Call and Response - Camden Art Centre

Over the autumnal months, Camden Art Centre presented Glenn Ligon: Call and Response, the first exhibition in a UK public gallery for the celebrated American artist.

One of America’s most distinguished contemporary artists, Ligon (b.1960) has been deeply engaged with the written word throughout his career. Drawing attention to the problems of language and representation, he addresses pressing and challenging topics of race, language and sexuality. His works reconsider and re-present American history, especially narratives of slavery and civil rights, within a contemporary context. Best known for his stencilled text based paintings, he weaves together wide-ranging influences from literature, visual arts and popular culture. Over the past 10 years, Ligon has also been dedicated to interrogating these themes through his prolific and astute writing and interviews.

For his exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, Ligon presented a new series of large paintings based on the 1966 seminal taped-speech work, Come Out, by Minimalist composer Steve Reich. Come Out is drawn from the testimony of six black youths arrested for committing a murder during the Harlem Race Riot of 1964. Known as the ‘Harlem Six’, the case galvanised civil rights activists for a generation, bringing to attention police brutality against black citizens. Echoing Reich’s overlapping repetition of words and phrases, Ligon’s silkscreen paintings overlay the words to create slowly shifting and rhythmic effects.

Ligon was creating a new neon work, which draws on the words of Daniel Hamm, one of the ‘Harlem Six’, describing the police beatings. Neon letters, suspended for visitors to walk amongst, blink on and off in a cycle reflecting Reich’s work. Ligon’s neon works continue his interest in pushing text and speech to the point of abstraction. As with his paintings, they encourage the viewer to oscillate between reading and looking.

A new multi-screen video work uses footage of comedian Richard Pryor’s 1982 stand-up performance, Live on Sunset Strip. Ligon  reorganised and refilmed the recorded material to emphasise Pryor’s emphatic body language, movement and expressions, removing articulated words to focus on body language and the performative delivery of speech.

Images Related events

Exhibition Preview for teachers

Thursday 9 October, 5.00 – 6.00pm
A chance to see the Glenn Ligon exhibition before it opened to the public and to talk through the teachers’ guide with the education team.

Camden Art Centre produces a teachers’ guide for every exhibition, downloadable from the exhibitions’ page on the website. The guide includes activities for students at Key Stages 1-4 as well as SEN activities. Schools are welcome to book our studios free of charge on Tuesdays and Fridays to do these activities independently. Alongside this, we offer workshops led by artists which are charged for.

#callandresponse

Make & Do

Sunday 12 October 2014 – Sunday 11 January 2015 (Sundays), 2.00 – 4.30pm
Every Sunday throughout the Glenn Ligon exhibition, families with children dropped in to the Drawing Studio for free creative activities based around the work in the galleries. Led by artist Evan Ifekoya, the activities were fun and suitable for all ages.

Reading Group

Wednesday 22 October, 7.00 – 8.30pm
Artist Christian Nyampeta led a reading group exploring themes prevalent in Glenn Ligon’s work.  The first session looked at Fred Moten’s essay Black Mo’nin’ in the Sound of the Photograph:

Moten, Fred. “Black Mo’nin’ in the Sound of the Photography.” In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2003. N. pag. Print. (pg. 205 – 224 at this link)

The reading group took place on Wednesdays 22 October & 19 November and was programmed alongside Glenn Ligon’s exhibition Call and Response. Participants were encouraged to read the texts ahead of the session, and attend as many of the sessions that they can.

#CACWednesdays

Christian Nyampeta is a London based artist.  Recent exhibitions include How to Live Together: Prototypes, The Showroom, London (2014) and How to Live Together, Casco and Stroom Den Haag, Netherlands (2013-14).  He is an MPhil/PhD candidate at the Visual Cultures Department of Goldsmiths, University of London.

Exhibition Talk: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Sunday 2 November, 3.00 – 3.45pm
Artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye led a gallery tour of Glenn Ligon’s exhibition Call and Response.

#callandresponse

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b.1977) lives and works in London and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2013.  Recent solo and group exhibition include: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (2014); MIRROR CITY: London artists on fiction and reality, Hayward Gallery, London (2014); Verses, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev (2013); The Love Without, Corvi-Mora, London (2013); Salt 7: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Utah Museum of Fine Art, Utah (2013); The Turner Prize, Ebrington, Derry (2013);  Cinematic Visions: Painting at the Edge of Reality, Victoria Miro, London (2013), Extracts and Verses, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012).

Reading Group

Wednesday 19 November, 7.00 – 8.30pm
Artist Christian Nyampeta led the second of two reading group sessions, discussing texts which responded to themes prevalent in Glenn Ligon’s work.  This session focused on Rey Chow’s essay Where Have All the Natives Gone? and also recapped on some of the discussions from the first session around Fred Moten essay Black Mo’nin’ in the Sound of the Photograph.

Texts

Chow, Rey. “Where Have All the Natives Gone.” Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993. N. pag. Print. (pg. 27 – 54 at this link)
Moten, Fred. “Black Mo’nin’ in the Sound of the Photography.” In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2003. N. pag. Print. (pg. 205 – 224 at this link)

The reading group took place on Wednesdays 22 October & 19 November and was programmed alongside Glenn Ligon’s exhibition Call and Response. Participants were encouraged to read the texts ahead of the session, and attend as many of the sessions that they can.

#CACWednesdays

Christian Nyampeta is a London based artist.  Recent exhibitions include How to Live Together: Prototypes, The Showroom, London (2014) and How to Live Together, Casco and Stroom Den Haag, Netherlands (2013-14).  He is an MPhil/PhD candidate at the Visual Cultures Department of Goldsmiths, University of London.