Lubaina Himid :- Exhibition At The Walker Art Gallery - Liverpool - 7/10/17 - 18/3/18

Feb, 16 2018

~It’s one thing to study a subject at University, it’s another to interpret what you’re studying into a piece of contemporary art. There are a wide range of subjects for artists to focus their work. Probably one of the most difficult to  portray is the slave trade yet UCLAN lecturer and Preston based artist Lubaina Himid has taken on such a challenge in an exhibition entitled :- ‘ Lubaina Himid :- Meticulous Observations and Naming the Money’.

Having recently won The Turner Prize in 2017, Lubaina is hoping her new exhibition will give her the continuous exposure enabling her to become a relevant artist in the 21st century.

She has already made history by becoming the first black female to win the prestigious Turner Prize and the theme of race and colour shapes her installation ‘Naming the  Money’ which seeks to reveal how Europe’s wealthy classes spent their money and flaunted their power in the 18th and 19th centuries, by using enslaved African men and women. The highly individual sculptural figures, each with their own profession and life-story, demonstrate how enslavement was disguised and glamorised.

The exhibition is taking place at the Walker Art Gallery on William Brown Street, Liverpool. It began   last October and runs till Sunday 18th March 2018.  Visitors to the Walker will find groups of these figures positioned around the gallery in configurations determined by the artist.

As you enter the Art Gallery you will see a series of paintings all by female artists which dominate just one room. Central to this display is a collection of Lubaina’s work dating back to 1987 simply entitled, ‘Scenes from the life of Toussaint L’Overture’, about the former slave who led the Haitian revolution.

This is a person who has seriously grafted to create some epic and moving pieces of art which were relevant in the 1980’s and remain as important in the modern era. As an MBE and Professor of Contemporary Art at the School of Art, Design and Fashion at Preston’s UCLAN, students couldn’t be in anymore capable hands. Yet she remains humble and modest about her work, despite knowing that it’s an intellectual concept derived from the things she has seen and experienced in the media that has inspired her to create her memorable works of art.

Experience a  powerful new exhibition which  features works selected by Lubaina from the Arts Council Collection, along with 20 figures from her major installation, Naming the Money.

Lubaina Himid: Meticulous Observations and Naming the Money
Walker Art Gallery & Arts Council Collection
 Saturday 7th October to Sunday 18th March 2018.

^Alex Ashworth.