Search the collection

Overview | Detailed Record

Untitled 1986
painting

Piper, Keith
Europe, United Kingdom, England
1986

1987.21

Emulsion on canvas
218.4 x 213.4 cm

Untitled 1986

Keith Piper born 1960

Emulsion on canvas

The black British artist, Keith Piper
was a member of the radical BLK Art Group in the 1980s.
The artist said that much of his work at this time
was aimed to shock a white audience and
'communicate the structuring of oppression
and means of struggle to a black audience'.

This powerful image about black identity and colonialism
uses an African bronze head of a priest-king
and a Tim Page photograph of helicopters in Vietnam.
The giant head looks out impassively
over the symbols of Imperialist aggression
which are reduced to the size of mosquitos.

Purchased 1987.21