 So welcome everybody, thank you for joining us today. It's lovely to see some familiar faces from last week and of course some new faces joining us as well as some new names popping up. So welcome, this is the second session of the Black British Artists and Political Activism public lecture course. My name is Lizzie Robles and I'm delighted to have worked with the Paul Mellon Center's amazing team in convening the course. First off, we have some sort of bits of housekeeping to think about if I can have the next slide. So just to say we're gonna have sort of a conversation for sort of maybe the first 45 minutes around there and that will be followed by an opportunity to ask questions. Really encourage you, you know, this is one of the really special things I think about this forum is that we, you know we can sort of exchange ideas with everybody that's come to join us. So what you can do is you can pop your questions into the Q&A box at the bottom and I can read those out and we can bring them into the discussion. This session is being recorded and will be made available to the public later. So keep an eye out for that. And just say also that closed captioning is available if that's something that might be valuable to you. So you can just click the CC, I realized I'm pointing and that's not very helpful because you can't see where I'm pointing. So just click on the CC button on your screen and that will enable captions for you. So as I said, this is the second in a longer series of lectures that takes play, that will take place every Thursday now until the 9th of December. In our first session last week, I laid out some of the parameters of the lecture course and highlighted in particular the convergences and tensions between work and world art and politics. Tonight, I'm really excited that we're joined by Ego Suinsky who will lead us as we continue to unpack these themes in a closer look to the work and networks of the sculptor Ronald Moody. Ego is an archivist and mixed media artist currently pursuing a PhD at Chelsea College of Arts and it is the fastening processes and outcomes of this research which places much needed critical attention on Jamaican board sculptor Ronald Moody that she'll be sharing with us today. Ego holds a master's degree in archives and record management from University College London. She's the archivist for the Rita Keegan Archive Project and a founding member of the Remembering Olive Morris Collective 2.0. She is a member of Transmission, a core group of five individuals who share thoughts and ideas on the current heritage landscape and continues to develop frameworks for interrogating what it means to be a black archive, advocate and or archivist in the 21st century with a view to sharing skills and building capacity with the heritage and memory work sector. Ego, thank you so much for joining us on the lecture course today. So to begin with, could you give us a bit of an introduction to Moody, sort of who was he? Thank you. Thank you, Lizzie. Thank you for the invitation to participate. I'm delighted to be with you and everybody this evening. So I'll give a kind of overview of an intro to Ronald Moody, Ronald Clive Moody. So the aim of this conversation is to contextualize Jamaican sculptor and philosopher, Ronald Clive Moody slides. So the aim of this conversation is to contextualize Jamaican sculptor and philosopher, Ronald Clive Moody, 1900 to 1984 as an international network figure and artistic practitioner and how we can explore his politics and activism through the examination of his artworks, exhibition history and personal papers held by tape, as well as his key artistic friendships, networks and influences through the exploration of key moments and conjunctures in his life. These moments aim to frame and position Moody as one of the most significant modernist sculptors of the 20th century with the same power that continues to have ongoing impact and influence. Through his roles in the Harlem Renaissance, the Caribbean artist movement and the Black British art movement. Moving beyond the dominant accepted narrative that grounds Moody as forgotten, invisible or marginalized through his career as a professional artist. The conversation aims to be cast Moody through a lens that explores his art practice, wider contributions and recognition, impact and value to the landscape of British and Caribbean art and archives. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, the 12th of August, 1900 to an affluent professional family, Ronald was the son of Charles Ernest Moody, a pharmacist and Christina Emmeline Ellis. His siblings were Dr. Ludlow Moody, Loxley Moody, a supreme court judge, his sister, a well-respected nurse, Elise Viola Moody and Howard Moody, a leading advocate of abolition of the colour bar who founded the League of Colour People in London, 1931. Ronald received a sound classical secondary education at Calabar College, a prominent old boys school. He arrived in England in the spring of 1923 to pursue one of the professions his family considered appropriate to their standing, dentistry at the Royal Dental Hospital at King's College. During his period, he developed a passion for philosophy from Plato to the metaphysics of China and India, which has had a