01 Nov 2008

Iniva at Rivington Place presents...

Iniva's forthcoming exhibition of Donald Rodney's work will present an important opportunity to reconsider his output against a 21st century backdrop. A leading artist of his generation, Rodney was profoundly influenced by the work of artists including Eddie Chambers, Keith Piper, Sonia Boyce and others who were re-examining social and historical narratives from a black perspective. Though his work continually evolved, Rodney never abandoned his use of self-portraiture in which he would often explore recurring themes of black masculinity, the body and the stereotyping of the young black man as 'public enemy' and icon of danger. The exhibition will also mark the 10 year anniversary of the artist's untimely death from sickle cell anaemia.

The exhibition examines work executed by Rodney in the last 10 years of his life when his illness, an emblematically 'black' disease, resulted in increasing pain, immobility, hospitalisation and isolation. In many of his pieces of this period, the artist uses his illness as a metaphor through which a wider set of societal interrogations may take place. This is evidenced by some of the works displayed in the exhibition which use illness as a theme.

Included in the exhibition is the work My Mother, My Father, My Sister, My Brother (1997), in which Rodney's own skin, discarded from an operation to remove an artificial hip, forms a miniscule house-like structure held together by pins. This fragile work exudes a sense of intimacy and domesticity but also, given the nature of its origins, something disturbing and profound.

However, Rodney's work is not confined to the personal and specific. The exhibition will also include Doublethink (1992), a large installation of sporting trophies displayed with plaques showing statements which Rodney termed 'half truths and half lies'. One trophy is labelled with 'Black History is plagued by reactionary politics'. Another reads BLACK PEOPLE LOOK TO RELIGION AS A RESCUE FROM THEIR SPIRITUAL BARRENESS, while another carries the message 'Black Women are use (sic) to degradation'. These trophies suggest the idea that Black people have been awarded or had forced onto them, twisted and skewed identities by the dominant society and its media mouthpieces. By using trophies, Rodney was also able to draw fresh attention to the supposed sporting prowess that simultaneously liberated and trapped Black people.

A new element of the exhibition will be The Genome Chronicles, a film commission from John Akomfrah, an award-winning film-maker and friend of Rodney's. Rodney left behind a large amount of super 8 film material, video and audio tapes as well as 13 written notebooks currently held at Tate Britain. The new film uses this archival material as well as popular songs, reconstructed and composed scenes to create an elegiac three part 'poem' to his late friend which, as John Akomfrah said when writing about the film, 'captures the private drama of a man who, faced with death, turned to a camera for solace, for assurance, for respite, for redemption.'