Shade

In today's episode, I'm reading an essay by Eleanor Sanghara Güstard, published in Shade Art Review today. Eleanor inherited an old Nikon F50 from her late father. When the lens cracked, she kept shooting through it. Those "poor images" became a methodology for navigating her position between Britain and India, whiteness and brownness. In her essay, Eleanor traces a lineage of South Asian photogra...

Shade Podcast closes out 2025 by returning to the Shade Art Review archives. This episode adapts "Oh God It's Frieze Week Again," an article I wrote in October 2023, asking: Who gets to show up in the art world? As Art Basel Miami Beach wraps the year's art fair circuit and we await next week's Turner Prize announcement, I explore the barriers disabled artists and arts workers face during heighten...

I'm reading "Deana Lawson's photography divides critics and I'm here for it" from the Shade Art Review archives, asking questions about critical freedom, backlash culture, and when we lost the ability to be honest about art. This one asks: when did bland takes become the safest option? And who does this serve? Questions I'm still asking about art criticism, fear, and the freedom to feel something....

Shade Podcast is back. After months away, I'm returning to what we were at the beginning—intimate, unedited conversations, just me and you. This episode adapts an article I wrote in February 2024 for Shade Art Review, asking: Where is the Black Nan Goldin? Where is the documentary photography showing Black intimacy—real, unguarded, not staged, celebrated in major exhibitions or published by promin...

Hospital Rooms has been bringing world-class contemporary art into NHS mental healthcare units since 2016. Today, we focus on their most ambitious work to date at Hellesdon Hospital, part of the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. This project embodies both successes and challenges – from the triumph of commissioning fifteen incredible artists to create site-specific works, to the complex re...

This series of conversations with art educators expand on the ideas presented by Vi sualise:  The   Runnymede Trust and Freelands Foundation 2024 report   on Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education. In this episode 'Visualise the Future' we are joined by Carey Robinson, Deputy Director, Learning and Public Programmes at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Ca...

This series of conversations with art educators, practitioners and makers expands on the ideas presented by Vi sualise:  The   Runnymede Trust and Freelands Foundation 2024 report   on Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education. In this episode 'The Art of Teaching' we are joined by Shepherd Manyika, an artist and educator based in London. Shepherd graduat...

This series of conversations with art educators, practitioners and makers expands on the ideas presented by Vi sualise:  The   Runnymede Trust and Freelands Foundation 2024 report   on Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education. In this episode 'Art Outside the Classroom' we are joined by Dr Sadegh Aleahmad,  an Iranian-born multi-disciplinary artist,...

This series of conversations with art educators, practitioners and makers expands on the ideas presented by Vi sualise:  The   Runnymede Trust and Freelands Foundation 2024 report   on Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education. In this episode 'Classroom Portraits' we are joined by Exodus Crooks, a Birmingham-based multi-disciplinary artist and educa...

This new weekly, five part series of conversations with art educators, practitioners and makers expands on the ideas presented by Vi sualise:  The   Runnymede Trust and Freelands Foundation 2024 report   on Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education. These conversations aim to support educators in providing a more diverse art curriculum. In today's episode...

Enjoy our special episode which captures and reflects on a discussion on new approaches to sculpture outdoors which took place at the inaugural London Sculpture Week symposium at London Metropolitan University on 25th September 2024.   The discussion features contributions from the following speakers: Jo Baxendale, Visual Arts Project Manager Fourth Plinth, Greater London Authority  Sara...

Donald Rodney (b. 1961, West Bromwich; d. 1998, London) worked across sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, and digital media, experimenting with new materials and technologies throughout his life. His work is known for being incisive, acerbic, and evocative in its analysis of the prejudices and injustices surrounding racial identity, Black masculinity, chronic illness, and Britain's colonia...

Enjoy our special episode from the exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at Kunstmuseum in Basel recorded by Anne Kimunguyi. Many of you know Anne from her Shade Art Review. features. Our guest is Head of Contemporary Art at Kunstmuseum Basel, Maja Wismer. As part of her role, she specialises in art of the late 20th and early 21st century, having previously held the...

Matthew Krishanu (b.1980, Bradford, UK) paints atmospheric, pared-back compositions including scenes from the artist’s life, particularly his childhood years in Bangladesh growing up with his brother, and their parents—a British Christian missionary and an Indian theologian. In the paintings, seemingly familiar narratives are alluded to but destabilised. The viewer’s own projections are called upo...

Welcome to the second of our episodes from the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. I am delighted to welcome back Aindrea Emelife as my guest. Aindrea is a curator and art historian of modern and contemporary art, whose practise specializes in colonial and decolonial African histories and the politics of representation. Aindrea is the curator of Nigeria Imaginary at th...

Welcome to the first of our episodes from the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Today, I am delighted to hand the mic to my dear friend the arts writer Dale Berning Sawa, who met with John Akomfrah at the preview of The British Council commission Listening All Night To The Rain . You'll also hear from me in this episode and Dale shares a reflection on her first Venice exp...

Legacy Russell is Executive Director & Chief Curator of the experimental arts institution The Kitchen , one of New York's oldest non-profit spaces. She is writer, curator and author of the critically acclaimed Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. I am delighted to have Legacy join me to talk about Black Meme, which is due to be published on May 7th. Black Meme focuses on the history and producti...

Ibrahim Mahama is an installation artist who works with textiles, material production and found objects to create large-scale public interventions. He initially garnered widespread attention for his open-air installations made of stitched-together jute sacks that were draped on or over architectural structures, such as libraries, an airport, and a museum, in the cities of Accra and Kumasi, where h...

Michael Ohajuru is a London-based art historian who returns to the podcast to discuss the John Blanke project , a large gathering of artists and historians who have come together to re-imagine John Blanke, the black trumpeter to the courts of Henry 7th and Henry 8th and the first person of African descent in British history that we have both a visual and written...

Joy Gregory (b. 1959. Bicester, UK). Born in the UK to Jamaican parents, Joy Gregory ’s work explores the impact of colonialism on global perceptions of beauty, memory, botany, health and traditional knowledge. As a photographer, Gregory has worked over decades in various media, including video, digital and analogue photography, film installation, Victorian print processes and more recently t...

This evening, 21 March '24 6 - 8pm GMT: Artist Talk - Tiona Nekkia McClodden at White Cube Bermondsey, London. Tiona will discuss the impetus of her solo exhibition  ‘A MERCY | DUMMY’ , which spans two discrete bodies of works produced alongside each other. McClodden will explore the impulse to present two bodies of works together for the first time in her career through a choreographed shari...

Welcome to the final episode in my seven part, end of year series! Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual, I am joined by friends to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, familial and ancestral who guide them. Cynthia is a costume designer, whose work you will have seen in successfu...

Welcome to the penultimate episode in this Christmas series of conversations. Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual, I am joined by friends artists to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, familial and ancestral who guide them. Rashod Taylor is a Missouri-based photographer whose p...

Welcome to this seven part, end of year series - new episodes are released each weekday between Dec 13-21. Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual. I am joined by friends (artists, dancers, musicians) to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, familial and ancestral who guide them. Tyr...

Welcome to this seven part, end of year series! New episodes released each weekday between Dec 13-21. Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual. I am joined by friends (artists, dancers, musicians) to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, familial and ancestral who guide them. Today I...