long lasting impact throughout his life. Jamaica up to the turn of the 20th century had been considered first and foremost in economic terms by its British colonial rulers who retain the island for its profitability. As a result, the pursuit of the fine arts up until the 1930s was tolerated as a hobby and scorned as a profession, very few who chose a difficult path of becoming an artist. Moody, whilst in London, became increasingly interested in all forms of art, spending his time visiting galleries and museums, his social networks comprised of writers and artists. On a fateful visit to the British Museum in 1928, he turned left instead of right and strayed into the Egyptian rooms. He was so transfixed by what he saw, he described it as the tremendous inner force, the irresistible movement in stillness. It was in this moment he resolved and had no doubt he would become a sculptor, and he later wrote and knew that sculpture was the only thing I wanted to do, and that simply nothing would prevent me from doing it. The British Museum had been a significant social and educational space for many, for many people of African and Asian heritage in London in the early 20th century, particularly the reading rooms, which were used by activists that include Marcus Garvey and Claude McCain. It was also influential space to artists like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Whilst continuing his dentistry training, he began an experiment with plasticine from plaster. He found that he took to the art, he took to the art form as naturally as breathing. Moody qualified as a dentist in 1930 and successfully established his own practice at Six Cabin Dish Place near Oxford Circus, London. He continued in his spare time to pursue sculpture while he struggled to make a living from dentistry. Without the resources for formal art training, he relied on the support and guidance of friends, many of whom were themselves sculptors. Through trial, error, and perseverance, Moody became more adept and confident in his artistic practice. In 1934, he moves into a garden plant near Regent's Park. The flat had a greenhouse attached to it, which became Moody's studio. It was here he began with trepidation, his first sculpture, Wohing, 1935, an 18-inch high carved head made from oak. The completion of the sculpture left him with wonder and astounded his friends. The fact that he had made such a tremendous leap forward with his art was impressive. One of his lifelong friends, film and theater critic and biographer Paul Robeson, Moody Seaton, later wrote, some people found it so provocative they could not bear to sit in the same room with him. Seaton later purchased Wohing. The artwork was considered so intriguing by Brazilian film director Alberto Carval Canti. It led to him inviting Ronald to come to Paris for a one-man show. Throughout his career, Moody explored a variety of materials, including concrete, fiberglass, bronze and copper, but was known for his exquisite work with wood. So that's the kind of general overview of Moody and his art practice. Brilliant, thank you. There's already so much there to unpack, but I think how has he sort of been understood within the broader context of British art? How has his work tended to be written about or is it written about much at all? One of the things that I find really interesting about him, sort of coming from my little corner of this field, is that he sometimes also seems to fall out of this sort of still, very much still being written history of British work practice. Even thinking about Stuart Hall's, this idea of the three waves that Stuart Hall puts forward, very famously, his first wave is really the slightly later sort of quote-unquote Windrush generation, that these folks at Kamopa in the post-war period. So yes, where does he fit in to the discussion of British art more broadly? Well, I think when thinking about Moody in relation to the broader context of British art, it's important to first think about the landscape of British sculpture in the 1920s to 30s. At the point that Moody decides to become a sultan. Moody arrives 25 years before Windrush. And in the 1981 book, Henry Moore at the British Museum, Moore notes that in the 1920s, in 1920s Britain, little attention was being given to sculpture in the general public and in art colleges. When he begins at Leeds School of Art, they had to start a sculpture school, especially for him, as he was the only student. He reflects that the only practicing sculpture in Britain at that time that he had any respect for was Jacob Epstein, who he later builds a relationship with. But after studying at Leeds, he attends the Royal College of Art. And even there, he was one of maybe six to seven students at the time. So in many ways, maybe we can consider how Moody's choice of discipline in that moment, in the context of Britain, can be considered a form of politics or activism. Moore reflects that at this time, students were being taught the sculpture and painting was the servant of architecture. Something more was found unacceptable. In his essay, A Reputation Restored, there was the rediscovery of Ronald Moody. The art critic, Guy Brett refers to the first of four moments during the 20th century in which Moody's work received