Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Nottingham Contemporary 2024
This retrospective exhibition of black activist artist Donald Rodney at Nottingham Contemporary was testament to the valuable role he played in the UK art scene. It included a huge body of work spanning video, sculpture, found objects, installation, painting and photography. It referenced his battle with sickle cell anemia, racism, black masculine identity and colonialism. His voice is as relevant today as it was when he was making his work; and this is testament to the importance of the conversations he tried to hold.
He was a pioneering Nottingham black artist, speaking out loudly about the inequality and racism in the art world and creating publications for peers and future black artists to help them navigate the system effectively.
He was involved in his work in an extremely intimate way, with parts of his skin, photos of his medical scars and video pieces made during his time spent bedbound due to ill health included in his works. The visceral yet accessible nature of his art makes his work impactful and commands that you pay attention to what he is trying to communicate. I understand what it means to want to include parts of yourself, both literal and metaphorical in your work, and the power and resonance this can give to a piece.
He wanted one of his installations to include his blood being pumped around colonial family crests painted on boards but wasn't allowed due to concerns about this posing a health risk to members of the general public. An attitude which further highlighted the discrimination and endemic medical racism he and other black community members suffer. This reaction is in especially poor taste because the piece is talking about the blood of black slaves that built the British Empire.
He consistently held a lens up to racist and harmful perceptions of black male identity; something that he suffered the impacts of throughout his life. One of his pieces involved multiple slide projectors illuminating cut up images of black make faces in collage on a large scale. As the projectors cycled through, an everchanging blurred mishmash of black faces appeared on the gallery wall, referencing the racism faced by black males through police photofit profiling. It also cleverly evoked curiosity about the man behind the nose, eyes and chin that lit up the wall. Who were they? And what parts of them were denied and hurt by toxic systemic beliefs?
The time I spent talking with the gallery assistants highlighted what a massive undertaking it had been to collate and display his work. Not least because some of the mediums that he used are unique and therefore are devoid of script for preservation and display; for example a number of his paintings and sculpture include x-rays of his body gathered during treatment.
I was particularly struck watching interviews of him by how gentle, jovial and earnest he seemed. In my mind and heart, it generated an even more poignant relationship with his audience.
I left the gallery feeling a closeness to him. An empathy for his journey and admiration for his creativity and determination to tell his story and to connect with his audience.
Photography was not allowed in some areas of the exhibition. Regrettably one of this areas included the wheelchair he sat in for a lot of his adult life that had been modified using motion sensors so that it could move without risk of collision, empty, around the gallery space. Carrying his ghost.
Below are some of my favourite pieces that I could document.
