| Intro.
Q. How did you first meet Donald Rodney?
Q. What would Donald Rodney have thought
about having his archives donated to Tate?
Q. What was Donald Rodney's involvement in
the Black Art movement of the 1980s?
Q. What was Donald Rodney's work about when you met him?
Q. What key themes underpin Donald Rodney's
work?
Q. How do you feel about Black History Month?
Q. What
was Donald Rodney's work about when you met him?
Jeremy Akerman
Donald was never that very worst kind of artist,
the one that begins, 'my work is about such and such'. Quite
the opposite. Donald was constantly involved in ideas about
art, life and what to have for dinner. Donald held opinions
on most things, responding with his art in ways that he felt
would make the most impact. He had a showman’s instinct
and knew how to get attention, but this was really the sugar
on the pill, a way to get you onto to more uncomfortable issues.
He was a great tease, but he liked the uncomfortable, uncomfortable
meaning important issues where something is really at stake.
I guess to put it in a rather crap obvious way Donald specialised
in making the best of living in a sick body. This was a metaphor
that he used often about society. He was fascinated by the
way things live and rot, which was reflected in his fascination
with Michael Jackson and his work that used milk and money.
He keenly followed developments in technology and was the
first person I knew to draw attention to the future as microscopic.
There was something arch about Donald, he knew a lot (about
death, pain, displacement, greed, jealousy) and protected
his friends from it whilst simultaneously unleashing these
ideas in work that was as angry and as deliberate as he could
muster.
Virginia Nimarkoh
The piece I remember specifically from
the Camerawork show was Bête Noire. It was very provocative
and very funny. Donald was working with appropriated imagery
at that time. He juxtaposed a bronze cast of a Mr T doll (from
the cult 1980s TV series The A-Team) with light box
featuring a detail from Robert Mapplethorpe's Man in Polyester
Suit. The two objects made such an odd pair; the image
of the black penis seemed huge next to this tiny doll. Donald
was playing with stereotypes of black masculinity produced
in both high and low culture.
Michael Tooby
The same as it was about for all his career;
but perhaps less layered by the construction of his work around
his illness as metaphor.
David Lawson
Donald's work was always very tactile, provocative,
sometimes sublime, narratively compelling and engaging.
David Thorp
Donald's exhibition at the South London
Gallery was entitled Nine Night in Eldorado and it
included several pieces of new work made especially for the
show. Nine Night is a traditional Jamaican event
that takes place after the death of a family member. The family
meet to reminisce over a period of nine nights. Eldorado
recalled Donald's father's favourite film and evoked the mythical
'land of milk and honey' that his father believed he would
find when he travelled to Britain in the 1950's. The souring
of these hopes was represented in the show by Donald's sculpture
Land of Milk and Honey, a glass filled with strata
of milk, honey and copper coins that have gradually curdled
and bled into one another. The exhibition was the 'nine night'
that Donald was unable to attend after the death of his father.
Among the works in the exhibition was
another piece made specifically for the show. Donald worked
with computer scientists to develop a sensor-driven wheelchair
that responded to approaches by visitors. If approached, the
wheelchair would wheel away from the visitor and try to hide,
then return only to try to conceal itself again. A comment
by Donald on the awkwardness and the invisibility experienced
by the disabled. His automaton Pygmalion placed in
an illuminated booth reminiscent of those once found in seaside
arcades, was also sensor driven and was sited at the end of
dark tunnel. It would light up and spring into life as anyone
entered, shocking the viewer as it gestated in its booth.
A roughly blacked-up mask of Michael Jackson was placed over
the figure's carved head, a symbol of ambivalence between
black and white identity. The outside of the tunnel was camouflaged
in a military pattern. Looking carefully at the outer wall
the viewer could discern a slogan in the camouflage, Donald
had written, 'You can take the nigger out of the jungle, but
you can't take the jungle out of the nigger.'
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