Dr Leila Kamali: The History of Racism in Britain
Karol Radziszewski: QAI/GB-NGM Mar - May 2022
Reactor: Here, the Gold Ones flatter Mar - May 2022
Bonington Vitrines #18: Story Cloth Sep - Dec 2021
Bonington Vitrines #17: Andrew Logan, Alternative Miss World Sep - Dec 2021
Andrew Logan: The Joy of Sculpture Apr - May 2021
Reactor: Here, the Gold Ones meet Oct - Dec 2020
Sophie Cundale: The Near Room Feb - Mar 2020
Matt Woodham: Sensing Systems (streaming online) Jan - Jan 2020
Nick Chaffe: Motif Residency exhibition Nov - Feb 2020
Motif Sep - Nov 2019
Waking the witch: Old ways, new rites Apr - May 2019
The Big Head Man Sep - Nov 2019
Bonington Vitrines #13: Wayne Burrows – Works from the Hallucinated Archive Apr - May 2020
Bonington Vitrines #16: The Captive Conscious (POSTPONED) Feb - Mar 2020
Bonington Vitrines #15: Nomadic Vitrine with Mick Peter (CLOSED) Nov - Feb 2020
Bonington Vitrines #14: Journeys to Nottingham from the Windrush Generation Apr - May 2019
Bonington Vitrines #12: Complaint Jan - Feb 2019
Bonington Vitrines #10: Jewell Feb - Feb 2019
UKYA City Takeover Apr - May 2019
C/J
Chloé Maratta and Joanne Robertson Mar - Mar 2019
The Community Live in Nottingham Nov - Dec 2018
THE SERVING LIBRARY V DAVID OSBALDESTON Nov - Dec 2018
Bonington Vitrines #9: Towards The Serving Library Annual Nov - Dec 2018
Emily Andersen Portraits: Black & White Book launch and exhibition Sep - Oct 2018
BONINGTON VITRINES #8: HOUSE OF WISDOM Jan - Feb 2019
DICK JEWELL: NOW & THEN Sep - Oct 2018
THE ACCUMULATION OF THINGS Apr - Apr 2018
Video Days Preview Apr - May 2018
Video Days Apr - Apr 2018
Video Days: Week One Screenings Apr - Apr 2018
Video Days: Week Two Screenings Apr - May 2018
Video Days: Week Three Screenings May - May 2018
Video Days: Week Four Screenings May - May 2018
Video Days: Week Five Screenings Apr - May 2018
Bonington Vitrines #7: The Bonington building, est. 1969 Feb - Mar 2018
Bonington Vitrines #6: One Eye on the Road – festival and traveller culture since the 1980s Feb - Mar 2018
LACE UNARCHIVED Jan - Feb 2018
Bonington Vitrines #5: Communicating the Contemporary – The ICA Bulletin 1950s to 1990s Nov - Dec 2017
Bonington Vitrines #4: Sara MacKillop publications, 2008–2017 Sep - Oct 2017
Bonington Vitrines #3: London’s Calling Jan - Feb 2018
Ruth Angel Edwards: Wheel of the Year
! EFFLUENT PROFUNDAL ZONE ! Nov - Dec 2017
Sara MacKillop: One Room Living Sep - Oct 2017
It’s Our Playground: Artificial Sensibility Apr - May 2017
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT Sep - Oct 2016
MOULD MAP 6 — TERRAFORMERS Oct - Dec 2016
KRÍSIS Jan - Feb 2017
ALL MEN BY NATURE DESIRE TO KNOW Jan - Feb 2017
Bonington Vitrines #2: Marbled Reams Oct - Dec 2016
Bonington Vitrines #1: Selections from the Raw Print Archive Feb - Mar 2017
SHAPELESS IMPACT NOT TIME SLOW IS (FLITS BY)
27 Oct - 27 Oct 2021
Dr Leila Kamali: The History of Racism in Britain
This free online talk is part of our ongoing public events programme Formations, led in partnership with the Postcolonial Studies Centre at NTU.
The recording of the event can be viewed here.
Dr Leila Kamali talk: The History of Racism in Britain
Bonington Gallery and Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) Postcolonial Studies Centre (PSC) are very pleased to welcome back Dr Leila Kamali, following the talk she gave on John Edgar Wideman in October 2020. This event will be introduced by PSC co-director, Dr Jenni Ramone.
This talk will give a brief history of Black people’s presence in Britain which stretches all the way back to Roman times, and will offer education and resources for understanding the relationship between Britain and its populations of colour as a kind of continual historical pendulum. From Renaissance times, to the 18th century, to the post-Second World War period, Britain has again and again ‘invited’ people of colour to build the nation’s economic and cultural wealth, and simultaneously created conditions which exclude and dehumanise people of colour, and which foster and encourage racism. Whether in the time of Margaret Thatcher, the New Cross Fire and the repressive SUS laws, or in the wake of Brexit and the Black Lives Matter protests, Britain has a track-record of racial repression which supports and also precedes the racial violence more often popularly associated with the United States.
In 2020, the public murder of George Floyd caused the spotlight to be turned with a new sensitivity upon anti-Black racism. Now, in 2021, mixed conditions exist – the return of apathy at some level, the brief release again of racial hatred following the UEFA European Football Championship, and a right-wing politics which remains ascendant. This talk will ask questions about where we are situated historically in terms of anti-racist struggle, and in relation to what can be observed from the pendulum of history. Key suggestions will be thought through in terms of the kinds of anti-racist work which are most appropriate, and most likely to foster real inclusivity in Britain today, amidst the many social challenges currently facing us.
Biographical notes
Dr Leila Kamali is a literary scholar with specialisms in African American and Black British literature, diaspora, cultural memory and aesthetics. She has held research and lecturing roles at the African American Policy Forum, at the University of Liverpool, Goldsmiths University of London, and King’s College London. Her book The Cultural Memory of Africa in African American and Black British Fiction, 1970-2000 (Palgrave 2016) was named “boldly progressive” and “entirely original and provocative” by Professor Michelle M. Wright and Professor Paul Gilroy respectively. Her articles have been published in Callaloo, Obsidian, Kalfou, and Atlantic Studies, and she has chapters on ‘Diaspora’ in the volume Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction (Routledge 2019), and on Black Queer Poetry in With Fists Raised (Liverpool UP 2021). She is currently working on two monographs, one on the work of John Edgar Wideman, the other on the “inner life of Blackness”.