Artistic strategies from the 1980s and beyond: Keith Piper

Keith Piper's work over the past 30 years responds to specific social and political issues, historical relationships and geographical sites. This discussion with Keith Piper focuses on the artist’s pioneering use of digital technology in his work, from video to computer based interactivity. Speakers also include academics and curators Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Ramon Amaro and Paul Goodwin.

Organised in collaboration between Iniva and Tate, this is the first of three events exploring strategies developed in the 1980s by artists focused on questions of race and gender. How did artists navigate the political and social terrain of Britain then, and how are these tactics deployed by artists and activists working today?

Keith Piper is a London based artist and academic. His creative practice responds to specific social and political issues, historical relationships and geographical sites. Piper was a founder member of the Blk Art Group. Since then he has exhibited work internationally, published writings and taught in institutions in the UK and North America. Adopting a research driven approach, and using a variety of media, his work over the past 30 years has ranged from painting, through photography and installation to a use of digital media, video and computer based interactivity. Piper is Associate Professor in Fine Art at Middlesex University. Piper’s work is currently on show as part of The Place Is Here at Nottingham Contemporary, a group exhibition tracing some of the urgent conversations taking place between black artists, writers and thinkers during the 80s.

Ramon Amaro is Associate Lecturer in Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Visual Cultures, and a PhD researcher at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests include machine learning, black study, race, social modelling and the philosophy of maths.

Dr Anjalie Dalal-Clayton is an art historian and research fellow with the AHRC-funded Black Artists & Modernism research project at University of the Arts London. She is conducting a nation-wide audit of works by black artists in UK public collections, monographic work on Keith Piper and Sonia Boyce, and expanding her ongoing research of black British exhibition histories.

Professor Paul Goodwin  is the University of the Arts London Chair of Black Art and Design Director of TrAIN (Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation). Goodwin is an independent curator, urban theorist and researcher based in London. His practice extends across the fields of contemporary art and urbanism with a particular focus on black and diaspora artists and visual cultures. Most recently, Goodwin co-curated the exhibition ‘Untitled: Art On The Condition Of Our Time’  currently on view at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham.