Richard Hylton: 'From where I'm standing'
In: Annotations 1: Mixed Belongings and Unspecified Destinations. Edited by Nikos Papastergiadis. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1996,
pp. 70-77
During the organisation of Imagined Communities I reached a point where all I could see were faxes, loan requests, 'admin' and more 'admin'. I then got out from behind my desk and walked into Oldham's town centre. Wandering around the 'other museum', that of the shopping centre, I walked into HMV to see if there were any bargains. I noticed to my mild surprise that in a prominent position they had a large CD display of Jimi Hendrix. Wondering whether I had stumbled on an 'oasis' I went over to the display and picked up a CD out of passing interest. On the back was an image which struck me. At first it appeared like a typical rock icon. A guitarist wearing bell bottoms with Afro hairdo, and a guitar pointing in the traditional erect position. But suddenly I realised that Jimi Hendrix, the psychedelic sex symbol, mythological black man, "honorary white man" was not playing to white hippies but to a predominantly black audience. This got me thinking. Hendrix's whole appeal and success was driven by the fact that he had successfully 'crossed over'. He made it where few black performers make it. Charles Sharr Murray says in his astute book Cross Town Traffic - Jimi Hendrix and the Rock 'n' Roll Revolution: "The white audience, superior both numerically and economically, is where the richest pickings are". However, there was a price to pay for this success. Once he crossed over he could not come back. Without going into the complexity of the Hendrix phenomenon, his pioneering music and controversial persona seemed to embody, to me, some of the confusion and shortcomings in our inability to conceive of people moving across different cultural boundaries with integrity. As a provocative cultural icon, Hendrix attracted contradictory reactions and interpretations.
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From this experience in HMV I started to remind myself afresh about what the exhibition was trying to do. We speak so often of things in exclusive terms which make assumptions about people and culture, Brit pop/Brit art, Black community/Asian community. The questions that motivated me were directed against over-simplification and assumptions about community and the problems which occur when people do not know their 'place'.
There are many things I drew on in thinking about this show which is evident in the work of the nine artists. They, however, do not necessarily fit together neatly. Perhaps our need to fix identity would make life more manageable but only at great expense. Why can't we move across different cultural boundaries with integrity? Who isn't able to assume a multiplicity of identities?
With Imagined Communities I wanted to bring together a number of artists, but not so many as to produce a survey exhibition which tried to deal with every possible denomination of community. The exhibition uses the notion of community as a starting point to look at a multiplicity of ideas. It explores the parallel between an artist in a community and an individual in private and public spaces. The works in the exhibition were produced during the eighties and nineties and range from the figurative to the conceptual. The site of production of the work varies from the artist's studio, the urban dwelling, or more conventional community locations. None of the works should be read as conclusive descriptions of a particular community or representative of an authentic or fixed notion of community. They are, to quote Benedict Anderson's phrase, best seen as "fractions". The nine artists in Imagined Communities provide sharp insights into relationships between individual, community and place through their everyday manifestation in family, memory, history, popular culture and last, but by no means least, art. To varying degrees the artists are evidently implicated in their work, be it through their relationship to the subject which may be historical, cultural, transient, or even anonymous. The artist's work here does not function as a tool for the betterment of a community, thereby distinguishing itself from the utopian ideals of 'community arts' practice.
Tim Rollins + KOS' (Kids of Survival) long standing project in the Bronx is an example of where artist and individuals from a particular community meet and cross cultural, geographical and economic boundaries.
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[Gary] Simmons interrogates the relationship between the corporate body and the African-American community in the assertion of particular cultural identities.
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Denzil Forrester's large figurative paintings are vignettes of London's black music and club scene.
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The authenticity of history and memory is approached in different ways by Christian Boltanski and Giuseppe Penone.
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Komar and Melamid's 'The Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Paintings' are presented on the Internet. Based on statistical information derived from the results of marketing surveys, the artists make use of both actual and virtual communities.
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Gillian Wearing's mixed media work homes in on the individual and the group in order to investigate the relationship between artist, public and gallery.
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Sophie Calle's installation traverses the traditional boundaries which define the role of the artist as the neutral or objective observer of society.
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From this microcosm of urban life we draw back to view the vastness of the African Diaspora. African fabrics, made in Manchester, sold in Brixton Market and exported in bulk to Africa, are commonly, as Yinka Shonibare says, "worn with pride amongst radical cool youth" in Britain and signify a 'genuine' African identity.
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Imagined Communities brings together works which are, to me, visual chronicles of our times, past and present. By the nature of their relationships to each other, they are also a means of questioning the modes of artistic practice and representation that define 'the group' and 'the individual'. Some of the perspectives overlap and some, as I said earlier, do not necessarily fit together, which implicitly and intentionally acknowledges the differences within and across communities, be they artistic, cultural or geographical.