Rita Keegan
American-British artist and archivist (born 1949)
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Rita Keegan, OBE (born 1949) is an American-born artist, lecturer and archivist, based in England since the late 1970s. She is a multi-media artist whose work uses video and digital technologies.[1] Keegan is best known for her involvement with in the UK's Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and her work documenting artists of colour in Britain.
Rita Keegan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rita Morrison 1949 (age 76–77) |
| Education | High School of Art and Design, San Francisco Art Institute |
| Occupations | Artist, lecturer and archivist |
| Known for | Painting, digital art |
Biography
Born Rita Morrison[2] in the Bronx, New York City,[3] to a Dominican mother and Canadian father,[4] she described her upbringing in the Bronx as having "more in common with an English/Commonwealth background".[5] She graduated from the High School of Art and Design focusing on illustration and costume design, then obtained a fine arts degree at the San Francisco Art Institute,[6] where her teachers included the photographer Imogen Cunningham and the African-American artist Mary O'Neill.[5] Keegan moved to London, England, in the late 1970s.[1]
Keegan originally trained as a painter but in the 1980s begin to incorporate lens-based media, using the photocopier and computer in both 2D and installation work.[7] In 1984 she worked at "Community Copyart" in London. The GLC-funded organisation was an affordable resource centre for voluntary groups to create they own print material in addition to working with artists who wanted to use the photocopier as a form of printmaking.[8]
Keegan was a founding member of the artists' collectives Brixton Art Gallery in 1982, and later Women's Work and Black Women in View. She went on to co-curate Mirror Reflecting Darkly, Brixton Art Gallery's first exhibition by the Black Women Artists collective.[9] From 1985, Keegan was a staff member at the Women Artists Slide Library (WASL), where she established and managed the Women Artists of Colour Index.[10] She was Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive from 1992 to 1994.[2] In 2021, she had a solo exhibition titled Somewhere Between There and Here at the South London Gallery[11]
Keegan taught New Media and Digital Diversity at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also helped establish the digital-media undergraduate course in the Historical and Cultural Studies department.[2][9]
Selected exhibitions
- 1983: Women's Work, Brixton Art Gallery, London[12]
- 1985: Mirror Reflecting Darkly: Black Women's Art, Brixton Art Gallery, London[12][13]
- 1990: Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces, Bluecoat[14]
- 1991: Family Album: An exhibition by Brixton Black Women Artists, Copyart Resource Centre, London
- 1991: Four X 4 curated by Eddie Chambers, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton[4]
- 1992: Trophies of Empire, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Bluecoat, Liverpool curated by Keith Piper[12]
- 1992: White Noise: Artists Working with Sound, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham[15]
- 1993: Rites of Passage, ICA, London (solo)
- 1995: Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art, InIVA and British Museum, London[16]
- 1997: Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966–1996, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Caribbean Cultural Center (Manhattan), New York[2][17]
- 1998: Family Histories: Eating with Our Memories, Sleeping with the Ancestors, 198 Gallery, London (solo)[2]
- 2006: Transformations, Lewisham Arthouse and Horniman Museum, London (solo)[18]
- 2021: Somewhere Between There and Here solo exhibition at the South London Gallery[11][19]