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Tate Liverpool

Liverpool, United Kingdom
Official website: Tate Liverpool

Albert Dock
Liverpool
L3 4BB

Tel: 0151 702 7400 (international +44 151 702 7400)
Fax: 0151 702 7401
TextPhone: 18801 7027400
Email: visiting.liverpool@tate.org.uk

From the website: “Tate Liverpool welcomes over 600,000 visitors a year, is the home of the National Collection of Modern Art in the North of England, and one of the largest galleries of modern and contemporary art in the UK, outside London. Tate Liverpool houses two main types of exhibits: displays from the Tate Collection and special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. The special exhibition programme brings together works from national and international collections, both public and private. Since the gallery opened in 1988, Tate Liverpool has had over 150 different exhibitions and collection displays of work by hundreds of different artists, some seen for the first time in the UK at Tate Liverpool. Major exhibitions include Salvador Dali: A Mythology (1998), Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture (2002-03) and Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era (2005). Tate Liverpool hosted the Turner Prize 2007, the first time the prize had been presented outside London since it began in 1984, as a curtain-raiser for Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008.”

Tate Liverpool was the venue for Afro Modern, a major exhibition that took place at Tate Liverpool in the spring of 2010. The exhibition was accompanied by a major catalogue. This small gallery guide also accompanied the exhibition. From the guide:

“Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic explores the impact of different black cultures from around the Atlantic on art from the early twentieth-century to today. The exhibition takes its inspiration from Paul Gilroy’s influential book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness published in 1993. It features over 140 works by more than 60 artists.

Gilroy used the term ‘The Black Atlantic’ to describe the transmission of black cultures around the Atlantic, and the instances of cultural hybridity, that occurred as a result of transatlantic slavery and its legacy.

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic reflects Gilroy’s idea of the Atlantic Ocean as a ‘continent in negative’, offering a network connecting Africa, North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. It traces both real and imagined routes taken across the Atlantic, and highlights artistic links and dialogues from the early twentieth-century to today.

The exhibition is divided into seven chronological sections. Charting new forms of art arising from black culture and the work of black artists and intellectuals, it opens up an alternative, transatlantic reading of modernism and contemporary culture.”

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic was part of Liverpool and the Black Atlantic, described in the brochure as “a series of exhibitions and events that explores connections between cultures and continents. Partners include the Bluecoat, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), International Slavery Museum, Kuumba Imani Millenium Centre, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Metal, Tate Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, and the University of Liverpool.”

The exhibition was presented in seven sections:

Black Atlantic Avant-Gardes
Maya Deren - Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti
Black Orpheus
Dissident Identities
Reconstructing the Middle Passage
Exhibiting Bodies
From Post-Modern to Post-Black

The guide, A6 portrait in size, offered brief introductions to each of the exhibition’s seven sections.