Kaveh Golestan was born in 1950, Tehran, Iran. He was a photojournalist and an artist who worked in both Iran and Britain.
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mm
Kaveh Golestan’s socially engaged photography exposes the plight of people living on the margins of society.
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mm
This series of portraits, taken between 1975 and 1977, documents sex workers from the former red light district, Shahr-e No, in Tehran, Iran. Following the 1953 Iranian coup a wall was erected around the area, creating an inner-city ghetto where approximately 1,500 women lived and worked. Here Golestan witnessed ‘the social, financial, hygienic, behavioural and psychological problems that exist in everyday society… magnified.’
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 167 x 247 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm
Golestan spent several years researching the area and gaining the trust of the residents, developing a connection with his subjects evidenced by the sensitivity of his portraits. Golestan believed in the power of art to challenge accepted narratives. By documenting harsh realities with brutal honesty he hoped to raise awareness of the issues facing society and encourage the public to take action.
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 167 x 248 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm
Golestan commented, ‘I want to show you images that will be like a slap in your face to shatter your security. You can look away, turn off, hide your identity … but you cannot stop the truth. No one can.’
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 245 x 157 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 167 x 247 mm
During the Iranian revolution of 1979 Shahr-e No was deliberately set alight. The authorities made no attempt to put out the fire and there are no records of how many women died.
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm
Under the newly formed Islamic Republic, the area was demolished in an act of ‘cultural cleansing’ and today bears no reference to its past. Golestan’s images are among the last known records of the women of Shahr-e No.
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mmUntitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm
This exhibition celebrates the work of Black artists working in the united states in the two decades after 1963. During this turbulent time, these artists asked and answered many questions. How should an artist respond to political and cultural changes? Was there a ‘Black art’ or a ‘Black aesthetic’? Should an artist create legible images or make abstract work? Was there a choice to be made between addressing a specifically Black audience or a ‘universal’ one? The exhibition looks at responses to such questions.
In 1963, when the exhibition begins, the American Civil Rights Movement was at its height. At the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington D.C., Dr Martin Luther King, Jr dreamed that his children would live in ‘a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’.
King referred to himself proudly as ‘Negro’, but by this time, many who were on the March were beginning to call themselves Black. Taking issue with King’s non-violent position, especially after appalling racist violence later in 1963, many joined in calls for ‘Black Power’.
Others rejected in idea of an integrated America, and began to speak of a separate, autonomous Black Nation. Looking at newly independent African nations, and understanding an ancestral connection to the continent, the terms ‘Afro-American’ and ‘African American’ also began to take root. The artists in Soul of a Nation wereprofoundly aware of these political visions and different senses of self, and each took an aesthetic position in relation to them.
Reginald Gammon, Freedom Now, Acrylic paint on board, 1963
Norman Lewis
“America the Beautiful”
In a small series of works, he set aside his flair for colour to concentrate on black and white, in order to reflect on race relations in America. Here, lewis evokes a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, while titling the work to suggest the difference between America’s vision of itself and its realities.
Norman Lewis, America the Beautiful, Oil paint on canvas, 1960
Romare Bearden The Dove Photostat on Fibreboard 1964
Wadsworth Jarrell
“Black Prince”
Black Prince is a portrait of Malcolm X, made for the second AfriCOBRA exhibition in 1971 held, like their first, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It is based on a May 1963 photograph of Malcolm X in Harlem, speaking against segregation and ‘Uncle Tom Negro preachers’.
Wadsworth Jarrell Black Prince Acrylic paint on canvas
Wadsworth Jarrell Liberation soldiers Acrylic paint and foil canvas
Kay Brown
“The Divel and His Game”
Kay Brown was for a time the sole woman member of Weusi artist collective, named after the Swahili word for ‘blackness’, and would go on to be an influential member of Where We At! In The Devil and His Game, Brown comments on then-US president Richard Nixton’s foreign and domestic policies.
Kay Brown The Divel and His Game Paper and acrylic paint on canvas 1970
Jeff Donaldson, Wives of Sango, Acrylic paint, gold foil and silver foil on cardboard, 1979
Ed Clark
“Yenom (#9)”
Ed Clark was a part of the second generation of abstract expressionist and in 1957 was the first American artist to experiment with irregularity shaped canvases.
Ed Clark, Yenom (#9), 1970
William T. Williams
“Trane”
This painting was named after John Coltrane and may conjure the cascades of sound in his performances.
William T. Williams, Trane Acrylic paint on canvas, 1969
Jack Whitten
“Homage to Malcolm”
Most of his late 1960s works were colourful with expressive brushstrokes, however Homage to Malcolm is very clearly structured and is the artist’s only triangular painting.
