Curated by Dorothy Price, Esther Chadwick, and Cora Gilroy-Ware, Tavares Strachan’s “Awakening” (see below) is part of “Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now: Art, Colonialism and Change” at the Royal Academy from February 3 to April 28, 2024. Strachan hails from the Bahamas. Other Caribbean-rooted artists in this exhibition include Frank Bowling (Guyana), Sonia Boyce (UK/parents from Barbados and Guyana), Isaac Julien (UK/St. Lucia), and Hew Locke (UK/Guyana).

(“Entangled Pasts” is at the Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Art, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London.) “Tavares Strachan: Awakening” will then be exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, in London, from June 11 to September 1.

Description: J.M.W. Turner and Ellen Gallagher. Joshua Reynolds and Yinka Shonibare. John Singleton Copley and Hew Locke. Past and present collide in one powerful exhibition.

This spring, we bring together over 100 major contemporary and historical works as part of a conversation about art and its role in shaping narratives of empire, enslavement, resistance, abolition and colonialism – and how it may help set a course for the future.

Artworks by leading contemporary British artists of the African, Caribbean and South Asian diasporas, including Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling and Mohini Chandra will be on display alongside works by artists from the past 250 years including Joshua Reynolds, J.M.W. Turner and John Singleton Copley – creating connections across time which explore questions of power, representation and history.

Experience a powerful exploration of art from 1768 to now. Featuring a room of life-sized cut-out painted figures by Lubaina Himid, an immersive video installation by Isaac Julien, a giant flotilla of model boats by Hew Locke, and a major new sculpture in the Courtyard by Tavares Strachan. Plus, powerful paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings and prints by El Anatsui, Barbara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Shahzia Sikander, John Akomfrah and Betye Saar.

Informed by our ongoing research of the RA and its colonial past, this exhibition engages around 50 artists connected to the RA to explore themes of migration, exchange, artistic traditions, identity and belonging.

This exhibition will contain themes of slavery and racism, and historical racial language and imagery. Please contact the RA for more information. For more information, see https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/entangled-pasts

Also see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/arts/uk-royal-academy-slavery-entangled-pasts.html

[Shown above: Tavares Strachan, The First Supper (Galaxy Black) (2023). Image courtesy of the artist and Perrotin, collection of Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland.]