British Art News: Newsletter of the British Art Network, April 2022

CONVENOR’S INTRODUCTION This issue of our regular BAN Newsletter tackles the theme of the global and international in relation to British art. The various Members’ contributions included here provide an array of perspectives on the issues and questions involved – about the histories associated with British art, who qualifies as ‘British’ (whether in history, in art, or in contemporary society and working life), and whether ‘British art’ holds up as a category. They bring a wealth of experiences, from their working lives as exhibition organisers and researchers, and in many cases as people who have relocated globally themselves. Some pieces are clearly celebratory, others are more sharply political. Several reflect on how porous the category of ‘British art’ already is – but also see this as an unfinished project. There is common ground across a few the pieces here in reflecting on Brexit as a negative force in recent times, causing division and unease. With contributors invited earlier in the year, but writing in March and April, the topic of the terrible war in Ukraine surfaces at several points, understandably. The legacies of colonialism and empire are apparent here as well – although not in a way that reactionary commentators often seem to assume, as an absolute and inevitable block on engaging positively and creatively with British art, art histories, and history.

No single vision or version of British art emerges here. There is common ground – in experiences of migration (historical and more recent), in the readiness to see British art as a porous or mutable category, one which is always open to being re-examined, and in seeing the role of curating in contributing to that rethinking. Exhibitions, displays and art projects are shown here to be catalysts or forums for making connections, drawing parallels and marking differences, gaining knowledge and asking questions. And cutting across all these contributions is an expansive, diversified sense of curatorial practice. That diversity, combined with the common ground which is not simply consensus nor, quite certainly, based on any denial of conflict, trauma and complex histories, reminds me again of the philosopher Bernard Yack’s reflections on ‘Community’ as involving ‘awareness of difference as well as commonality’. Community is in this definition not a simple given – a birth right – nor merely artificial or contrived, but produced by a collective effort involving mutual acknowledgement.

The principle of allowing difference to abide within or along with community is finding expression of sorts in the online collection produced by BAN Members, the British Art UnCanon. This now includes 30 articles, ranging from Tudor 3