Jack Whitten, Homage to Malcolm, Acrylic paint on canvas,1970
Andy Warhol
“Muhammad Ali”
The palette of red, black and green shares its colours with the pan-African flag where red represents the blood uniting the African diaspora, black as representative of its people, and green being the natural riches of the African continent.
Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, Acrylic paint and screenprint on canvas, 1978
Barkley Hendricks
“Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale)”
Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale) is a self-portrait, trimmed with a border evoking the American flag. Barkley Hendricks painted himself wearing a novelty T-shirt, provocatively nude from the waist down. The work’s subtitle invites a declarative statement of solidarity with the Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.
Barkley Hendricks, Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale), Oil paint, acrylic paint and aluminium leaf on canvas,1969
Gerald Williams
“Nation Time”
Gerald Williams was one of the five founding members of AfriCOBRA. For Williams, ‘Nation’ referred not to America but to a separate Black nation. Amiri Baraka used the word in the same way in his poem of the same year, ‘It’s Nation Time’, and Jeff Donaldson used the phrase too in the landmark AfriCOBRA text, ’10 in Search of a Nation’, also 1970: ‘It’s NATION TIME and we re now searching.
Gerald Williams, Nation Time, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1970
David Hammons
“Injustice Case”
Injustice Case refers to Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale’s trial for conspiracy to incite violence, during which Seale was bound and gagged in the courtroom. Hammons cut an American flag to frame the image (itself a punishable offence), effectively making this shocking scene from the halls of justice an x-ray of America.
David Hammons, Injustice Case, Body print and screenprint on paper, frame wrapped with American Flag, 1970
Barkley Hendricks
“What’s Going on”
Five figures stand nearly life-size. Amalgamations of people real and imagined, the nude woman is modelled on Hendricks’s recurring model, dancer Adrienne Hawkins, and the youngest man in rose-tined glasses is based on the artist’s brother. Hendricks conveys a range of complexions by seamlessly transitioning between highly malleable, slow-drying oil paint and fast-dying acrylic to suggest different textures and surfaces.
Barkley Hendricks, What’s Going on Oil paint, acrylic paint and acrylic resin paint on canvas, 1974
Barkley Hendricks
“Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait)”
Brilliantly Endowed is a self-portrait that demonstrates swagger – defiance and cool detachment – as an everyday act of revolutionary aesthetics. Hendricks subtly targets New York Times critic Hilton Kramer, who had concluded a 1977 review by calling that artist ‘a brilliantly endowed painter who erred, perhaps, on the side of slickness’. The artist tackles head-on the double entendre and its potential stereotype connotation of Black male anatomy, while also putting on show his confidence as a painter, upending ‘slickness’ to embrace it as an attribute.
Barkley Hendricks, Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait), Oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas, 1977
Alice Neel
“Faith Ringgold”
Alice Neel, a white artist, was an ardent supporter of the equal representation of Black people – both through her own selection of sitters, such as this portrait of artist Faith Ringgold, and in her social actions.
Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, Oil paint on canvas, 1977
Emma Amos
“Eva the Babysitter”
Emma Amos was the sole woman artist in the Spiral group. The circumstances of socially-accepted domestic and child rearing responsibilities compounded the challenges women artists faced. This image honours a woman who helped enable Amos’s artistic practice. The radiant child-carer smiled while the artist’s toddler daughter is barely contained by the canvas.
Emma Amos, Eva the Babysitter, Oil pain on canvas, 1973
Carolyn Lawrence, Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1972
virginia jaramillo, Untitled, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1971
Joe Overstreet
“We Came from There to get Here”
In he early 1960s, Joe Overstreet Was making image-based painting clearly expressing the political goals of Black Power; he was closely associated with the Black Arts Movement, and painted backdrops for the jazz musician Sun Ra. He later turned to making more abstract work, here painting a colourful grid and drawing the outlines of figures giving gestures of empowerment.
Joe Overstreet, We Came from There to get Here, Acrylic pain on canvas and rope, 1970
Frank Bowling
“Texas Louise”
Texas Louise was one of six Map Paintings Bowling included in his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in late 1971. He poured waves of acrylic over stencils of continents that were removed before more paint was applied, so ghostly outlines remain. Continents emerge from and disappear into colour; oceans and rivers are combined with pools and trails of liquid paint. While many Black Americans were pointing to Africa as a mother continent, Bowling’s maps do not privilege any particular place, and celebrate a more fluid and open idea of identity and belonging to the world.
