Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1985
Published by: Nicola Jacobs Gallery
Year published: 1985
Unpaginated.

Catalogue for Room at the Top, a group exhibition curated by Waldemar Januszczak. The exhibition took place at Nicola Jacobs Gallery, 9 Cork Street, 6 February - 9 March 1985. The artists included in the exhibition were: Sonia Boyce, Mary Mabbutt, Paul Richards, Gerard de Thame, and Adrian Wiszniewski. The exhibition was one of the very few such undertakings, during the 1980s, in which the work of a Black artist (in this instance, Sonia Boyce), was exhibited alongside work by white artists. Boyce was for a while an artist with whom Januszczak, (at the time, visual arts reviewer for the Guardian), was particularly impressed.

Catalogue contents as follows:

Title page

Essay Room at the Top, by Waldemar Januszczak

Monochrome plates (one per artist) and, on the facing page, edited CV for each artist. Yellow cover designed by Waldemar Januszczak.

In his essay, Januszczak wrote “Sonia Boyce’s art fills you with a sensation of intimacy. She performs one of art’s classic functions in helping you to see something more clearly. In this case what we are seeing, or rather over-hearing, is the private plight of a young black woman in a dominant white society. The captions which appear below some of her pictures re-tell half-remembered stories which a mother once told her young daughter, stories about her past, about the place she comes from. We glimpse the artist’s unsettled dreams. We are given an insight into the strain between a black woman and her white lover. When Sonia Boyce allows you into the sanctuary of her room she allows you into her life.”