wide recognition, was popular and in demand. The first moment begins with his sculpture, Wohehn, in 1935. Wohehn, which means wearing German and is taken from the title of the Schubert song. The same year, he exhibits at the Adam Gallery, which was located at two-pound mound place. The exhibition, Negro Art, was organized in conjunction with the publication of the book, Arts of West Africa by Oxford University Press, a collaboration of fellow members of the Art Subcommittee of the Education Committee at the Colonial Office. The aim of the exhibition was to bring together three kinds of works, three kinds of works of art. A selection of Negro works of work would be normally viewed in museum conditions as ethnographic rules, specimens, a selection of paintings and sculptures by black artists and paintings by contemporary, which included Ronald, and paintings by contemporary English artists whose works had been inspired by an interest in Negro life or art. Supposedly, combining these categories, there was a hope that a relationship between them was made more vividly and apparent. Jacob Epstein was one of the exhibitors in Negro Art. This period is followed by Moody's interwar moment, a period that includes him living in the artistic district of Montmartre, Paris, where he has a one-hand show at the Gallery Belet Forms in 1937, and a second show at Council Van Lien Amsterdam in 1938, which attracted favorable coverage. He lived quite an exhibited in Paris with his partner wife, with his painter wife, Helène-Copour Caron, until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The Moody's abandoned their Paris-avowed artworks and tools escaping with friends through Occupied France. Escaping from Paris, he made an arduous journey through Occupied France across the Pyrenees into Spain. Moody eventually returned to Britain in 1941, with ill health that impacted him for the rest of his life. The second moment Brett refers to includes Moody's inclusion in the 1939 exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The Contemporary Negro in Art, a large survey show organized by the Harmon Foundation, and curated by Ellen Locke. He is one of 29 artists exhibiting that included Aaron Douglas, Richmond Bath, Sergeant Johnson, and Lois M. Jones. Arnold included 12 sculptural pieces and a mixture of wood and bronze sculptures. Wohing and Madons, including Wohing and Madons. It was one of the first major exhibitions in the U.S. to feature African-American artists. The BMA saw the exhibition as a way to refocus the priorities of a traditional American museum from one that served constituents of a private patron class to one that served the interests of its broader public. The exhibition was conceived by the American writer, philosopher, educator, cultural leader and patron of the arts, Ellen Locke. The Harmon Foundation founded in 1922, who funded the exhibition had dominated in the promotion and production of exhibitions of black art at the beginning of the 1930s, and were a major resource for the financial support of black artists from 1926 to 1933. In the forward of the exhibition catalog, Locke states that the exhibition states the exhibition to be a declaration of principles as to what art should be in a democracy. In Geoffrey C. Stewart's biography, The New Negro, The Life of Ellen Locke, he states no images survive of Locke given the opening night speech. But the enduring image of the two young children looking up at a large mask, mask-like sculpture of Ronald Moody is demonstrative of what Locke achieved with the exhibition. Stewart explains the children display hope, optimism and wonder at the huge possibilities. Before them, Locke's purpose to generate an art that would uplift the gaze of youth by filling them with a sense of pride, style and wonder of what they could achieve if they believed. However, the war came and the artworks remained in the custody of the Harmon Foundation until 1952. Ronald continued over an extended period of time to get his artworks returned to him. Moody's friend, Mary Seton, intervened and this resulted in the recovery of the works and them eventually being shipped back to England. Everything except medants. In 1966, the Harmon Foundation was dismantled. Moody made one last attempt to have medants returned. His letter remained unanswered. He never saw medants again. A loss and grief that he never reconciled. Medants is currently on display at Tate St. Ives as a part of the modern conversations with which spotlights five key artists associated with the modern art networks of St. Ives and West Cornwall. Moody's medants is located in modern bodies, Barbara Hepworth. His works sits alongside Sunel Maholi, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore as part of a discourse that explores and challenges the narrow representations of the body from the viewpoint of the privileged white male which dominated 20th century Western art. Overturning bias and inequity is an artistic legacy that is debated and progressed in the 21st century. The third moment covers the periods of the late 60s to the late 70s. Moody has a key figure and active participant in the Caribbean artist movement. The movement that attracted a wide range of men and women who had been born in the British West