Review relating to an exhibition, 1992
Published by: Time Out
Year published: 1992
Number of pages: 1

Review in Time Out magazine, February 12 - 19 1992, page 36, written by Sarah Kent. The review, titled Young at Art,  was of the Barclays Young Artists Award of 1992, held at Serpentine Gallery. The star of the exhibition was undoubtedly a work by Yinka Shonibare, titled Installation. Kent had emerged as a sometime admirer of the work of Black artists, though, surprisingly perhaps, her language seemed at times heavy-handed. Her review of Installation was no exception. After addressing the other artists in the Barclays Young Artist Award exhibition, Kent concluded thus:

“Yinka Shonibare is a black artist – a group that, in the West, has also been without a voice. He creates a dialogue between minimalist abstraction and the brightly coloured designs of African fabrics. The cloth is stretched as though it were canvas and used as the support for swathes of dense pigment – high art meets ethnic design. Numerous modern artists have been inspired by ethnic art, but this is a dialogue of a different kind – between Shonibare and himself, between his Western experience (he was born and brought up here and studied in London art schools) and his distant roots. Without being in any way didactic, the paintings raise questions concerning the relationships between high and applied art and between the first and third worlds. More importantly perhaps, they also address the issue of belonging versus alienation: highly intelligent work.”