1961
On 18 May, Donald Rodney is born in Birmingham, England. He
is the last of twelve children and at birth the hospital recognises
that he may have sickle cell anaemia.
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1965
On 12 February Malcolm X visits Smethwick, because he is disturbed
by a case of bigotry on Marshall Street. This is the town where
Rodney lives; he grows up on the street which caused the controversy.
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1968
Several of Donald’s brothers and sisters who were born
in Jamaica migrate to England.
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1977
Donald Rodney enters a Foundation Course but he misses many
of his classes because of frequent hospital visits, and is thrown
out of art school for failing to keep up with his coursework.
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1979
At the age of seventeen, Rodney produces his first sketchbook.
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1980
He begins a Foundation Course at the Bournville School of Art
in Birmingham and graduates in 1981.
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1981
He starts a Fine Art Honours BA at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham.
During his studies he meets Keith Piper. Rodney writes his thesis
on ‘Black Independent Film as part of the Black Art Movement.’
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| 1982
Donald Rodney joins a group of young black
artists who become known as the Pan-Afrikan Connection. They
plan group exhibitions and produce works that engage with
the struggles of black people. The collective includes Eddie
Chambers, Keith Piper, Marlene Smith and Claudette Johnson.
Donald Rodney posing next to the
poster for a show he helped organise called, The First National
Black Art Convention. He is 21 years old and around this time
he begins to consider art as a career. |
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A polaroid of (from left to right)
Marlene Smith, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney and Eddie Chambers
They are posed in front of an art work shown at one of their
many group exhibitions.
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| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| The Pan-Afrikan
Connection organises The First National Black Art Convention
in Wolverhampton. At this event Donald Rodney meets Sonia Boyce
and the Black Audio Film Collective. He
moves into a flat with Keith Piper shortly after his Christmas
break at college.
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1983
The Pan-Afrikan Connection organises
several group shows at venues including the Africa Centre in
London, the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry, and the Midland
Group in Nottingham. Rodney becomes
the youngest person in the UK to have an operation to replace
both of his hips.
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A
flyer for a degree show that Donald was involved in while
studying at Trent Polytechnic. |
Courtesy of
the Artist's Estate |
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1984
The Pan-African Connection changes their
name to the Blk Art Group and holds An Exhibition of Radical
Black Art at the Battersea Arts Centre, as well as the University
of Birmingham.
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1985
Donald pursues a Postgraduate Diploma in
Multi-Media Fine Art at the Slade School in London. He completes
this degree in 1987. Rodney’s
first solo exhibition The First White Christmas & Other
Empire Stories opens at Saltley Print and Media in Birmingham
on 9 December.
He exhibits in the group show Heroes and Heroines
held at the Black-Art Gallery in Finsbury Park, North London.
The Handsworth riots; press coverage of this
event becomes important source material for Rodney’s
work.
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A poster Donald Rodney made to publicise his first solo exhibition.
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| Courtesy
of the Artist's Estate |
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1986
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This poster was produced for
Donald Rodney’s solo exhibition at the Black-Art Gallery
in London. The photographs in the lower band are images appropriated
from the media coverage of the Handsworth riots in 1985: in
the centre is an image of a black youth holding a petrol bomb
and in the lower corners are photos of Cherry Groce, a woman
whose poor treatment by the police became a catalyst for the
uprising.
In the brochure accompanying the show
Donald Rodney writes: ‘my work challenges the concept
of art for art’s sake and without any regret or any
apologetic gesture to appease the liberal amongst you.’
Rodney has a major solo exhibition entitled
The Atrocity Exhibition & Other Empire Stories at the
Black-Art Gallery from 12 July to 2 August.
He exhibits in the following London-based group
shows: Unrecorded Truths at the Elbow Room, Young, Black and
Here at the People’s Gallery and State of the Art: Ideas
and Images in the 1980s at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
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| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
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1987
Rodney’s disease of the blood worsens;
during an extended period in hospital he develops the idea of
using x-rays as a medium for his art. Clinton
McCurbin, a young black man, is arrested in a shopping mall
in Wolverhampton and dies in police custody. Donald Rodney
takes press images from this event and uses them in works
such as Self-Portrait as Clinton McCurbin.
Rodney is included in the following group shows:
The Devil’s Feast at the Chelsea School of Art, True
Colours in Greenwich, The Image Employed at Cornerhouse, Piper
and Rodney at the Prema Arts Centre, Piper and Rodney-Adventures
Close to Home at the Pentonville Gallery and Depicting History:
for Today which opens at the Mappin Gallery.
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1988
Donald Rodney posed next to his x-ray piece Flame of the
Soul, completed in 1988. The photo was taken during the
making of a CEDDO/Channel Four film on sickle cell anaemia also
called Flame of the Soul.
Rodney is awarded a residency through the Graves Art Gallery
in Sheffield. This enables him to produce the majority of the
works shown the following year in his solo exhibition.
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| Courtesy of the
Artist's Estate |
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| 1989
Rodney has a solo exhibition entitled
Crisis at the Chisenhale Gallery which brings together a variety
of his x-ray based works.
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 |
| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| Front and
back views of the invitations for Rodney’s solo exhibition
Crisis at the Chisenhale Gallery. On the cover is a black-and-white
reproduction of his work Britannia Hospital 2, in which the
hospital becomes a metaphor for Britain’s diseased society.
He participates in two group shows, Searchlight,
Visibility/Surveillance/Regard at the Ikon Gallery and The
Suitcase Show which tours the UK.
