Eddie Chambers (artist)


Eddie Chambers is a British contemporary art historian, curator and artist. He currently holds the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.
WWW eddiechambers.com

Artistic career

Chambers was born in Wolverhampton, England, to parents who were immigrants from Jamaica. While attending Sunderland Polytechnic where he was pursuing a Fine Art degree, Chambers met Trent Polytechnic student Keith Piper. Alongside Marlene Smith and Donald Rodney, they formed the BLK Art Group, a groundbreaking association of Black British art students. The group's highly politicized work, including Chambers' Destruction of the National Front, was part of a controversial 1989 touring exhibition entitled "The Other Story: Asian, African and Caribbean artists in Post-War Britain". The exhibition challenged imperialist attitudes toward race and nationalism, and attracted wide press attention and critical interest.
More recently, Chambers' work was featured in the exhibition No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 at the Guildhall Art Gallery. When the exhibition began, he and Errol Lloyd held a Q&A session at Guildhall to discuss "the impact made by notable Black Artists in the late 20th Century, who have gone largely unnoticed in the British Art Arena."

Curating

In addition to his own artistic work, Chambers has continued to champion the work of other artists, curating exhibitions throughout the UK and internationally, including Black People and the British Flag, Eugene Palmer, Frank Bowling: Bowling on through the Century and Tam Joseph: This is History. In 1998 he was awarded a Ph.D in History of Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London, for his thesis "Black Visual Arts Activity in England Between 1981–1986: Press and Public Responses". Concerned about the need to document the practice of black artists, Chambers set up the African and Asian Visual Artists' Archive in 1989. It was the first research and reference facility in the country for documenting British-based Black visual artists. Drawing on material in his own collection relating to the visual arts practices of artists from African, South Asian and other diasporas, he also initiated the online research and reference facility, Diaspora Artists.

Writing

In the 21st century, Chambers moved into the world of academia and art scholarship, contributing catalogue essays, anthology entries, articles and books with a focus on the work and history of Black British and African artists. After relocating to the United States, he joined the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Austin in 2010, where he taught the history of African Diaspora art. He also wrote his first substantial work of contemporary art history, Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain. It garnered enthusiastic responses in leading journals, including Art Review, which described his writing as "excellent" and "nuanced". In 2014, he published an expanded consideration of his themes in Black Artists in British Art: A History from 1950 to the Present.

Selected bibliography

Books

  • Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the making of Black Britain. Bloomsbury, 2017. The Routledge Companion to African American Art History. Routledge. 2019.

Book contributions

Articles

  • Subject: Artists' work about riots.
  • . Art Monthly, 214, March 1998.