Artist and Empire: New Dynamics 1790 to the present day Lubaina Himid in conversation with Zarina Bhimji, Artist and Curator and Achim Borchardt-Hume director of Exhibitions and Tate Programmes.

Abstract

Tate Britain’s major conference, held in collaboration with Birkbeck, University of London and culture at King’s College London, marks the opening of the exhibition Artist and Empire. Scholars, curators and artists from around Britain and the world consider art created under the conditions of the British Empire, its aftermath, and its future in museum and gallery displays.
Scholarship of art associated with the British Empire has expanded over the last two decades, across a huge span of disciplines and locations. This conference takes the historic opportunity of the exhibition, featuring diverse artists from the sixteenth century to the present day, to bring together people to meet and share the latest research being developed around this subject. The papers, roundtables and audience discussions will consider the cosmopolitan character of objects and images, and the way geographical, cultural and chronological dislocations have in many instances obscured, changed or suppressed their history, significance and aesthetics. We will also explore how approaches to contemporary art, archives, curation and collecting can help develop new ways to look at them now. 


As part of the discussion between Himid, Bhimji and Borchardt-Hume we explored the content of the exhibition itself examining the stated principles and aims, where it had succeeded and perhaps more interestingly where it had failed.