Join curator Ian Sergeant and Prof Mike Phillips as they discuss and unpack Donald Rodney’s ‘Autoicon’ as part of the public programming for the exhibition 13 Ways of Looking curated by Dr Sylvia Theuri.

Donald Gladstone Rodney (18 May 1961 – 4 March 1998) was a British artist and a leading figure in Britain’s BLK Art Group of the 1980s, who became recognised as “one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his generation.” Rodney’s work appropriated images from the mass media, art and popular culture to explore issues of racial identity and racism.⁣

The exhibition #13WaysOfLooking features his work Autoicon, a dynamic internet work and CD-ROM that simulates both the physical presence and elements of the creative personality of the artist, who died from sickle-cell anaemia, on loan from the artists’ estate. And the 1982 work How the West Was Won, which was painted when Rodney was only 21 and a student at Nottingham Trent University. It dates to a time when he was part of the BLK Art Group, group producing work that engaged directly with the socio-political issues of the time.⁣