News October 2010

People’s Portraits, curated by Brendan Jackson and Beverly Harvey at The Public in West Bromwich from Wednesday 6 October to Sunday 31 October.

A three screen projection selected from photographic documentation of Black and Asian history in the region, part of Sandwell’s Black History Month. Taken in the period 1988-93 during Jubilee Arts’ People Portraits Project (of which we were both a part), the images now function as a historical document of everyday life in the community at that time. Jubilee Arts championed communities to control how their shared identities could be represented by sharing aspects of their life experiences and achievements.

The show includes images from ‘Bickle’ (1989), a large scale exhibition containing photographic portraits and interviews with Afro-Caribbean elders, ‘Sandwell in Black & White’ (1990), a mass participation project in which diverse groups of residents were invited to document their life using a camera over the whole year, and ‘My Mother, My Daughter, Myself’ (1992) a collection of oral histories and portraits of three generations of Asian woman living in Smethwick.

An introduction to the exhibition can be downloaded here… People’sPortraitintro.pdf

Image above: editorial sessions with participants of ‘Sandwell in Black & White’ project, 1990
Below: Three screen installation.