Shade – Details, episodes & analysis

Shade Podcast is back. After months away, I'm returning to what we were at the beginning—intimate, unedited conversations, just me and you. This episode adapts an article I wrote in February 2024 for Shade Art Review, asking: Where is the Black Nan Goldin? Where is the documentary photography showing Black intimacy—real, unguarded, not staged, celebrated in major exhibitions or published by prominent publishers? 22 years after I viewed Nan Goldin's The Devil's Playground at Whitechapel Gallery, I explore why I haven't seen a Black photographer gain the same recognition for work depicting intimacy with the same unflinching honesty.

This isn't about replicating what Goldin did. It's about wondering why Black artists working in this space haven't emerged to the foreground with the same institutional support. As Black people, we move through the world with vulnerability. Our bodies have been mistreated and misrepresented throughout history. So maybe there's a reason why not all is being revealed.

This article led to an exciting collaboration I'll share more about when I can.

Read the full article at Shade Art Review: https://shadepodcast.substack.com/

Contact: lou@shadepodcast.co.uk | Instagram: @shade_podcast

Shade is an independent, one-person operation. If this resonates, please share and subscribe.

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Hospital Rooms has been bringing world-class contemporary art into NHS mental healthcare units since 2016. Today, we focus on their most ambitious work to date at Hellesdon Hospital, part of the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. This project embodies both successes and challenges – from the triumph of commissioning fifteen incredible artists to create site-specific works, to the complex realities of working within a healthcare setting that has faced its own struggles in recent years. Joining me are three remarkable individuals who have been integral to the transformation of the Hellesdon spaces: Ken Nwadiogbu, a multidisciplinary artist from Lagos whose journey from civil engineering to fine art has led him to this transformative project, alongside the artist Sarah Dwyer who places drawing at the heart of her practice. We are also joined by Dr. Sophie Bagge, the Lived Experience Lead at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, who brings invaluable perspective as someone with personal and professional insights. Throughout this episode, you'll hear a sound composition by Mark Jennings titled Wards Extended, 2025 - created from recordings made in two psychiatric facilities – one abandoned and awaiting demolition, the other newly built and preparing to open.

Shape, Shift, an exhibition of artworks from this project opens at The Fitzrovia Chapel in London, from March 13-25, 2025.

This episode was supported by Hospital Rooms.

Executive Produced and hosted by Lou Mensah

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Music King Henry IV original composition for Shade Podcast by Brian Jackson

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Matthew Krishanu (b.1980, Bradford, UK) paints atmospheric, pared-back compositions including scenes from the artist’s life, particularly his childhood years in Bangladesh growing up with his brother, and their parents—a British Christian missionary and an Indian theologian. In the paintings, seemingly familiar narratives are alluded to but destabilised. The viewer’s own projections are called upon to fulfil the interpretive loop, raising questions about childhood, religion, race, power, and the legacies of empire.

The Bough Breaks is showing at Camden Art Centre until June 23. Krishanu's forthcoming solo exhibition will show at Tanya Leighton L.A., in the autumn.

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Editorial support from Anne Kimunguyi

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Welcome to the second of our episodes from the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia.

I am delighted to welcome back Aindrea Emelife as my guest. Aindrea is a curator and art historian of modern and contemporary art, whose practise specializes in colonial and decolonial African histories and the politics of representation. Aindrea is the curator of Nigeria Imaginary at the Nigeria Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which sees the country participating in the festival for the second time. The pavilion will show projects made in collaboration with the Museum of West African Art, where Aindrea is also a curator. Today, we will be getting an exciting introduction into this year’s Nigeria Pavilion and

hearing a bit more about the participating artists, their works and the curatorial thinking behind this year’s exhibition.

Enjoy a review, including images of Nigeria Imaginary written by Anne Kimunguyi in today's special edition of Shade Art Review.

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Nigeria Imaginary

Aindrea Emelife

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Welcome to the first of our episodes from the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia.

Today, I am delighted to hand the mic to my dear friend the arts writer Dale Berning Sawa, who met with John Akomfrah at the preview of The British Council commission Listening All Night To The Rain. You'll also hear from me in this episode and Dale shares a reflection on her first Venice experience and conversation with the artist on this special occasion. You can also enjoy Dale's review of Listening All Night To The Rain and images from the exhibition, in Shade Art Review. today.