Indies but were now living in Britain. The movement included the likes of cultural theorists, writers, poets, artists, they include Edward Camel Braithbay, CLR James, Aubrey Williams, Andrew Solke, John LaRose, Alfie McNeish and Ninton Quasie Johnson. In 1974, Moody became the chairman of the UK Visual Arts Committee of the Festival of Art and Culture, Festac, held in Lagos, 1977. We've brought together artists from all over Africa and it's diaspora. The fourth moment was the inclusion in artists and curator Rashi Doreen's pioneering exhibition, The Other Story, Afro-Asian Artists in Post for Britain in 1989 at the Hayward Gallery. In Aaron's essay in the Citadel of Modernism, he states that though Moody lived for 53 years in England, having had some exhibitions with favorable reviews, newspapers and art journals, Aaron notes that he was honored in his country of origin, Jamaica, by two of the highest official awards. However, he died in England in 1984 without receiving any official recognition from the British art establishment. He goes on to write that it's not his intention to make a claim for Moody's status, but feels it is necessary to raise the question as to why he remains excluded from the British art world. So that kind of gives a kind of broad look at how his context in the broader picture. Yeah, I wanna find so interesting about that. It's the ways in which straight away we see those sort of transnational, international links. Yeah, I had, I didn't, because I've seen this image before. I think it's in actually a text that might be somewhere behind me in the David A. Bailey and Rick Powell's exhibition of around the sort of Harlem Renaissance that was- Yes, that's the- Yes, wrap season black, yeah. And that image is there, isn't it? I think, yeah, I hadn't really sort of clocked necessarily that he was moving so quickly. So I wanted to ask you next a little bit more about his networks, but this is sort of a bit more of an impromptu question around that. Is how did he know Locke? Or did he know Locke? Like how does the work go to get to Baltimore? I think his connections, as you can see, sort of, as soon as he's made his first piece, Wilhelm, he's straight in there. And I think maybe that Negro art, the 1935 exhibit, might have been a connection, or, you know, like just that exhibition happening might have been the catalyst of sort of raising awareness that he exists and his work exists and particularly that framework but also maybe Paris, his tiny Paris, there were those that were there before him. And he was in that kind of, yeah, he was in that kind of space. So I mean, more investigation to how he was selected because I believe he's the only person from the UK that he's included because it is really exhibition of African-American artists. That's really interesting. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yes, the Paris connection. I mean, it's sort of beyond my little corner. I can't remember which years Locke is where and all that. I did want to ask a little bit more about these sorts of networks. So as you mentioned before, his brother, right, was involved with sitting at the League of Colored Peoples, which I think he said he founded in 1931. And so how much was Ronald involved in those sorts of activities? Or was he, as he said, CLR James is obviously also part of the Caribbean arts movement a little bit later but he was also involved with the sort of 1930s activities. Yeah, so is this something that he's connected to just via his brother or is this something that he's interested in as well? Well, Moody doesn't appear to be explicitly involved with the League of Colored Peoples but correspondence between Ronald and his brother, Howard, show Howard was supportive and sort of sometimes kind of patron to his brother but not necessarily explicitly. But however, prominent members of the League of Colored Peoples included Runa Masen, George Padmore and Paul Robeson. And Robeson in 1968, Robeson won't become friends. And in 1968, Moody created a copper resin portrait of Robeson, which is currently part of the permanent collection of the National Museum in Wales and within his archive, there is correspondence between himself and Robeson. And before I used to think that the connection between them was through Mary Seton, who did Robeson's biography, but it could also be through Ronald, I mean through Howard as well. There are examples of Moody also engaging with people like Claudia Jones. In the early 60s, Moody participated as a judge for the beauty pageant alongside fellow sculptor Namba Roy and Guyanese author Peter Kempadu at Claudia Jones second carnival gathering in 1961 at the Lyceum Ballroom, London. The event sponsored by the newspaper, Jones co-founded the West Indian Gazette, sported the slogan, A People's Art is the Genesis of their freedom. And it becomes the annual world renowned not an ill carnival. Or there's another example of the transcript between poet Una Marsen interviewing Ronald Moody in February 1943 for calling the West Indies broadcast, where they discuss his escape from Paris. It's easy to read that there is a familiarity in the way that Marsen speaks to Moody, which signals a kind of personal relationship. The transcript was included in Dr. Caroline Bressie