The exhibition arrives in London following a run at the Spike Island (Bristol) and Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham).
It has been announced that the Whitechapel Gallery will present this major survey exhibition of the late British multi-media artist Donald Rodney from the 12th February until the 4th May 2025.
Titled Visceral Canker, the exhibition will encompasses the majority of Rodney’s surviving works from 1982 to 1997, including large-scale oil pastels on X-rays, kinetic and animatronic sculptures as well as his sketchbooks and rare archival materials.
During his career, Rodney experimented with new materials and technologies which saw him working across sculpture, installation, drawing, painting and digital media.
The artist lived with sickle cell anaemia and harnessed the condition to confront the prejudices and injustices surrounding racial identity, Black masculinity, chronic illness and Britain’s colonial past.
The title of the exhibition comes from a 1990 work which comprises two wooden plaques displaying heraldic images, linked together by a system of medical tubes that pump theatrical blood. It combines both the visceral aspect of Rodney’s work and politics, and his persistent scrutiny of the canker, or disease, at the heart of society.
Visitors coming along to the exhibition can expect to see The House that Jack Built (1987), a mixed media installation featuring a crudely fashioned figure seated in front of a house made of X-rays onto which Rodney added text and drawings. It also includes one of Rodney’s earliest surviving paintings, How the West was Won (1982), made while Rodney was an undergraduate student at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University).
The exhibition is curated by Gasworks Director Robert Leckie and Spike Island Director Nicole Yip and organised at Whitechapel Gallery by Gilane Tawadros and Cameron Foote. The exhibition is presented in partnership with Spike Island and Nottingham Contemporary and is currently on display at Nottingham Contemporary until 5 January, 2025.
To find out more visit: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/donald-rodney/