Frank Bowling, Texas Louise, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1971
“No.1 / series: The Artist’s Mind” – Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood- 18.5in x 18.5in x 1.57in, 2017
Name: Leo Vergel
DOB: December 1988
Place of birth: Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
Occupation: Artist
I was born on December 16, 1988 in the Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, I was given the name Jesús Leonardo Vergel Alvarez, but I prefer Leonardo Vergel, because of the pressures of this society that is always dictating what to do, ending up giving up and studying a university degree “Profitable”, which by the way does not end because I decided to make art and live from it. I have never entered an artistic institution, I firmly believe in confronting the work a thousand times and do it very often, I am totally self-taught, painting now means for me to have recast the child I had forgotten.
“Palenquera No.1” – Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood -38.19in x 27.36in x 1.57in, 2015
“Palenquera No.2” – Mixed, acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood- 24.02in x 17.32in x 1.57in, 2016
My technique is to use colored cardboard cutouts, I can use them in a way that has an order or a random shape purposely that allows me to express the idea at that time. The shapes I use are rectangular, square, rhomboid or other triangular cases, I think it is because when I had a little fun playing using these materials and associated them with those geometric figures I saw in school.
“Palenquera No.3” – Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood- 48.03in x 36.02in x 1.57in, 2017
This can also be seen in the funds that I make in my works, to this is added that when I was 7 or 8 years I saw a lot of Japanese TV program called “nopo y gonta” where the presenter very creatively taught Children on topics such as geometry and how this could be creatively used to create any number of fun objects. Part of what I saw and lived as a child is reflected today in my work.
“Mango”- Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood, 55cm x 44cm x 4cm, 2016
My work is handled in a genre that I still try to understand and that for me is handled between painting and collage, but I could not say that it is clearly one or the other. My work begins to manage a little symbolism, from the memories, what I live in my daily life and what I think or how I see the world.
“No.2 / The Artist’s Mind” Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood, 2017“No.3 / The Artist’s Mind”- Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood-31.89in x 28.74in x 1.57in, 2017
I like to think that it is Fauvism, by the way I express myself emotionally through color, but with recycled cardboard of vivid colors reinforced with acrylic. I have seen and I am inspired by works of great masters like Gustav Klimt, the way as in his work and uses the color are great teaching for me and I try to achieve it with my work, that the color and the human figure achieve a moving impact In people to the point of reflection. I would like very much to get my work to transcend my generation and in fact to impact people, to let people know that there are always second chances, I want to leave a legacy. My technique is inherent in me, it represents my childhood, when you do not have the resources to paint the only thing that matters is you and your imagination, the rest you forget, it loses importance.
“Open Cage”- Acrylic & recycled cardboard on wood, 45.67in x 35.83in x 1.57in, 2017
I graduated from Manchester School of Art this year where I studied Illustration with Animation.
I believe that the function of a design can be equally as important as it’s aesthetic, and that it should be used as a tool to connect with and to emote an audience.
In my more meaningful work, various current affairs and issues I feel strongly about motivate me. In contrast, I’ve have always had a love for nature, organic forms and textures which have been used heavily in my recent work. I take an interest in many other contemporary Illustrators, from editorial and abstract, to local and well known. I particularly like learning about the processes of more local Illustrators, as I feel I can relate to and learn from them on a more personal level.
Christmas
I have found that the use of visually appealing processes and techniques, combined with a positive outlook and awareness of certain affairs and issues, allows me to connect with the viewer in a way that brings both them and me enjoyment as well as motivation for change. Whether the work is trying to covey a strong message or to simply be aesthetically pleasing, I want people to connect with the work on a positive level, and to get a feel for the enjoyment I feel when creating the work.
I wanted to emote social awareness of a major issue that affects most of the Western world through the use of my artwork. Through trial and error during my degree, I found that the most effective way for me to do so would be in a positive manner. Instead of pointing out the negatives of an issue, I wanted to find solutions and suggest these ideas through engaging illustration.
Food Bank
My project ‘Therapeutic Gardens’ explores a lack of green space in cities and an increase of mental health problems in our increasingly fast paced urban lives. I decided to explore the integration of green spaces in the city, and the benefits Therapeutic Gardens could have on our health. To do so I ultimately wanted to engage people, and raise awareness through the use of uplifting forms and imagery.
