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The Other Story - exhibition

Group show at Hayward Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Manchester City Art Gallery, Cornerhouse. 1989 - 1990
Date: 29 November, 1989 until 4 February, 1990
Curator: Rasheed Araeen
Organiser: Hayward Gallery/South Bank Centre

The Other Story was a landmark exhibition, which sought to outline a history of ‘Afro-Asian artists in post-war Britain’. The exhibition was curated by Rasheed Araeen and organised by Hayward Gallery and South Bank Centre, London, 1989. It featured work by the following artists: Rasheed Araeen, Saleem Arif, Frank Bowling, Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Avinash Chandra, Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Uzo Egonu, Iqbal Geoffrey, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid, Gavin Jantjes, Balraj Khanna, Donald Locke, David Medalla, Ronald Moody, Ahmed Parvez, Ivan Peries, Keith Piper, A J Shemza, Kumiko Shimizu, F N Souza, Aubrey Williams and Li Yuan Chia.

Running to 160 pages, the exhibition catalogue featured an introduction, four essays and a postscript by Rasheed Aareen. Foreword and acknowledgements by Joanna Drew, Director of Hayward and Regional Exhibitions and Andrew Dempsey, Assistant Director, Hayward Gallery. Chronology compiled by Julia Engelhardt, Artists’ biographies compiled by Anita Swarup. A section of the catalogue was titled ‘Other Voices’ and featured contributions from Balraj Khanna, Guy Brett, David Medalla, Mel Gooding, Lubaina Himid and Maud Sulter (A Statement from The Elbow Room), and Gavin Jantjes. Extensively illustrated with colour and monochrome reproductions. The exhibition itself attracted a considerable amount of press attention. Following its showing at the Hayward Gallery, the exhibition went on to be seen in Wolverhampton (Art Gallery) and Manchester (City Art Gallery and Cornerhouse).

Some two decades after The Other Story closed, Aicon Gallery in London presented an appraisal, of sorts, of the exhibition. Put together by Niru Ratnam and titled A Missing History: The Other Story Re-visited, it featured a number of artists included in the exhibition, plus two (Chila Kumari Burman and Sutapa Biswas) who were not. The other artists were: Rasheed Araeen, Sonia Boyce, Avinash Chandra, Uzo Egonu, Lubaina Himid, David Medalla, Keith Piper, Saleem Arif Quadri, A J Shemza, F N Souza, and Aubrey Williams.

The Aicon Gallery exhibition ran from 29 June - 24 July 2010, with a Private View on Tuesday 29th June, 6.30pm - 9.00pm.

From the exhibition’s press release; “Aicon Gallery presents ‘A Missing History: “The Other Story” re-visited’. This group exhibition re-visits the seminal exhibition ‘The Other Story’ that closed twenty years ago in June 1990. The show features 13 (sic) artists, 11 of whom featured in the original show. ‘The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain’ curated by Rasheed Araeen, opened at the Hayward Gallery on 29 November 1989. The show’s premise was to present artists working in Britain with an African-Caribbean, African or Asian cultural background whose works were ignored by dominant accounts of Modernism. The exhibition subsequently toured to Wolverhampton Art Gallery and finally the Cornerhouse in Manchester where it closed on 10 June 1990.”

The press release went on “Along with ‘Magiciens de la Terre’, the 1993 edition of the Whitney Biennial and Documenta XI, ‘The Other Story’ is one of the key exhibitions that over the last twenty years have impacted on the ways in which a previously closed art world was opened up to issues around post-colonialism, migration, exile, diaspora and globalization. Unsurprisingly each of these exhibitions generated controversy, with heated discussions taking place at the time of each one. ‘A Missing History: “The Other Story” re-visited’ is an opportunity to look back on these debates at the twenty-year anniversary mark as well as to exhibit the works of 11 of the 24 artists in the original show and two artists who were not in the show…”