Black British Artists and Political Activism: Artists Against Apartheid
Channel: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Date: 2021-12-06

25 November 2021


This is session four [session three was not recorded] of the Black British Artists and Political Activism series. In this session, Gavin Jantjes in conversation Allison K. Young will unpack the impact of the anti-Apartheid movement on Jantjes' early work ​and the subsequent shift in his practice from the overtly political in works such as A South African Colouring Book (1974–5) towards non-figurative abstraction.


About the speakers
Dr Allison K. Young is Assistant Professor of Art History at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. She received her PhD in Art History at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2017, and specializes in postcolonial and contemporary art of the African diaspora and Global South, centering issues surrounding migration, transnationalism, and social justice.


Young has published scholarship and criticism in Art Journal, the International Review of African American Art, Artforum, Apollo International, the Photoworks Annual, and other platforms. She has contributed to several exhibition catalogues including The Measurement of Presence, the Dutch Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Out of Easy Reach (2018); All the World’s Futures, the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); and the forthcoming Prospect.5: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow (2021).


Before joining LSU, Young was Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow for Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where she curated and published an exhibition catalogue for Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred (2018).


Gavin Jantjes is a painter, curator, writer, and lecturer. In Germany, he was a founding member of the German Anti-Apartheid movement and he served as a consultant for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In the UK, he was a consultant for the creation of the International Institute for Visual Art – better known as INiva. Recently, his work has been exhibited Dak’art Biennale, Dakar (2018), Oslo Kunstforeinig, Norway (2017), The British Museum, London (2016), Centre for Photography, New York (2013), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004 -2005), and recently included in the group exhibition ‘The Place is Here’, South London Gallery, London (2017). His lectures and essays have been published widely in many international publications and art journals.