and Dr. Gemma Romain's 2014 exhibit, A Tape, Britain's Spaces of Black Modernism, London 1919 to 1939. They also included Moody's last sculpture, Midons, which took center stage, creating an opportunity for a new audience to experience the sculpture. Bressie and Romain cast Moody here as a key figure to any understanding of black interwar avant-garde art and African diaspora identity and included documents from his archive to further contextualize his life and contributions. However, where Moody's networks are visible in his personal collection is within his address books. His address books from the interwar period and his time in France includes the lights of Mamre, which you can kind of see in the left-hand corner. His later address books include evidence, is evidence of the lights of members of the Caribbean artist movement. So, Edward Camel Brathway in his address book is fondly referred to as Eddie. And Andrew Solke is there alongside Uzu Agunu, Althea McNeish, Aubrey Williams, Edward Lloyd, Jack Dove, and Yinka Odenani, John LaRose, David Sharkey, alongside a number of institutions that he's sort of on a first name basis. So, I think, I also think sort of broadening the idea of what being political or what activism looks like. And so though it wasn't explicit, I think it comes up in a number of different ways, or he wasn't explicit, I should say. That's really interesting. And so I'm thinking sort of about this relationship that we sort of picked up last week and sort of underpins sort of the whole series. For Moody, is there a sense that his practice is sort of separate from these sorts of networks that he fosters, which are sort of social and also sort of inherently political? Yeah, is there sort of a clean line between that and his art practice, or is there any sense of intersections or overlaps? I don't think it's a clean line, but I do think it's, I'm viewing it with the lens of today, you know? But in an interview with Sylvia Moore for the World Service Radio, Netherland, Hilverson, at Moody's Fleming Close Studio in 1977, Sylvia Moore states that Moody was obviously a universal kind of artist. She goes on to ask him whether black consciousness has any part to play in his life as an artist. And Moody responded by saying, I never approached art from the point of view of politics. It seems for me an impossibility to approach it with that sort of intellectual concept, conception. I think that there is only man and he's equally silly and equally wise and he's man that matters, man or woman, I should say. In these days of women's live, of course, but that is the thing. I approach my art from that point of view. But of course, I inevitably feel sympathy with things, but I also feel that so many of the things that happen in Africa are just as stupid as happened, are just as stupid as the things that happened in Europe years and years and years ago. And it's such a pity that they haven't learned. Or indeed, it still happens sometimes. Moody's concern for mankind's ability for destruction continues as a theme in his work and was an ongoing and can be seen in works such as The Warrior, which was recently acquired in auction by Pallant House Gallery. When telling the story of Ronald Moody, it is important to bring into focus the work of his niece Cynthia Moody in ensuring that his work and legacy was secured and cared for. Without her forensic work, it would be near impossible to have this conversation. Though Moody may not have seen himself as explicitly political, I think often his choice of theme for board cars or public talks could be seen in this way. When you explore some of the titles, The Artist's Environment, The Artist's Education, what is called primitive art, the artists in the community, the responsibility of an artist, the visual arts of the West Indies. I often think that Moody would have been a great educator and wonder if teaching would have been something he considered. Though I feel often reading through Moody's archive, reading through his writing and philosophies around art, he often feels like an artistic mentor I never had. I also think maybe we can consider Moody choosing to become an artist and essentially Moody choosing to be himself just by being, was in many ways, a kind of politics. Also in his politics, maybe, also his politics maybe come through in his art, his choices of portraits such as his brother Harold, which can be seen at both the National Portrait Gallery and Palant House Gallery, or Paul Robeson that I mentioned earlier, which is in on permanent display of the National Museum of Wales. I also think that maybe understanding Moody through a lens of activism and politics might be about where he has been exhibited post-1984 and in what context. On the centenary of his birth in 2000, a tribute to Ronald Moody was held at the National Gallery of Jamaica. The small exhibition consisted of Moody's 12 works in Jamaican collections at the time, spanning a period of production from 1936 to his last work in 1980. The exhibition included Moody's 1938 Elm sculpture, Tassit, which is now part of the National Gallery of Jamaica's permanent collection. Most of the works on view had never been exhibited in Jamaica before and represented all the major aspects of his work, monumental