Making Art in Africa: 1960-2010

Description

What does it mean to make art in Africa? In Making Art in Africa, 60 of the continent's leading artists give very different answers to this question through a series of extraordinary first-hand commentaries relating to specific works. The book includes accounts from key curators and co-ordinators, and primary images are considered in the context of contemporary events, personal discoveries, and the networks such as Triangle which have brought them together. Showcasing paintings, sculptures, prints and installations, Making Art in Africa marries the selected interviews and their associated images with archival and comparative illustrations. The result is an unparalleled insight into the artworks, experiences and processes of art making in Africa during a period of radical social change. Visually appealing with absorbing, accessible texts, Making Art in Africa provides a unique contribution to the literature available on this fascinating subject, and will be an essential purchase for scholars and general readers alike.

Polly Savage is a writer, curator and Senior Teaching Fellow in History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS, London. She was previously Associate Lecturer in World Arts at Birkbeck College and Assistant Curator at the October Gallery, London, and has published and lectured widely on contemporary art in Africa and diasporas. Robert Loder CBE has had strong links with Africa since the mid-1950s a' he lived and worked in South Africa, and then Zambia, for eight years from 1955. Back in the UK, he was Treasurer and then Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts during the 1970s and in 1982 he co-founded the Triangle Workshop with Sir Anthony Caro. Over the next two decades, Triangle developed into a network of workshops and studio buildings in over twenty countries. Throughout the 1990s he visited Africa frequently, and as Chairman of Triangle Arts Trust in the UK he promoted Triangle workshops and studios in many countries in Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. John Picton is Emeritus Professor in African Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He worked for the Nigerian government's Department of Antiquities from 1961 to 1970, and for the British Museum from 1970 to 1979. His research and publications cover Yoruba and Edo (Benin) sculpture, masquerade and textile history in sub-Saharan Africa, and the transformations of African visual practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.

'At the heart of this book - and what makes it unique - are the artists' first person stories about their own experiences in art making. The production value of this hardback book is high as we would expect from Lund Humphries. For librarians building African art collections, this should be on your "must buy" list for 2015.' Art Libraries Society of North America