Keynote Speaker
 

Claudette Johnson

Claudette Johnson is a British artist and member of the BLK Art Group. She is known for her large-scale studies of Black subjects. Her talk and seminar at the First National Black Arts Conference in 1982 is recognised as a formative moment in the Black feminist art movement in the UK. She was recently described by Modern Art Oxford as "one of the most accomplished figurative artists working in Britain today". Johnson’s work, ‘Standing Figure with African Masks’ (2018) is currently on show at Tate Britain in the display: Walk Through British Art. 

Photo credit: Ingrid Pollard

An in-conversation with Claudette Johnson, Keith Piper and Marlene Smith, artists and founding members of the influential BLK Art Group

Formed in Wolverhampton in the late 1970s, the group known first as the Wolverhampton Young Black Artists and later the BLK Art Group brought together young artists including Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Eddie Chambers, Donald Rodney, Claudette Johnson, Wenda Leslie, Dominic Dawes, and Ian Palmer. With roots deep in the Midlands, the group had significant political and artistic importance; their work spoke to and about race, class and gender relations in the UK and challenged narrow parameters of art-making and aesthetics. They forged the way for the founding of institutions such as The Black-Art Gallery, INIVA and the Association of Black Photographers. In this panel discussion the artists will talk about their work and the legacies of the BLK Art Group, and reflect upon the intersections of art practices, politics and histories then and now, and what the future might hold for British art and art history.