Sovereignty of Quiet

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Darkroom Mirror (_2200633)  2018

Charles White, Love Letter III  1977

Tau Lewis, Saint Mozelle  2022

Barkley L. Hendricks, Family Jules: NNN (No Naked Niggahs)  1974

Hendricks made four paintings featuring George Jules Taylor, one of his former students at Yale University. The other paintings showed him dressed in contemporary fashions, while this one depicts him nude except for his glasses. Hendricks was already a well-known African-American painter, and his decision to place a naked black male figure in the position of the traditional female ‘odalisque’ was extremely radical. As the title underlines, the painting confronts white fears and sexual stereotypes surrounding the black male. These issues are heightened by a realistic representational style that went against contemporary trends in black American art.

Gallery label, October 2016

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Remain, Thriving  2018

Made for Brixton Underground station, this scene imagines a gathering of the grandchildren of the ‘Windrush generation’ who moved to Britain following the 1948 British Nationality Act. The patterned walls, radiogram and hanging pictures are reminiscent of ‘front rooms’ they may associate with their grandparents. The wall imagery derives from photography in Brixton’s Black Cultural Archives, Including portraits of Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and activist Olive Morris. The scene is not simply celebratory: 2018 news of the Windrush scandal’s deportation of commonwealth citizens plays on television.

Gallery label, January 2022

Robert Colescott, The Emperor at the Bathers’ Pool  1985

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Drop Scene (_2200693)  2018