wood carvings, symbolic sculptures and portraits. At the opening of the round table discussion, was held on the life and work of Moody and Mr Norman Ray and Senator Oswald Hardin QC were invited as special guests to speak and share recollections on Moody. Ronald Moody was also one of 15 notable figures, a mixture of artists, musicians and authors who have made significant cultural contributions to mankind to be named in 2008 after an impact creator on Mercury by the Messengers Science Team and approved by the International Astronomical Union. Other accomplished figures honoured at the time included Spanish painter and surrealist Salvador Dali, Ben Unmuno, renowned Nigerian artist and Norwegian simplest painter, Edward Marr. In recent years, we see Moody's artwork featured in a number of exhibitions in London. The Dynamic Art and Archive Project No Calabar, Black British Art in Action 1960 to 1990 exhibition held at the Guildhall Art Gallery in 2015, which explored Black British cultural heritage through the lens of the Black art movement. Frame Moody is a crucial Black British sculptor who continues to inspire. No Calabar was a collaborative project between the Friends of Huntley Archives at the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Art Gallery and took its impotence from the life works of Eric and Jessica Huntley. The 10th anniversary of the Huntley Archives held at the NMA was commemorated as well as the pioneering Black publishing house and bookshop and cultural hub they founded in 1969, local literature press. Moody's 1977 sculpture, Annie II, made of Kohi Kohi, a native to New Zealand, was included in this exhibit and mists an array of artworks of his peers. The 2019 get up stand up now are generations of Black creative pioneers was held at Somerset House celebrating 50 years of Black creativity in Britain, tracing more than half a century of collective creative history. Get up stand up now was a multi-sensory experience. Combining history works and new commissions placed alongside items from personal archives, curator Zakove, son of the radical Black filmmaker, Horisove, pulled together 110 interdisciplinary artists to explore the Black experience from post-war era to the present day. Moody's modernist wooden sculpture, a male standing figure, the priest, 1939, was amongst the works, amongst the artworks of Franklin Rogers and Richard Mark Rawlings in one of the five thematic sections titled Motherland. Archival documentation known by heritage organizations which included the Black cultural archives and Friends of Huntley Archives of the London Metropolitan Archives included within these materials on display was the Caribbean artist's movement publication Savaku. I'm beginning to investigate this period as a fit moment or possibly an internal moment where Moody's legacy continues to grow in recognition and diasporic memory, developing strategies to further contextualize Moody's legacy now in the 21st century in the places and collections where he firmly resides. Ah, sorry, that's so interesting. And I think there's so much to unpack there, right? This idea that, yeah, like you said, this idea that just to become a sculpture, sculptor, no, sculpture, a sculptor, we can think about that as a political thing. And I can't remember what the number was but in previous conversations, you mentioned that around this time there was something like, what was it, 35 or something like that? Sort of practicing artists, breast sculpture. So I mean, the landscape has changed in sort of the culture of sculpture in the UK, I suppose, in the UK particularly has evolved. So, you know, sculpture is something that's just around us but I suppose in the time and in that particular moment of him developing his practice, that just wasn't the case. So I think that's a really important part of who he is, yeah. Yeah, that's it, yeah. And this idea of becoming an artist full stop as being a statement and then be choosing to become a sculptor. And then the other really interesting thing, yeah, again, is this sort of those works of his brother and of Paul Robeson. And as you said, like, you know, obviously, there's a personal collection between obviously his brother and a friend. But yeah, the ways in which we can interpret those sort of portraits, almost maybe memorials or, you know, sort of recordings of them, yeah, as sort of registering their importance on a wider scale, sort of beyond this personal level. And then I also wanted to pick up, so sorry, I'm just sort of like throwing things and maybe talking about the conversation sort of later. But one of the things that keeps coming back, right, is this relationship that he has, so later on with the members of the Caribbean artist movement. And I think you've mentioned that he supplies the logo for their journal, right, for Savaku. And so again, sort of, yeah, and then the fact that, you know, yeah, he calls Savaku, and then the fact that, you know, yeah, he calls, you know, there's Addy Brathway in his address book, right, instead of, you know, he's sort of published in but are known as sort of AdWords. Yeah, this idea is, again, is this, do we know was he involved in the conferences? Did he sort of get stuck in, oh, again, was it sort of more of a social