Work from the 1980s
Image: 'Black Assassin Saints' (1982)
The Black Assassin Saints (1982)
The Seven Rages of Man (1984. Reconfigured 2018)
‘The Fours Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (1985)
During the 1980s Keith Piper developed an interest in art-making as a means of storytelling. He had a strong impulse to use images and words to interrogate pressing issues and to pursue the constant battle for social and racial justice. The resulting works were predominantly two-dimensional pieces on paper or unstretched canvases featuring handwritten texts alluding to protest banners. They were Piper’s response to the era of Thatcherism, the struggle against Apartheid, police brutality and other issues during the 1980s.
Almost all works exhibited here are characterised by sequential, written narratives presented across several panels. These large, elaborate pieces are full of references to literature, history and theory allowing for multiple interpretations. They also allude to history painting, a genre of allegorical paintings that depict moments of turmoil from the past.
Panel-based works, where the story gradually reveals itself in ‘episodes’, suggest the artist’s increasing interest in using ‘time’ as a way of organising content. This subsequently led him to work with time-based media exhibited in the next two galleries.