LONDON.- Hayward Gallery Touring’s landmark exhibition
British Art Show 9 will continue its national tour, opening in Wolverhampton on 22 January 2022, following its first leg at Aberdeen Art Gallery (10 July – 10 October 2021). Recognised as the most important and ambitious recurrent exhibition of contemporary art produced in the UK, British Art Show takes place every five years and brings the work of artists defining new directions in contemporary art to four UK cities.
In anticipation of the exhibition’s second iteration, Hayward Gallery Touring is pleased to reveal the curatorial focus for the city and list of artists exhibiting across two venues in Wolverhampton from 22 January to 10 April 2022: Wolverhampton Art Gallery and University of Wolverhampton School of Art. Following this, the exhibition will continue its national tour to multiple venues across Manchester before closing in Plymouth.
British Art Show 9 is curated by Irene Aristizábal and Hammad Nasar, and showcases the work of 47 artists. Focusing on work made since 2015, the exhibition reflects a precarious moment in Britain’s history, which has brought politics of identity and nation, concerns of social, racial and environmental justice, and questions of agency to the centre of public consciousness. The artists presented in the exhibition respond in critical ways to this complex context. Through their works, they imagine new futures, propose alternative economies, explore new modes of resistance and find ways of living together. They do so through film, photography, painting, sculpture, and performance, as well as through multimedia projects that don’t sit easily in any one category.
The exhibition is structured around three main themes – Healing, Care and Reparative History; Tactics for Togetherness; Imagining New Futures – and has been conceived as a cumulative experience, adapting and changing for each city, and presenting different combinations of artists and artworks that respond to their distinctive local contexts.
In Wolverhampton, the exhibition will focus on how we live with and give voice to difference, showcasing 34 artists whose works investigate identity from an intersectional perspective. By exploring coexisting identities such as class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, these works will be presented in critical dialogue with Wolverhampton’s cultural history which has been shaped by the diverse populations that came to work and live there during the post-war period. Wolverhampton Art Gallery houses one of the most significant collections of art on ‘The Troubles’ outside Northern Ireland. It also collects works linked to the British Black Arts movement which has its roots in the city as many of its members studied at Wolverhampton School of Art. As part of the BAS9 exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery there will be a capsule display of selected works from its collection.
Selected highlights of BAS9 Wolverhampton:
• Works from Hurvin Anderson’s barbershop series – including a new painting Dixie Peach (2020) – will be presented at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, Anderson’s vibrant paintings explore his relationship to both cultures.
• Helen Cammock’s new multimedia installation Changing Room II (2021) and elegiac film Changing Room (2014) reflect on her late father – who was an art teacher, magistrate and amateur ceramicist – and his experiences of living in Wolverhampton in the 1960s and 70s. This work is made possible through Art Fund support and will be acquired into the collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
• Oona Doherty’s dance work Hope Hunt & The Ascension into Lazarus (2015-ongoing) – created after learning that Northern Ireland had the highest rate of young male suicides in Europe – has been performed in youth detention centres and prisons as well as theatres, and will be configured as a street performance in Wolverhampton.
• Mandy El-Sayegh presents a new work problems with metaphor (2022) at Wolverhampton School of Art incorporating personal memorabilia and layers of accumulated ephemera. The immersive installation includes walls covered in newspapers, with latex and mixed-media floor tiles and sculptural specimen tables.
• Mark Essen has created a pilot programme for an ‘art school of otherness’ within the setting of Wolverhampton School of Art, working with students from the Thomas Telford School to create and furnish a workshop space. School of the Underkraft (2021-22) is made possible with support from Arts Council England Project Grant for National Activities.
• A new audio-visual installation, ZEMEL (2021), from experimental rapper, producer, writer, visual and performance artist GAIKA draws on his Caribbean heritage, sound system culture and is a shrine to his murdered uncle and other Windrush-generation deportees. Supported by Hayward Gallery Touring for BAS9.
• As well as a series of new drawings, Hardeep Pandhal exhibits a new version of his recent video work, Ensorcelled English (2020–21), expanding his interest in dark enchantment through a fantasy of a cursed art school, while dissecting the racist and sexist structures on which art education is too often founded.
• An ambitious new film, Trinity (2021), from Hetain Patel created with dance, martial arts and sign language collaborators. The production was supported by Hayward Gallery Touring for BAS9.
The exhibition includes a programme of artist films and a dedicated website which enables artists, especially those not showing works in Wolverhampton, to share works online. A schedule of events and activities for visitors of all ages, both in person and online, will furthermore extend the reach of British Art Show 9 throughout the city and across the Midlands region and its surrounding counties.
Hammad Nasar and Irene Aristizábal, Curators of British Art Show 9, said: “We are thrilled to present the second iteration of BAS9 in Wolverhampton, where we focus on an intersectional approach to living with difference. Our approach foregrounds the contemporary resonance of the Black Lives Matter protests with the historic context of Enoch Powell’s infamous and divisive ‘rivers of blood’ speech (1968), made during his tenure as Wolverhampton South West’s Conservative MP. We see BAS9’s presentation in critical dialogue with Wolverhampton’s cultural history. This is reflected in concrete form through a ‘capsule’ exhibition of a selection of works from Wolverhampton Art Gallery’s permanent collection, presented as part of BAS9”.
Brian Cass, Senior Curator, Hayward Gallery Touring, said: “We are delighted to be working with Wolverhampton Art Gallery and University of Wolverhampton School of Art on British Art Show 9. The collections and histories of these two iconic institutions provides an important context for BAS9. We hope the extraordinary range and variety of outstanding work in BAS9 will give everyone who lives and visits Wolverhampton an opportunity to engage with the most exciting contemporary art being produced in the UK today.”
