which has been subsequently cited in a number of publications as a watershed moment in the development of what came to be described as the British Black Art Movement in the 1980s. Formed to mark the 30th anniversary of this event, The Blk Art Group Research Project 2012 is engaged in the organization of a number of events, culminating in a conference and publication examining the 1980s Black Art Movement and its legacies. To date this has centered around an exhibition of work originally exhibited by members of the Blk Art Group in the 1980s staged at the Graves Gallery Sheffield from August 2011- March 2012. A symposium was held on the 22nd February in connection with this show in which Piper delivered two papers. The first was an in-progress digital paper entitled Pathways to the 1980s in which he presented an historic and theoretical framing of the early 1980s.