From 29 June - 15 July, Grosvenor Gallery will be exhibiting work by Rasheed Araeen at Frieze Cork Street. The show opens with a reception on Thursday, 29 June from 6 - 8 pm.
The exhibition is titled Sixty-Three Years of the Figural and will feature a curated and focused view of the figure in his practice, from early drawings to political works and performances. Works in the exhibition will largely date from the 1970s and 1980s. On the opening night we will be screening Rasheed's seminal performance Paki Bastard (Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person), originally staged at Artists for Democracy in 1977.
Simultaneously we will be exhibiting historical work by Araeen at the Grosvenor Gallery on Bury Street as well as his minimalist Constructions.
Other events:
Walkthrough of the exhibition led by Kylie Gilchrist and screening of Araeen’s work Paki Bastard (Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person), (1977)
Saturday, 1 July: 11 am
Screening: 11.30 am
Location: Frieze, No. 9 Cork Street
Rasheed Araeen’s seminal performance, Paki Bastard (Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person) was executed in 1977 at an exhibition staged by ‘Artists for Democracy’. The work was part of Araeen’s body of heavily political pieces, which began in 1973 with the collage work For Oluwale. The film consists of a montage of images of Asian immigrants on Brick Lane, interspersed with press cuttings describing race related attacks, portraits of Araeen’s family and of his minimalist structures. The film is set to a soundtrack including Handel’s Messiah, music from Bollywood films and racist chants by members of the National Front.
Running time, 25 minutes
Kylie Gilchrist is an AHRC-NWCDTP PhD candidate in art history at the University of Manchester and was a visiting assistant in research at Yale University in Autumn 2022. She is completing a dissertation titled Structures of Transformation: The Politics of Artistic Form in the Work of Rasheed Araeen, 1952–1978.
Tate Modern:
On Friday 21 July Rasheed Araeen's Zero to Infinity will be opening the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, part of the Uniqlo Tate Play Series. The largest iteration of Araeen's seminal work, it is a large scale interactive public sculpture involving 400 cubes.
