Conversations exhibition catalogue published by Walker Art Gallery

In her 1989 book Talking Back, bell hooks writes: “To know our audience, to know who listens, we must be in dialogue. We must be speaking with and not just speaking to.” hooks personally believed the issue with her seminal text, Ain’t I a Woman? was that it tried to speak to everyone; “black men, white women, white men” and resulted in a voice with less authenticity and therefore less authority. “Those passages where I was speaking most directly to black women contained the voice I felt to be most truly mine— it was then that my voice was daring, courageous.” Conversations at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, featuring work by 40 Black British women and non-binary artists, feels in line with hooks’ positioning on finding your voice through first determining your audience. 

History is of central significance to many of the works in the exhibition. In fact, most works tend to look back, sometimes in anger, sometimes in love. A work that appears to do both is Black Trans Archive (2021-2022) by Danielle Brathwaite–Shirley. The interactive video game seeks to conserve the experiences, stories and thoughts of Black trans people due to their systematic erasure from history. This here is a work that establishes its audience immediately and explicitly. The video game, which is housed in a large bright red structure, begins with the question: “What do you identify as?”. The options are: Black Trans; Trans; Cis. The screen text is large. The coloured buttons are large too and require a certain level of physicality to push from the chair. It’s a performance to participate, making one’s physical engagement with the piece as observable to visitors at the installation itself. The option you click on determines what questions will follow and the journey one will take through the game. The gamer and the game are in an exchange, but the gamer’s choices are limited to a path already coded out for them. “You will help a black trans femme remain safe when travelling,” the game says at one point. Other routes might have yielded different experiences and lessons, but the interplay when clicking “cis” creates a necessary power imbalance. The game leads you into the unknown with the purpose of disrupting any voyeuristic interest an outsider might have in the trans experience, and instead, reminds you of the importance of allyship. 

Another work that encourages its viewers to engage meaningfully and purposefully with history is BLOODSOUND (2022) by Zinzi Minott. Sound system culture originated in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1940s and became the most significant distribution model for new music in the country and later went on to revolutionise music globally. It is seen as a technological and cultural phenomenon designed in such a way to emphasize the bass, reverb and vibrations which provides a distinctive auditory experience, but also, sound systems are about the people too. The “dance hall” is very much a third space, a place to connect and to congregate away from home and work and, in spite of oppression. 

In the exhibition, a red and transparent sound system stands proudly as it bellows out dub and reggae classics — euphorics sounds especially when heard with the volume all the way up. Professor Julian Henriques who researches sound, technology and popular culture and specializes in sound systems said: “The experience of listening to music can create a home away from home, or an aspirational future home.” This is especially true for the windrush generation and their children, who brought sound system culture to the UK. However, the music emitting from Minott’s sound system is punctuated with field recordings from Notting Hill carnival, as well as a speech by Nye Bevan about founding the NHS and an interview with the artist’s grandmother who was a nurse. The socio-political context that sound systems developed in as are important to savour as the feeling of awe it begets. BLOODSHOT is not solely about pursuit of vibes, but an attempt to present the soundsystem as an art form and history worthy of preservation. 

Throughout the show, “politics” is omnipresent. Even in places it doesn’t at first appear visible, it lurks quietly.  A flag hangs from the wall. On one side it reads, “‘I chose you this” and the other reads “and you”. It’s by Rene Matić who is interested in “what it means to be British” and the ontological significance of flags. Flags emblazoned with text are a recurring motif throughout their practice. “Dance with me”, and “Let me lead” have appeared on previous iterations. There’s a suggestive intimacy in Matić’s choice of language, yet an authoritativeness. The phrases read as commands, and when placed on a flag, there’s an undeniable sense of governance over the space.  A flag is a symbol of belonging; proof of existence, but it is also a symbol of authority, triumph and conquest. Speaking on the use of Union Jack and the St George Flag within skinhead culture, sociologist and author of There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack Paul Gilroy said in an interview: “Perhaps they aren’t flags at all, but screens, veils or filters to block out the ghastliness of the public world beyond the home that isn’t a castle any more?” While Matić isn’t explicitly making a comment on British patriotism, the work does summon one to think about allegiances. 

Nowhere is politics more literal than in Hannah Black’s 7-color LED work which simply reads “politics”. The work looks like a shop-window sign and takes its cue from the feminist phrase ‘the personal is political’. The idea is that our private lives are entrenched with politics and if you pay enough attention to your material conditions, everything you look at becomes a “sign”. Still, it’s multi-coloured and lit up in a kitsch way that subverts its inherent meaning. It’s as if “politics” is something available to purchase. The work could easily be speaking to the productification of politics – seen in all corners of contemporary society — from the rise of cronyism to brand activism. Still, a sign is a sign is a sign. Black is perhaps just naming the tension that is perpetually in the air, and illuminating it. 

Rhea Dillon’s work is similarly sharp and to the point. Two sapele mahogany frames that look like dresser drawers hold a painting of an ace of spade – one black, one a white almost translucent yellowish. The word “spade” used as a slur against Black people dates back to the 1920s, but it’s still around today. In early 2024, the Metropolitan Police came under fire for using an ace of spade emoji to cover the faces of Black men being stopped and searched. At the museum, the framed work appears on the floor leant against the wall at an angle, almost as if toppled, rendering the spades powerless. The frames being positioned on the ground perhaps signifies an opportunity to unearth new meanings — it is a tool for digging afterall. Dillon uses the icon throughout her work as a way to reclaim the “weapon” and turn it into a protective shield. It’s believable — because despite it being historically used as an insult, the ace of spades has positive connotations in African American culture through the game of the same name.  In an interview, writer Amina S. McIntyre says: “What is most important here is to consider that Spades is a play space where Black joy occurs and can be a way to move participants toward liberation.” In his poem We Should Make a Documentary About Spades, Terrence Hayes writes “There are no enemies. In Spades. Spades is a game our enemies do not play.”, By reclaiming the spade, Dillion is in turn, refusing to engage with the enemy. 

