Entangled Pasts 1768 - Now
Royal Academy of Arts, London

ENTANGLED PASTS 1768-Now tackles fundamental themes of human exploitation, cruelty and injustice inflicted on people of colour by British imperialism and its legacies from the 18th century to the present. It also focuses on black and Asian artists’ resistance to these injustices and celebrates their peoples’ achievements. 

Imperialist conquests are exemplified by single and group portraits commissioned by the wealthy and powerful who aggrandised their social status by having their ownership of “exotic” colonial servants included. Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV, c 1787 depicts the prince in full regalia of elaborately embroidered coat of cream and blue with a red sash, standing in front of a classical column next to his extravagantly plumed hat. A young black male servant who also wears the British flag’s red, white and blue bends down to adjust the prince’s belt while the prince stares arrogantly into the middle distance, studiously ignoring the lad. 

Thomas Gainsborough’s half-length portrait of Ignatius Sancho is painted on a more modest scale yet it shows that the black composer, shopkeeper and writer was successful enough to have his portrait painted. But these are rare exceptions, and John Bell’s sculpture Manacled Slave of 1877 portraying a beautiful, but helpless young black enslaved woman is more typical of contemporary racial attitudes, while also embodying male sexual attitudes and fantasies of domination.

Yet most of the exhibition focuses on recent and contemporary art by black British artists with mixed or African or Asian or backgrounds. Karen Mclean, who grew up in Trinidad but is based in Birmingham, bases her work on the historical and cultural interconnections between Britain and the Caribbean. Drawing upon Caribbean folklore her installation Primitive Matters: Huts of 2010, juxtaposes seven small, basic wooden huts like those lived in by slaves, mounted on tall stilts in front of a large projected black and white photograph of an elaborate white mansion like those lived in by slave owners. A direct visual indictment. 

Sonia Boyce’s Lay back, keep quiet and think what made Britain so great, of 1986, devotes three of its large panels to depictions of British colonial exploitation, while in the fourth panel her self-portrait returns out gaze with a quizzical, sorrowful and accusatory stare. It says it all. 

Many works celebrate black people’s beauty. The American Chicagoan artist, activist and educator Margaret Burroughs’ Black Venus of 1957, depicted the goddess rising from the sea in a composition recalling Sandro Botticelli’s famous Renaissance painting of a white Venus. At a time of overt, virulent American racism when dominant stereotypes portrayed black people as ugly, Burroughs’s work formed part of a rising black resistance which included asserting consciousness of their own beauty. She also promoted African-American artists and writers through her work as a teacher. A rare inclusion of a non-British artist in this exhibition, this could be a portent of an important future exhibition of international black artists. 

Also sticking to monochrome is Kara Walker’s no world, from An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters, of 2020 that conveys the horrific practice of throwing slaves overboard to lighten slave ships’ loads in turbulent seas. 

Lubaina Himid’s large installation of black dancers and musicians trapped in motion is contradictory: the figures’ glum facial expressions oppose their bright, patterned clothes and energetic movements, so suggesting a critique of stereotyping black people as only entertainers. 

A more direct indictment of immigrant hardships is Yinka Shonibare’s sculpture Woman Moving Up of 2023, in which a woman with a globe for a head wears vivid African printed textiles, but is bent double as she struggles to lift her suitcases up a golden staircase. 

But the most profound and exciting work is Hew Locke’s Armada, of 2017-19. A major installation which greets the viewer, and stays in the memory longer than all other works. Born in 1959 in Edinburgh to a Guyanese father and British mother, aged five Locke first left its grey stone walls and North Sea winds mitigated by the Scots’ wit and humour, for Guyana’s balmy breezes. There he spent the next equally formative seven years, followed by several future journeys between the two countries. These voyages were made by sea, and boats, ships and the sea became his major subjects and migration a major theme. 

Such deep childhood disjunctions may disturb but also enrich lifelong outlooks. The major contrasts between the two countries gave Locke the visceral understanding of cultural and national difference but also of our shared humanity. These were destined to underlie his work. 

His installation Armada, of 2017-19 is a stunning masterpiece. His childhood and adolescent experiences as both insider and outsider in Guyana and Britain produced a profound understanding of humanity. A life-size rusting cargo ship is surrounded by smaller boats, and even a flimsy raft floating precariously close to the main ship. There are no people yet the entire installation resonates with implied human presence. 

Ever inventive, and based on serious, well-researched history, Locke’s installation provides multi-layered references to colonialism, culture, politics, sea-faring and his personal experience as an immigrant and dual national. He says: “Boats are a metaphor for life, basically.” On another occasion he asserted the importance of being positive and having hope. 

One of Britain’s greatest living artists Hew Locke stands head and shoulders above the many contemporary artists who do not go beyond narrow navel gazing, whereas he looks out at the world and does so with generous compassion. Rising above casual racism and xenophobia, he has stated his firm belief in hope and in the importance of having positive attitudes.

This is an ambitious, well-funded exhibition imbued with a sense of national guilt at past racist cruelties and oppression. When I saw it on a non-press day I was pleased to see that there were more people of colour there than is usual. 

Runs until April 28. For more information see: royalacademy.org.uk