FADA

FADA

Sunday, July 17, 2016

THE FRONT ROOM 'INNA JOBURG' & The ARRIVANTS - solo exhibitions produced by VIAD.

Drinks Cabinet (The West Indian Front Room
-Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Nelligan
The Visual Identities in Art & Design Research Centre (VIAD) take pleasure in inviting you to the opening of the solo exhibitions and related public events:

THE FRONT ROOM 'INNA JOBURG'
by Michael McMillan
FADA Gallery, Ground Floor

&


THE ARRIVANTS
by Christine Checinska
FADA Gallery, Lower Ground Floor

OpeningReception & and Performance, Saturday 30 July 2016 from 18h00


Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants
 in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images
The opening event will be accompanied by a collaborative performance titled BACK A YARD by Christine Checinska and Michael McMillan

Exhibition Duration: 30 July-26 August 2016

FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus, University of Johannesburg.

The West Indian Front Room
(Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Neligan 2005.

ABOUT THE FRONT ROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ BY MICHAEL McMILLAN

THE FRONTROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ is an installation-based exhibition in which writer-artist-curator Michael McMillan recreates an African-Caribbean family front room, in which tradition meets modernity, and creolised material culture intersects with memory in a postcolonial Diasporic context. McMillan, who is British born of Caribbean migrant heritage, invokes his youth, his family and their generation as they struggle to establish a Black British identity in England during the 1970s. Image (left) Tina, The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©Michael McMillan

THE FRONT ROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ is a re-contextualisation of McMillan's critically acclaimed exhibition The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum, 2005-2006) that had over 35, 000 visitors. It led to international commissions: Van Huis Uit: The Living Room of Migrants in The Netherlands (Imagine IC, Amsterdam 2007 & Holland tour 2008); and A Living Room Surrounded by Salt (IBB, Curacao, 2008). The Front Room project also includes Tales from the Front Room (BBC4 documentary, 2007) and the publication, The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Black Dog, 2009). For further information follow the provided link. www.thefrontroom.org.uk. Image. Muhammad Ali (in Linda Small's front room) ©Michael McMillan 2005



ABOUT THE ARRIVANTS BY CHRISTINE CHECINSKA

In THE ARRIVANTS exhibition, UK-based artist-designer-academic Christine Checinska investigates the relationship between culture, race and dress. The conceptual departure point for the work is the 1948 arrival of the Empire Windrush at London’s Tilbury Docks carrying some 500 Jamaican migrants – colonial subjects invited by the British government to assist in rebuilding post-war Britain – hoping to make a better life in the ‘Mother Country’. Image (Detail).Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images


For more information see: The Arrivants.

Image (Detail).Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants
 in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images.


PUBLIC PROGRAMME

17 August 2016, 17h30 for 18h00
Public walkabout of THE FRONT ROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ and THE ARRIVANTS exhibitions with Michael McMillan.

18 August 2016, 18h00
Screening of the BBC4 documentary video, Tales from the Front Room, followed by discussion with Michael McMillan.

All events take place at the FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus, University of Johannesburg

Radiogram Rockers
ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Michael McMillan


As a writer, playwright, mixed-media artist, curator and scholar, Dr McMillan’s transdisciplinary practice explores migration, identity, gender, sexuality and hidden histories through ethnography, material culture, oral history, performances, texts, installation and audio-visual media.
Dr McMillan’s curatorial practice and mixed-media installations include the critically acclaimed projects: The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum, 2005-2006); Van Huis Uit: The Living Room of Migrants in The Netherlands (Imagine IC, Amsterdam 2007 & Holland tour 2008); A Living Room Surrounded by Salt (IBB, Curacao, 2008). The Front Room project also includes Tales from the Front Room (BBC4 documentary, 2007); and the publication, The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Black Dog, 2009). Image: Flowers & Vase (The West Indian Front Room-Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Hammond.

Television. (The West Indian Front Room
Geffrye Museum 2005) ©Dave Lewis


Recent work includes: No Colour Bar: Black British in Action 1960-1990 (Guildhall Art Gallery, 2015-2016); Doing Nothing is Not an Option (Peckham Platform, 2015), and Rockers, Soulheads & Lovers: Sound Systems back in da Day (NAE, Nottingham 2015-2016 & 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, London, 2016).

Dr McMillan is a Research Associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg; Associate Lecturer in Cultural & Historical Studies at London College of Fashion; and an EAS Associate Researcher (UAL). He is also a member of the Royal Literary Fund (RLF). Image: Jim Reeves Album Sleeves (The West Indian Front Room-Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Hammond 2005.


As an academic-designer-artist, Dr Checinska’s practice-led, inter-disciplinary work is situated at the meeting point between material culture and contemporary art. Checinska’s practice interrogates the place of textiles within the global flow of objects, ideas and identities characteristic of globalisations cross-cultural entanglements. The cultural exchanges that occur as a result of movement and migration, creating creolised cultural forms, are recurring themes, as is the correlation between personal history and received history. She is the instigator and convenor of the Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group at Iniva, London and was on the curatorial team for the Iniva touring show Social Fabric (2012, Iniva, London).  Dr Checinska is a Research Associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg and an Associate Lecturer in Fashion at Goldsmiths College, London.Image (Detail). Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images

For further information on the exhibitions and related public programming, please contact:

Maria Fidel Regueros, Curatorial Team member
Office: +27 (0)11 559 1442 / +27 (0)82 373 6127

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