LIFE BETWEEN ISLANDS – Caribbean-British Art 1950s–Now (Signed copy)

This fascinating book traces the connection between Britain and the Caribbean in the visual arts from the 1950s to today, a social and cultural history more often told through literature or popular music. With its multi-generational perspective, it reveals that the Caribbean connection in British art is one of the richest facets of art in Britain since the Second World War, and is a lens through which to understand the Caribbean diasporic experience in all its social, cultural, psychological and political complexities across generations. Featuring around 40 artists – among them Vanley Burke, Pogus Caesar, Armet Francis, Neil Kenlock,  Charlie Phillips, Ingrid Pollard, Vron Ware, and many more – it includes a variety of works mostly by UK-based African-Caribbean artists, but also by artists who were not originally from the Caribbean but who relocated there or have made important work about it. It sheds light on a number of themes such as Caribbean modernism, social and political struggles, subculture and its policing, the front room as a private and public space, after-images of slavery and the Middle Passage, and carnival and folklore. Readers will find themselves charting a course between two worlds: London or other urban localities in the UK and images of formerly British Caribbean nations. With contributions by a variety of authors, including Paul Gilroy and fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, A Brighter Sun presents post-war British art history in its global and transnational dimensions, and reveals how these were shaped by the struggle against Empire and its legacies.