Review relating to a publication, 2005
Published by: Art Monthly
Year published: 2005
Number of pages: 2

Two sheets of A4 portrait/monochrome photocopy from original/Original copy also in archive/ Review taken from Art Monthly, Issue 288, July - August 2005/page 46 - 47/Book review

Title: Shades of Black
Author: Eddie Chambers

Article is a review of the publication Shades of Black. Publication details: Shades of Black, Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, eds David A Bailey, Ian Baucom and Sonia Boyce, Duke University Press/inIVA/Aavaa, London, 2005, 340pp, colour and b/w illus, pb, 19.95/ISBN 0 8223 3420 8

Extract from the review as follows: “The publication opens with Stuart Hall’s contribution. “Assembling the 1980’s: the Deluge - and After“, in which he tries “to frame a provisional answer to the question: How might we begin to ‘assemble’ the 1980s as an object of critical knowledge?” In a wide ranging and highly engaging paper, Hall offers two things for our critical consideration. Firstly a highly nuanced deconstruction and reconstruction of the artistic and cultural events that give the decade much of its apparent significance. “By and large, even though a number of the contributors have undoubtedly done very well for themselves out of the 80s, the decade is remembered here with little fondness or affection and almost alarmingly, perhaps, with little passion or enthusiasm, not even for some of the incredible visual art produced during the 80s. Such a charmless and sullen recollection is perhaps of little real surprise, given the preponderance of bad news during that decade. As [Keith] Piper suggests, part of the dominant text of the 1990s was an expression of happy release from the dreary preoccupations of the 1980s.”