Output details

Pathways to the 1980s

‘Pathways to the 1980s’ is a 34-minute video essay on the ‘Blk Art Group Research Project 2012’, of which I was a founder member. The ‘Blk Art Group Research Project 2012’ exists to provide a context for new scholarship examining the 1980s British Black Art Movement, its precursors and its legacies. The video essay examines a number of the key cultural and political influences that shaped the consolidation of Afro-Caribbean communities in the UK from the foundational moments of mass migration in the 1950s to the generational emergence of a fledgling ‘Black Britishness’ in the 1980s, using evidence from the existing photojournalistic, televisual and filmic archive. It also references prior research on this developmental epoch, in order to unpack the critical thinking of the moment from a longer historical perspective. The work adds to this body of knowledge in its specific examination of the previously unexplored archive of the Blk Art Group within the section of the video essay entitled ‘Coming up in the Black Moment’.

A version of the video essay was first shown at a Blk Art Group Research Project symposium in February 2012 held in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Blk Art group’ held at the Graves Gallery Sheffield form August 2011- March 2012. The final version of the video essay was shown at the Blk Art Group Research Project conference, ‘Reframing the Moment; Legacies of the 1982 Blk Art Group Conference’ and remains accessible via the research project website (http://www.blkartgroup.info) and on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/56718712).

The output is presented via portfolio, which should be viewed in order to gain a proper understanding of the research.