Flipping the Card
A look at the current controversial exhibition, ‘Playing the Race Card’.
It is not often that an art exhibition in Hastings can claim to be “an important and historic moment for our town.” But that is the entirely justifiable view of Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE, producer of the Playing The Race Card exhibition beginning on Friday, 21 October, in St Leonards. As the title implies this is an exhibition in which Black artists seek to confront and question the controversial idea of ‘playing the race card.’ And, as Lorna explains, “it will be the first time ever that so many black artists have shown in a single exhibition in Hastings.” It certainly seems likely to be a thought-provoking show.
False Profits by Sharon James
The notion of people ‘playing the race card’ is obviously highly divisive. And, in today’s fractious climate, even explosive. Therefore, this exhibition is both timely and super-charged. The project’s director, Claudine Eccleston argues, persuasively, that “when black and racialised people call out racism, too often we are blamed for being oversensitive or even accused of using sensitivities around race to our advantage.” She adds, on a personal note, that “this Black woman has never felt that a ‘race card’ was something other than in the soul of the racist. We hope this exhibition will help turn this problematic metaphor on its head and be a catalyst for debate.” If you want to get involved in that debate, there will be a panel discussion around these issues and images in the exhibition space on Saturday, 22 October at 2pm. The panel consists of the artist Femi Dawkins, the online ‘book influencer’ Sarah Gwonyoma, the illustrator/designer Dorcas Magbadelo and the textile artist Maggie Scott.
The exhibition began life as a community-led project back in 2020 which, due to the pandemic, existed only online. It was open to all UK artists who identified as Black, embracing people whose ancestral origins may be African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Romany, or indeed from any of the historic corners of exploitative empires. But now, for the first time, the exhibition will exist as a physical event and will feature an extremely wide range of artists, including many from the local area. Approaches also vary considerably, ranging from painting and printing, to photography, video and radical textile work. Surprisingly perhaps, it seems that craft and textile work has increased its profile in recent times, shaking off its cosy-hobby image. Lorna Hamilton-Brown, for example, has done a great deal to show the potential of knitting as a serious art form. Indeed, she has been described as the ‘Banksy of Knitting.’ For many, we suspect, this will be quite a jarring notion. In this way, and in many more, this exhibition looks likely to make you think. To say the least.
Artists featuring their work in the exhibition include self-taught London portrait artist Jacqui Cooke. She was born in Britain to Jamaican parents and, fascinatingly, she has studied and developed the traditional methods of oil painting, that arguably were so central to white European high-culture, to explore the histories and achievements of individuals from the African diaspora. Hastings-based, Vanessa Alves, is also exhibiting her work ‘The Skin I am In.’ This is a short video showing a poem overlapping the images of her skin. She explains that she “allowed her experience of being a Black woman to inform this piece.” Izzy, a 16-year-old singer/songwriter from St Leonards, has created an intriguing collage, ‘Our Existence Matters.’ She explained her thinking quite sharply – “living in a predominantly white area, I felt like I didn’t have a voice. Art is such an amazing way to express feelings. This piece of artwork was my voice.”
Whilst this is clearly an art exhibition with strong political overtones, we should not lose sight of the fact that this is an art exhibition. As the organisers say, the aim ultimately is to “replace a culture of victim blaming with a celebration of diversity.” I suspect that this show is going to highlight diversity as part of its very essence.
• The exhibition is on from Friday, 21 October to Sunday, 6 November at Greenhalf Studio, 7-11 Market Street, St Leonards.
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