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| 1990
In September of this year, Rodney
participates in TSWA Four Cities Project and exhibits his
work Visceral Canker in The Battery an underground fortress
in Plymouth at Mount Edgcumbe Park. Just before the show opens,
the local city council rules against the artist’s plans
to use his own blood as a part of the work.
Front and back views of the invitation
for Rodney’s first retrospective show, Critical which
opens at Rochdale Art Gallery on 19 May 1990.
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Donald Rodney preparing for the
TSWA Four Cities Project. He is sitting with his partner Diane
Symons in an Air Raid Shelter on Coburg Street in Plymouth,
near where he installed his piece Visceral Canker in 1990. |
| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| Donald Rodney has
a solo show called Critical at Rochdale Art Gallery. He decides
to exhibit his sketchbooks in this exhibition for the first
and only time.
Rodney participates in the following group shows:
Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces at the Herbert
Art Gallery in Coventry, Black Markets at Cornerhouse in Manchester,
and Body at the Arnolfini Gallery.
He is also awarded a residency through the Bishop
Challoner School in Wapping, London.
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1991
Donald has a solo exhibition entitled Cataract at Camerawork
in London. He is also included in the following group shows:
Shocks to the System on the South Bank, Interrogating Identity
at the Grey Centre Art Centre Gallery and Breaths: Art, Health
and Empowerment at Rochdale Art Gallery.
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| 1992
Donald participates in the Trophies of
Empire exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. His
piece entitled Doublethink is one of the best received works
in the show.
He shows works in the exhibition Mis(sed)
Representations at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool. He also
curates a show at the Ikon Gallery called White Noise, Artists
Working with Sound.
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A detail of Doublethink, a work
Donald made by borrowing sporting trophies which he furnished
with a series of inscribed plaques The work is shown in the
exhibition Trophies of Empire at the Arnolfini in Bristol.
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| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| The trophies read
(from left to right): ‘Black culture keeps oscillating
between hope and fear / Black culture is torn by convulsive
shudders,’ ‘Black sportsmen have small IQs / Black
people are inadequate and bitter,’ ‘Black sportsmen
take drugs / Black people love western life,’ and ‘Black
history has a horrible echo / Sadly, Black history gives poignant
clues to Black future / Black people are sly.’
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1994
His work is shown in the group exhibition Truth, Dare, Double
Dare at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
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1995
Donald Rodney’s mixed
media installation piece entitled Othello, which he developed
in collaboration with Graham Plumb. This piece was produced
for the exhibition Care and Control held in Hackney Hospital
from 24 June to 5 August in 1995.
Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| The walls of the
Victoria ward were spray-painted in camouflage and a pile
of used syringes and drugs was scattered over a pile of mattresses.
In an interview Rodney explains that he chose camouflage because,
‘I remember reading a thing said about OJ Simpson, that
you can take the nigger from the jungle, but you cannot take
the jungle from the nigger.’
Rodney contributes to the exhibition Care and
Control held in Hackney Hospital. He works in collaboration
with Graham Plumb on an installation piece titled Othello.
Donald Rodney’s father dies.
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1996
Front and back views of invitations
for the group show The Visible and the Invisible at the Wellcome
Centre from 21 September to 26 October 1996. The cover of
this private view card features an image of Donald Rodney’s
over-stitched scar which was also used in his piece Flesh
Of My Flesh.
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| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| Donald Rodney’s
work is included in the exhibition Body Visual at the Barbican
Centre. He also shows work in the exhibition The Visible and
the Invisible and Representing the Body in Contemporary Art
and Society at the Wellcome Trust in London.
He is awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award
for Sculpture and Installation.
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1997
Front and back views of the invitations
for Donald Rodney’s solo show 9 Night in Eldorado at the
South London Gallery, 10 September to 12 October 1997. The show
was held in honour of his father and the title makes explicit
reference to this. Eldorado was his father’s favourite
movie and ‘9 night’ refers to a Jamaican tradition
where family members of the deceased reminisce about their loved
ones over a period of nine evenings.
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| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
| Rodney is awarded
a grant from the Digital Arts & Disabled People Scheme through
the Arts Council of England. This is a bittersweet moment for
him as he is forced to recognise that his disease has officially
rendered him disabled. During the preparation
for 9 Night in Eldorado, Rodney has a hip-removal operation
which leads to long periods of hospitalisation.
His solo exhibition 9 Night in Eldorado opens
at the South London Gallery. It is dedicated to the memory
of his father. Rodney shows his piece Psalms, which consists
of a computer-automated empty wheelchair, but he is unable
to attend the opening of this show because of his deteriorating
physical condition.
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He produces his work My Father, My Sister, My Brother, a
small house built out of his own skin. |
| © the Estate
of the artist |
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Front and back views of the
invitation for the group show Inside Out, held at the East
London Gallery. The cover is illustrated by Rodney’s
lightbox work Self-Portrait: Black Men Public Enemy. |
| Courtesy of the Artist's Estate |
1998
He participates in the show Inside
Out at the East London Gallery. Donald
Rodney dies on 4 March.
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2000
Donald Rodney’s work is shown in the prestigious
British Art Show 5. He is also included in the show Give and
Take, Works Presented to Museums by the Contemporary Art Society
held at the Harris Museum and the Jerwood Gallery.
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2003
Tate acquires the collection of Donald Rodney’s
archival material.
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