Listening All Night To The Rain continues artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah’s investigation into themes of memory, migration, racial injustice and climate change with a renewed focus on the act of listening and the sonic. The exhibition, conceived as a single installation with eight interlocking and overlapping multi-screen sound and time-based works, is seen as a manifesto that encourages the idea of listening as activism and positions various progressive theories of acoustemology: how new ways of becoming are rooted in different forms of listening. Encouraging visitors to experience the British Pavilion’s 19th century neoclassical building in a different way, Akomfrah’s commission interprets and transforms the fabric of the space in order to interrogate relics and monuments of colonial histories.

John Akomfrah initially came to prominence in the early 1980s as part of the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), a collective founded in 1982. An early film by BAFC, titled Handsworth Songs (1986), explored the events around the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London. In recent years, Akomfrah’s work has evolved into ambitious, multi-channel installations presented in galleries and museums worldwide. In 2017, he won the Artes Mundi prize, the UK’s biggest award for international art. He has previously participated in the 58th Venice Viennale with Four Nocturnes, commissioned for the inaugural Ghana Pavilion in 2019, and Vertigo Sea (2015) as part of the 56th International Art Exhibition. The British Council commission Listening All Night To The Rain at the Venice Biennale 2024 runs from Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November 2024.

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Dale Berning Sawa

British Pavilion

Venice Biennale

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Legacy Russell is Executive Director & Chief Curator of the experimental arts institution The Kitchen, one of New York's oldest non-profit spaces. She is writer, curator and author of the critically acclaimed Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. I am delighted to have Legacy join me to talk about Black Meme, which is due to be published on May 7th. Black Meme focuses on the history and production of the ‘Meme’ – tracing through Black visual culture from its first appearance in the early 20th century all the way through to present times. It is a critical dissection of race, class, and gender as performed online and offline and emphasizes the central role that Black contributions have played in the development of digital culture.  

On the ‘Meme’, Legacy says:’ I want to talk about the economy and engine of this and perhaps push further a discussion about how we can hold ourselves accountable to how this material is produced and circulated.”

Black Meme is available to purchase online and in stores from May 7th.

Here is a link to Legacy's talk on The New Bend exhibition, as mentioned in Lou's intro.

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Editorial support from Anne Kimunguyi

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Ibrahim Mahama is an installation artist who works with textiles, material production and found objects to create large-scale public interventions. He initially garnered widespread attention for his open-air installations made of stitched-together jute sacks that were draped on or over architectural structures, such as libraries, an airport, and a museum, in the cities of Accra and Kumasi, where he is based. His practise involves a collaborative process of sourcing, collecting, reproducing and installing the often-textile based materials he works with. His pieces speak to ideas around historical memories, traditional belief systems, local economies and the democratisation of art. 

Ibrahim’s works have been shown in various group and solo shows, including The Norval Foundation in Cape Town, The White Cube in London and Hong Kong and has been a part of the Ghana Pavilion for 2019 Venice Biennale, among many others. In this episode, Ibrahim and I discuss his new large-scale public commission at the Barbican, the process behind creating this work and his hopes for its reception.

Ibrahim Mahama Purple Hibiscus runs at the Lakeside Terrace at the Barbican from April 10 - 18 August 2024 and is free to the public.

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Shade Podcast is Executive produced and hosted by Lou Mensah

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Editorial support from Anne Kimunguyi

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Michael Ohajuru is a London-based art historian who returns to the podcast to discuss the John Blanke project, a large gathering of artists and historians who have come together to re-imagine John Blanke, the black trumpeter to the courts of Henry 7th and Henry 8th and the first person of African descent in British history that we have both a visual and written record of. The participating artists include Keith Piper, Wole Lagunju, Phoebe Boswell, Paul Dash and Larry Achiampong.

David Olusoga Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester says of the project:

"The John Blanke Project redefines historical exploration by merging practical scholarship with innovation and critical imagination. Anchored in social justice, it reveals the overlooked narratives of Black Tudor England, enriching our grasp of diversity and British identity. By blending art and history, it encourages a deeper, empathetic engagement with our shared past, advocating for a more inclusive and equitable understanding of history."

