THIS IS LONDON SEPTEMBER EDITION 2025 copy - Flipbook - Page 30
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KERRY JAMES MARSHALL: THE
HISTORIES AT ROYAL ACADEMY
This autumn, the Royal Academy of
Arts will present the largest survey of
celebrated American artist and Honorary
Royal Academician Kerry James
Marshall ever to be shown in Europe.
Marking the artist’s 70th birthday, this
major solo exhibition will explore
Marshall’s expansive career to date.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
will feature over 70 works, bringing
together primarily paintings, as well as
examples of the artist’s prints, drawings
and sculpture, from museums and
private collections across North America
and Europe. The exhibition will be the
first institutional presentation of the
artist’s work in the UK since 2006 and
will include a dramatic new series of
paintings made especially for the show.
Revered as one of the most influential
contemporary history painters working
today, Marshall’s powerful, large-scale
paintings address themes including the
Middle Passage and the legacies of the
Civil Rights and Black Power
movements; portray individuals such as
Olaudah Equiano and Harriet Tubman;
and create monumental scenes depicting
contemporary Black life, elevating the
every day to the epic. He centres Black
figures in paintings built on principles
codified in the tradition of Western
picture making, which he encountered in
books and museums available during
his childhood. Marshall’s work is
informed by art history, contemporary
culture, Afrofuturism, and science
fiction. He engages hard questions about
the past, celebrates ordinary life, and
imagines a more optimistic future.
Marshall works in series and cycles,
as reflected in the exhibition’s thematic
arrangement, which will showcase 11
groups of works made between 1980
and the present. The exhibition opens
with works from the 2000s and 2010s,
highlighting Marshall’s long interest in
the disciplines of art taught in
institutions such as the Royal Academy.
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Kerry James Marshall, Untitled, 2009.
Acrylic on PVC panel, 155.3 x 185.1.
Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased
with the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
and a gift from Jacqueline L. Bradley,
B.A. 1979. © Kerry James Marshall
BLITZ: THE CLUB THAT SHAPED
THE 80S
This autumn, the Design Museum
opens a major new exhibition to
discover – or rediscover – the London
nightclub where the culture of the 1980s
began.
This will be the first ever major
exhibition on the legendary and
impactful Blitz club night. Developed in
close collaboration with some of the
leading ‘Blitz Kids’ who were there, the
exhibition will feature over 250 items –
all drawn from the Blitz club scene and
the creative individuals who populated it.
The vast majority of the objects that
visitors will experience are coming to
the Design Museum from the personal
collections of former Blitz Kids. Many
have been in the homes of these
influential figures ever since they starred
in the Blitz nights. This means most
items have not been seen in well over 40
years.
In London in 1979 – at the tail end of
Punk and at the start of Thatcher’s
decade in power – a small but influential
group of young creatives came together
every Tuesday at the Blitz wine bar in
Covent Garden. Co-hosted by Steve
Strange and Rusty Egan, this weekly
club night drew a daring, restless new
generation. They rejected both the
conformity of mainstream culture and
the rigidity of existing subcultures, and
instead pushed boundaries with their
outrageous fashions, gender fluidity and
futuristic music.
The scene launched the careers of
many stars, including chart-topping
performers Spandau Ballet, Visage, Boy
George, Sade, Ultravox and Marilyn as
well as a long list of designers, artists,
filmmakers and writers.
On view at the Design Museum until
29 March.
Outside the Blitz club in 1979.
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Photo: Sheila Rock
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