Both Anthea Hamilton’s perspex 4th Guimard Chastity Belt (2016) and Simone Brewester’s Inner Voice (2023) explore the politics surrounding women’s sexuality. Where Brewester’s loose interpretation of a woman’s body made with lively coloured swirls appears to explore free movement and expression, Hamilton’s belt is about organised restriction. The object itself might be outdated — first fashioned in the late 1700s to prevent women from engaging in sexual intercourse and masturbation — but the sexual purity of women is an area of fervent discussion in present times.  The design of Hamilton’s belt is inspired by the work of French architect and designer Hector Guimard who designed the entrances to the Paris Metro system and the body armour of Henry VIII. Suspended in the air using chains, as the viewer, it’s easy to swing between awe and disturbance when standing before it. There’s a collision of beauty and pain here — the way the perspex casts a shadow of the delicate detail and sharp edges of the belt against the wall —  that reveal the overlap between protection and control. 

Phoebe Collings-James creates a moment of stillness with her work The Infidel (2023), an off-white mythical ceramic sculpture that transforms at the top into what looks like the shape of a hand. One “finger” holds a small vessel on the end of a pink string. To be an infidel is to be a non-believer of the dominant religion, but in todays’ world, an infidel could also refer to a political outlier — someone who deviates from the grand narrative and is willing to speak out in opposition of said noise. Collings-James’ sculpture looks like a mythical apparatus crafted specifically to carry sound or truth. That point of the “finger” is so focused, it’s as if it’s showing us a new way. This sculpture belongs to the Colling-James’ series “bun babylon; a heretics anthology.” One can assume that the work is underpinned by an understanding of Rastafari. Patricia Rodney writes in The Groundings With My Brothers about how Guyanese historian and political activist Walter Rodney was drawn to the Rastafari because of its revolutionary liberatory potential, however: “The Rastafarians were viewed as outcasts and feared because of their beliefs, appearance, and lifestyles, not only by the government but also by the middle class, the church community and even some of the working class.” Rastafari has always been misunderstood and misrepresented in popular culture, but at its core, it’s about liberation through resistance, consciousness and spirituality, and this appears to be the framework Colling-James sculpture is based upon. 

Painting is in abundance across Conversations, many of them are attempts to sincerly document the Black figure. John-baptiste Oduor writes in frieze on the politics of Black figurative art today: “In the decade since the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement, the world has become saturated with images purporting to provide authentic access to Black life — from protest documentation to representations of quotidian Black life. Arguably, however, this recent proliferation has reduced the number of options available to artists wishing to portray Black figures innovatively, without conforming to pre-established narratives about race.” What Oduor is expressing here, is the problem faced by figurative artists whose main concern when depicting Black figures is to redress the whiteness of the art canon. It leaves little space for invention and originality beyond rectifying art history.  

So how does one freely capture Black life? There are many everyday moments depicted through figurative works in the exhibition. Sahara Longe’s Mariama (2022) depicts a scene that is “off-balance”. In the painting, four people holding glasses of wine stand together at a party. Their expressions display the kind of subtle awkwardness and discomfort one might experience in a social setting. The use of vibrant and rich greens, yellow and blues contrast with their impassive gazes. The piece observes the nuances of human interaction, the duality of being present and absent at the same time, of being open and closed.  Even though the figures are stylistically painted flatly, Longe brings a depth to them through leaving open space for narrative and curiosity.  

Emma Prempeh’s Go Limming (2022) is another scene of gathering, but here, there’s a euphoric verve in the room. Liming is a colloquialism that originated in Trinidad and Tobago and means to “hang out with friends in a public place”. The word is used abundantly in Tridadian author Sam Selvon’s 1956 novel Lonely Londoners. Prempeh’s painting could be a scene from the book: “Inside the hall was a real jam session. The girls stand up in groups here and there, and the boys liming out by the bar.” Prempeh’s palette of dark colors interrupted with warm pockets of light, works to foreground the figures’ joyous dispositions. It’s a distinctly Caribbean set-up — a small but mighty space filled with movement, music and connectivity.

Olivia Sterling’s Lincolnshire Sausages (2023) is perhaps the most bizarre work on display. At first glance, it’s a domestic scene of food processing, but closer inspection reveals a brutal act – a Black figure puts a dismembered body part through a sausage machine and turns whiteness into meat. The painting is a revenge fantasy, fuelled by the UKIP and Brexit voters in her hometown of Lincolnshire. The absurdism of the work is reflective of the absurdism of racism itself. Here, vengeance is at play, not simply as a personal grievance, but as an equalizer of power. The dehumaniser becomes the dehumanised. The truth is, there’s a catharsis brought about by the idea of comeuppance. French Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, political philosopher Frantz Fanon has long argued that violence can be a means for the oppressed to reclaim agency and humanity in the face of dehumanizing systems. “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”

If we were to imagine each piece in Conversations as its own voice, then it’s only right to return to bell hooks’ Talking Back and recognize the importance of freely expressing one’s whole self in any space, even if it’s your first time there. “Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side, a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back,” that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice.” 

With that sentiment in mind and heart, Conversations probes the transformative potential of transmission, especially that of Black women and non-binary people. It suggets that communication is more than just the movement of information, concepts and feelings, but about the distinct dynamic between art and the audience, one that can only be created through conscious engagement, interaction, and sincerity. As the Caribbean proverb goes: Those that don’t hear must feel.