Therapeutic Gardens
It is important for me to use relevant forms and shapes in my work, therefore in Therapeutic Gardens, every element was inspired by plants, flowers, materials, colours and forms that are essential to a Therapeutic Garden. I wanted to translate these sensory characteristics through the work to give the viewer an uplifting experience. Atelier Bingo have really influenced me in terms of my mark making, as they gave me the confidence to be really experimental and to use as many different tools, materials and surfaces, to communicate as many different mark and textures as possible. I also get a lot of inspiration from editorial Illustrators such as Mark Conlan. I love his use of contemporary shapes and forms that hold an organic feel through subtle textures, as well as his limited colour palettes and meaningful concepts, something that I try to use a lot within my work.
Therapeutic Gardens
I enjoy combining traditional and digital techniques, experimenting with a range of different hand rendered textures and marks, then composing these digitally as various shapes and elements.
Hand rendered textures and mark making have become an essential part of my work. I like to then work with these digitally as I find this creates a much more clean and crisp finish, also allowing me to play around freely with scale and colour. However, my hand rendered textures are something that I feel can’t be replicated digitally, as they have a much more spontaneous and organic feel which contrasts well with clean cut shapes and elements.
Christmas Sketches
I hope to uplift an audience and to allow them to look at issues from a new perspective. Anyone can see that there are many negative things going on in the world, but most will just ignore the issue, don’t care or don’t believe it’s their responsibility to make a difference. I hope that by showing people positive possible solutions for these issues instead, they might at least stop and think outside of the box for a moment.
Peace
My more recent work has been slightly more commercial, and focuses less on current affairs. I always told myself that after graduating, I would spend time producing work for myself, so that I could really develop my own style and learn what it really is that I enjoy doing. I’ve certainly been enjoying this and feel my authoritative style is really beginning to grow. My next step is to go back and combine more meaningful concepts with my now much stronger visual language.
The first series of large-scale works draws on Miller’s extensive archive of psychology and social science books, which date from the 1960s and ’70s. Characterised by their bold and colourful abstract covers, these books embraced a positive attitude and the possibility of ‘fixing’ disorders through a process of self-help.
Pot, Oil on canvas, 105 x 72 x 2 in. 2017Colour Made Me Hard, Oil on canvas, 109 x 73 x 2 in. 2016In the Shadows I Boogie, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 x 2 in. 2017
In Miller’s paintings, three-dimensional architectonic forms in bright, pop colours float against solid saturated backgrounds and are paired with fictional, sardonically humorous titles such as Reverse Psychology Isn’t Working (2017) and Immediate Relief … Coming Soon (2017). Occasionally, the same title appears on different compositions, highlighting how colour, forms and context can change both the rhythm and meaning of words.
Reverse Psychology Isn’t Working, Oil on canvas, 115 x 81 x 2 in. 2017Immediate Relief … Coming Soon, Oil on canvas, 118 x 81 x 2 in. 2017
Similar to the titles, Miller’s abstract imagery can also be read in different ways. Commenting on the work Armageddon – Is It To Much To Ask? (2017), for example, he says: ‘it’s an image that you see one way – then, when you relax, it flips and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t see it the original way. It’s symbolic of the way you read the title.’ These words reflect a departure for the artist, whose previous series of Penguin paperback paintings were re-appropriations of an existing object. Here, for the first time, Miller creates his own designs, focusing more closely on the impact of the image itself.
Why Breathe In, Why Breath Out, Oil on canvas, Two panels, each: 75 x 61 x 2 in. 2017Ace, Oil on canvas, 105 x 75 x 2 in. 2017Bi, Oil on canvas, 104 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
In another series of fictional book cover paintings, Miller depicts the outlines of letter in a range of typefaces and colours, intersected or layered over each other to create short, enigmatic words such as ‘Up’ or ‘If’.
Up, Oil on canvas, 104 x 73 x 2 in. 2017If, Oil on canvas, 104 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
Through a process of isolation, overlaying and re-connecting, Miller creates a sense of depth in the image that deconstructs and abstracts the meaning of language itself. With their bold, saturated colours, these paintings reference American abstraction and, in particular, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha’s use of vernacular signage and motifs. Miller has said about this series: ‘The idea is to make paintings that are just words, in contrast to the titles of previous works’.
Thought After Filthy Thought, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 x 2 in. 2017The Future, You May Not Like it Now, But You Will, Oil on canvas, 115 x 80 x 2 in. 2017
In both series of paintings the artist continues to use his own name as author. While the presence of Miller’s name alludes to the actual authorship of both image and text, fact and fiction became blurred, allowing for the artist’s deadpan humour to provoke, question and draw attention to the context and content of each work.
Wherever You Are, Whatever You’re Doing, This One’s For You, Oil on canvas, 112 x 77 x 2 in. 2017Circling The Small Ads, Oil on canvas, 109 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
Occupation: 3rd Year Fine Art Student at Manchester School of Art
As I am still at university I am always learning from my tutors and students around me. The research I gather plays a key role in developing my conceptual understanding which in turn reflects my artwork. My practice is specialised in various media including drawing, painting, still imagery and minimalist sculpture. My current work coincides obscure melodies depicting ‘the other self’. The symbolism behind the idea is inherited through the mental state of an individual/s. I gather research of any kind to source broad understanding and acknowledgment of any artist, author or philosopher. Carl Jung has had a great impact on my thinking process as a developing artist. Studying Jung’s concept on individualisation has broadened the conceptualisation trait, which is a significant value as a young artist.
I express myself visually through art. My mind and technique coincide off one another, yet results can sometimes differ. My usual ethic inside the studio is to begin fast sketching to gain incentive to push the creative process. My drawings demonstrate the best of my ability. And what I would like to accomplish in the future is to build, expand and dispute their forms, to challenge the arrangement and manufacture broad narrative. I cultivate the material directly rather than plan an incentive. For instance, I experiment with a material and build upon its track, almost letting it work itself. I feel as if my previous work has become significantly freer. Strong lines appear and begin to transform into new lines.
Throughout my practice I’ve been studying the works of Nava Waxman and Yves Klein. Both of which are very expressive in how they interpret their visions with the use of their physical movement. Waxman and Klein have heavily induced my most recent work, with repetitions of my limbs being used as tools in alliance with the material. The objective of these artworks is to establish a sense of visual movement while focusing on alteration and transfiguration of the human form in detachment. This stems from my physical, spiritual and emotional body and my life experiences that resonate and juxtapose with realism.
I am very visually led. I like to work with the materials directly rather than a narrative to follow. My liking to connect with a smooth piece of chalk yet impose on it with a harsh manner is somewhat a subjective and unintentional infringement on the contextual end of my practice. Now in my final year of my BA Fine Art, I am challenging how far I can push my psychological boundaries in tie with my work.
As part of my Art & Audience Project I had to get together with other students and assemble an exhibition. This was an experience non-the-less as very few of us where put in that sort of position, but it was without doubt one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had. The pieces I involved were A2 sized charcoal drawings and a figurative plaster model painted in acrylic black. The sculpture is a representation of both drawings held above, as were the 2D pieces where a representation of the ‘alter ego’. Again this past work has a strong connection with what I am currently working on.
An Iranian born artist now living in Columbus, Ohio, she attended the Faculty of Arts at the University of Tehran, and afterward studied under the mentorship of prominent Iranian painter Daruish Hosseini. She later began sculpting under the tutelage of eminent sculptor Behrooz Daresh.
Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x20″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard,25″x22″
“I am an expressive person. I enjoy watching people, in public spaces, at coffee shops, pools, beaches, painting their bodies, their emotions, capturing the other side of them. Not the realistic things everyone can see, but the hidden expressivity.”
Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 22″x24″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 20″x24″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 20″x22″
“I like to make my viewers think. When they pass a piece at an exhibition they have to stop and wonder. I like to show non-artists the things they can’t see. Show them a different world. It’s sometimes hidden, and sometimes not real at all, but in my imagination, a fiction that the person inspires.”
Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 18″x20″Acrylic and pastel on cardboard, 22″x26″
Raheleh’s work concentrates on abstractions of the human form and the emotional expressivity emanating from it, something not found elsewhere in nature. Each piece shows an alternate view of the subject, displaying a distinct beauty otherwise unseen. One cannot pass Raheleh’s pieces without stopping, and getting washed over by its startlingly unique perspective.
Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x16″Acrylic & pastel on card board, 20″x24″Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x22″
“For sculpting, I started because the canvas is not enough to show my emotion and excitement. I needed to make it in three-dimensional to get enough expression. To make the creatures I invented, and introduce them to the people.
I enjoy carving. When there’s a piece of wood or metal, and you can bring out art out of nothing — you give a little of your soul to these things. They have a part of you in them.”
Diving Bird – Aluminium 12″ x 10″
Since moving to the U.S., Raheleh has begun collaborating with an Iranian-American photographer, Arezoo Bijani, on a collection of works emanating from their experiences as artists in Iran, revealing the struggles they passed through in their home country, but also the distinct non-Western vantage point it gives them on male-female asymmetries even in the West.
Prints:
Lino print & collage on paper, 20″x8″Lino print with ink & collage on paper, 10″x8″Lino print & pen on paper, 10″x8″Lino print on paper,12″x10″
Wadsworth Jarrell Liberation soldiers Acrylic paint and foil canvas