Thanks for listening to this independent podcast. You can support this work by reviewing and sharing the podcast or becoming a Shade Art Review subscriber.

Read Shade Art Review 

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Shade Podcast is Executive produced and hosted by Lou Mensah

Music King Henry IV for Shade Podcast by Brian Jackson

Editing and mixing by Tess Davidson

Editorial support from Anne Kimunguyi

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Joy Gregory (b. 1959. Bicester, UK). Born in the UK to Jamaican parents, Joy Gregory’s work explores the impact of colonialism on global perceptions of beauty, memory, botany, health and traditional knowledge. As a photographer, Gregory has worked over decades in various media, including video, digital and analogue photography, film installation, Victorian print processes and more recently textiles; exploring photography as technology and as mode of artistic expression. She is interested in understanding how individuals and communities remember and interpret their history, particularly in relation to their connection to the land.

Joy & Lou discuss the themes of process and practice as they have developed throughout the artist’s four decade career. In June, Art on the Underground will unveil a new series of Joy’s artworks at Heathrow Terminal 4 Underground station - envisaging Heathrow as a portal of entry and exit. I spoke with Joy in February, as she embarked on her partnership with Hillingdon-based charity Refugees in Effective and Active Partnership (REAP) facilitating a series of photographic workshops with asylum seekers living in hotels in the Heathrow area, as well as a community group for Afghan women in Hayes and Harlington. These workshops will inform the creation of her artwork for Heathrow Terminal 4, giving space to the stories of newly arrived Londoners, displaced people whose realities are increasingly maligned and misrepresented. The work will offer an indelible trace of the cultures, languages and hopes which coalesce in London.

In the Autumn of 2025, Whitechapel Gallery will stage Joy’s first monographic exhibition, surveying a four-decade practice.

Thanks for listening to this independent podcast. You can support this work by reviewing and sharing the podcast or becoming a Shade Art Review subscriber (follow the link below for details).

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Shade Podcast is Executive produced and hosted by Lou Mensah

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Editing and mixing by Tess Davidson

Editorial support from Anne Kimunguyi

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This evening, 21 March '24

6 - 8pm GMT: Artist Talk - Tiona Nekkia McClodden at White Cube Bermondsey, London. Tiona will discuss the impetus of her solo exhibition ‘A MERCY | DUMMY’, which spans two discrete bodies of works produced alongside each other. McClodden will explore the impulse to present two bodies of works together for the first time in her career through a choreographed sharing of her collection of archival research, music, video, and texts. Reserve a spot here. MERCY | DUMMY runs until 24 March.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden (b.1981, Blytheville, Arkansas) spent her formative years throughout the American South. Trained as a filmmaker, McClodden worked largely within the punk and club scene in Atlanta before moving to Philadelphia in 2006 and expanding her practice to include painting, sculpture, photography and installation.

Recent solo exhibitions include Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (2023); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2023); The Shed, New York (2022); 52 Walker, New York (2022); The Triple Deities, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2021); and Company Gallery, New York (2019). Selected group exhibitions include Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York (2023–24); El Museo del Barrio in New York (2022–23), touring to Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona (2023) and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida (2023–24); ICA Los Angeles, California (2022); Prospect 5, New Orleans, Louisiana (2021–22); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2021); New Museum, New York (2021); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2019); and the Whitney Biennial, New York (2019). Other presentations of her work have been on view at MOCA, Los Angeles, California (2017); MCA Chicago, Illinois (2017); and MoMA PS1, New York (2016). In recent years, McClodden has won prestigious grants and fellowships, including the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2022), Princeton Arts Fellowship (2021–23); the Bucksbaum Award, Whitney Museum of American Art (2019); Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts (2019); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2017); and the Pew Fellowship (2016), while running Conceptual Fade, a project gallery and library she founded in 2020 that hosts micro-exhibitions and publications centred on Black art and conceptual practice.

Work by McClodden is in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; MoMA, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; and Rennie Museum, Canada.

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Shade Podcast is Executive produced and hosted by Lou Mensah

Music King Henry IV for Shade Podcast by Brian Jackson

Editing and mixing by Tess Davidson

Editorial support from Anne Kimunguyi

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