The Caribbean Artist Movement

Artistic Insight: Read about the Caribbean artist movement, their formation and aims.

The Caribbean Artist Movement (CAM) was a London-based creative grouping formed of writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians of Caribbean heritage that formed in 1966. Artists from the exhibition who were a part of this cultural initiative include the likes of Winston Branch, Aubrey Williams, Ronald Moody, Errol Lloyd. The movement illustrates the cultural cross-over of the time and the attempt of Black Artist’s, grouped through commonality but not defined by their heritage, to assert themselves in the visual sphere.

Errol Lloyd, The Lesson, 1972, Oil on canvas

From 1947 onwards, following WW2, there was an influx of migrants from various Caribbean islands.  Desiring to study, responding to the post-war labour shortage and the economical depression of the West Indies, the migrants came from all social spheres and backgrounds. England offered an opportunity for these individuals to interact, unrestricted by distance and geography. Despite the wildly disparate cultures, traditions and social and political structures of the different West Indian nations, migrants were often united in this foreign England. Wishing to establish their creative positions, and Caribbean- African heritage, in a new cultural environment, CAM was formed.

Writers John La Rose, Edward Kamau Braithwaite  and Andrew Salkey were two of the principle founders of the movement. Salkey was extensively published by Bogle –L’Ouverture Publications and was a close friend of the Huntley’s, who too were members of CAM. As well as grouping together artists, amalgamating skill and creativity, CAM wished to offer a reassessment of West Indian art of all forms, offering a critical framework that was more appropriate than the prevailing European tradition. The Caribbean artist movement, in its inception, often reflected backwards to its Caribbean heritage in various forms, but as time went on and a  new Black British identity emerged.

The CAM works in the No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960 – 1990 demonstrates the initiative of Black creative individuals to organise themselves and create an artistic space for themselves and their work in society arguably constrained by

racial assumptions and academic limitations. The Caribbean Artist Movement is also crucial in the overall understanding of Black cultural practices of the time as it demonstrates the dialogue between various mediums and practices, how word and image were closely related and combined in order the strengthen the themes and transmission of ideas.

Justice for Walter Rodney

(Words belong to the Walter Rodney Campaign) 

One Last Push for 1K signatures! Extended to Tues.10th Nov.

Part of Bogle L’ouverture’s genesis, Dr Walter Rodney’s name, work and image remain pivotal to FHALMA’s work and legacy. Yet successive Guyana governments try to expunge Rodney from Guyana's history. 

The new Guyana government, right now, continues to efface the work of the first Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry  into Dr Rodney's 1980 assassination. They seek to frustrate the proper completion of this - or any real inquiry, while more key witnesses die, records disappear, evidence degrades. And we forget?

That's why we started this petition. Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? Here's the link with further information.

One Last Push for 1K signatures! Extended to Tues.10th Nov.

We seek your urgent support for our campaign to salvage some justice for this distinguished son of Africa, educator and author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. It is crucial to raise the profile of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry into Dr Rodney's assassination as the last chance to secure vital historic records - before its too late, and remind the Guyana government that Rodney's legacy matters, beyond Guyana.

Requesting your Prompt Action

The new Guyana government continues to efface the work of this Commission of Inquiry into Rodney's assassination by denying the two more weeks it requested to properly complete its work. They seek to frustrate the proper completion of any real inquiry, 35 years on, while more key witnesses die, records disappear, evidence degrades. And we forget.

That's why we started this petition. Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? Here's the link with further information. 

We'd also be grateful if you would urgently circulate to students and social justice contacts. 

Thank you,

Justice for Walter Rodney Campaign

Artistic Insight: Uzo Egonu

Artistic Insight: Layla Gatens is a recent graduate of the University of East Anglia, studying History of Art and Anthropology. Here she explores Uzo Egonu and his work, Portrait of a Guinea Girl. 

Uzo Egonu, Portrait of a Guinea Girl,  1962, Oil on Canvas 

The internationally renowned modern painter, Uzo Egonu, explored the relationship between painting and sculptural forms, fusing his western and non-western influences to evoke a different kind of modernism. Painting at a time when the anti-colonial struggle was gaining momentum, Egonu’s work came to negotiate political themes of domination, racism and oppression. No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960- 1990 feature’s a rare and exciting example of Egonu’s figurative work; Portrait of a Guinea Girl (1962).

Egonu’s Portrait of a Guinea Girl (1962) explores the artist’s nostalgic feelings towards his homeland, whilst marking a crucial moment in the development of his personal aesthetic. Egonu’s oil painting depicts a young, Guinean girl, dressed in traditional West African outfit with a matching head dress and jewellery. The girl, with a neutral expression, leans forward with her arms crossed. The rigid pose, powerful graphic style and vivid colours draw similarities with Gaugin’s female subjects in his paintings of Tahiti in 1891-1892. 

After moving from Nigeria to England at the age of 14, Egonu studied painting and printing at Camberwell School of Arts until 1951. Graduating in an era of increasing cultural awareness, the global opposition to imperialism became crucial to the young artist’s process of cultural self-definition. This period of anticipation and political excitement led Egonu to spend much of his time in the offices of the West African students union. Like the Walter Rodney Bookshop that inspired the No Colour Bar exhibition, this provided young migrant students such as Egonu with “a place to read newspapers, engage in long discussions about the times and generally feel at home”. (Oguibe, 2004: 61)

In 1952, Egonu travelled Europe to expose himself to major works from the renaissance, cubism and surrealism, as well as those from Africa. During this period, Egonu was also engaging with the philosophy of the Negritude movement, which encouraged a common racial identity for Africans worldwide, and emphasized nostalgia as the core of their philosophy. After initially struggling to give form to his new conceptual and cultural ideas, Egonu’s creative crisis was solved by the route of memory and recollection, leading him to produce Portrait of a Guinea Girl - a celebratory, heroic portrait of an African female. The image romanticizes, valorises and reclaims the notion of ‘home’, positioning the girl as the embodiment of a future ‘Mother Africa,’ a vision of the beauty and potential of the African continent. With this view, Portrait of a Guinea Girl thematically and conceptually alludes to the 1945 poem Femme Noir, by negritude writer Léopold Sédar Senghor:

Naked woman, black woman

Clothed with your colour which is life, with your form which is beauty

In your shadow I have grown up; the gentleness of your hands was laid over my       eyes.                                                                   

And now, high up on the sun-baked pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,

I come upon you, my Promised Land,

And your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an eagle.

 -        Extract from Femme Noire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1945

Portrait of a Guinea Girl marks the beginning of Egonu’s crucial link with ‘home’, a theme that continues throughout his body of work.  Egonu continued to assert his African background with forms of European modernism, and in turn achieved an expression that was committed to his identity as an African artist in Britain, as well as his socio-political vision. Through his painting, Egonu confronted the barriers between Western and African art, and went on to overcome the processes of exclusion that made British galleries and exhibition spaces inaccessible to artists of non-European descent. By the 1960’s Egonu was a revered leader of the avant-garde scene in London.

See Uzo Egonu’s work, as well as many other seminal artists at the 'No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960 - 1990' exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery until 24th January 2016.

-        Layla Gatens