connection? Well, yes, we do know, I suppose it kind of, there's a key moment sort of in 1963, the year after Jamaican independence, Ronald Rudy was commissioned by the director of the relatively new established medical research council, Epidemiological Research Unit in Cardiff. Professor Archibald Lemon Cochran asked him to produce a public sculpture for the sister unit on the monocampus of the University of the West Indies, where it still stands today. Epidemiology is a study of public health and the trends of the wellbeing of communities and study of populations in relation to health. Moody produces the aluminum sculpture, Savaku, an example of Moody's public art based on cosmology, which can also be seen as a political act. Savaku, in a way, I think, is a political sculpture in a subtle political sculpture. It stands alongside other public artworks on the Uemona campus, artists such as Alvin Marriott, Christopher Gonzalez, and Ralph Campbell. Savaku is a bird, plump, yes, and lender in equal amounts. It stands just under eight feet high on a plinth and remains years on resilient on permanent view. Positions on the campus of the University of the West Indies on the Ring Road with the blue mountains in the distance. Moody stated that Savaku would rule over the wide expanse of green and trees with the hope that it would continue his dominion over thunder and strong winds. It stands like a sundial cast in immaculate sunshadows on the grass below. After the unveiling of Savaku on the University of the West Indies, Moony campus, he's returned to London renewed links with the past and then led him to join the Caribbean artist movement in 1967. The Caribbean artist movement grew out of a small informal meeting held in the basement that in Mecklenburg Square, London, on the evening of the 19th of December, 1966. The origins of Cam can be traced back some years before 1966 to the University of the West Indies at Moony, Jamaica where Edward Braithway had become a lecturer in the history department in 1962. In a period that marked a new pioneering phase in Caribbean studies, the University had opened its doors to students in 1949 and was already a creative force in the region. When Cam as an organisation ended six years later, it was noted to have had a major impact on the emergence of Caribbean cultural identity, particularly in Britain, encouraging young members and young members to be open to new concepts. Braithway was the driving spirit, insisting the movement included all arts. Cam as a movement was considered too diverse to be easily defined. Moody participated regularly in their exhibitions and debates while maintaining his individualistic stance. In 1970, Cam produced a magazine, Savaku. In May 1969, a typed preliminary brochure and limited circulation announced Savaku was issued with Edward Braithway and Kenneth Bamshard named as general editors. They decided right away on Savaku as the journal's name. Ronald Moody had told Braithway in London about his sculpture outside the Epidemological Research Unit on the moment campus. The publication was created to complement the printed newsletter that documented its meetings and conferences. The magazine published between 1970 and 1980 was mainly literary, in part historical and sociological. The journal alongside its name adopted the colourphone based on the head of the Savaku sculpture. And in 1979, Moody gave permission for the Caribbean University's press to use the design for the same purpose. Led by Cam and Braithway, there were 15 issues produced and published in Jamaica. Moody contributed to activities such as the Cam Symposium that took place on the 2nd of June 1967 on West Indian artists. Alongside Painter will be Williams and Painter Carl Jerry Craig and textile designer, Althea McNeish. Materials held by the George Padmore Institute include the papers of Anne Wormsley who wrote the book on Caribbean artists movement. And so her papers relating to the Caribbean artists movement are held there alongside John LaRose. They include exhibition ephemera, correspondence and recordings. Correspondence between Moody and John LaRose and Edward Cam of Braithway can be found there. And it's a kind of archival constellation that helps us to transmit the Caribbean artists movement and illuminate the connections and crossovers. The long lasting impact of Cam is evident in self-taught artist, Edward Lloyd, who credits Moody and Williams and other artists of the Cam community with giving him support and practical help to fully pursue the life of an artist. His membership of Cam led to a lifelong relationship with new Beacon books and the GPI. The independent enterprise, Black Blossom School of Art and Culture founded by artist, curator and educator, Mulan Lee Tajuddin, which aims to decolonize, deconstruct and democratize creative learning recently held an online short course titled Britain's Caribbean artists movement which was led by artist historian Richard Mark Walnins and included an in-conversation with artist Edward Lloyd. The four-week course provided an introduction to the lives and works of the key participants, including those that not only had the call, but those that documented it and so too those on the periphery that lent the associations support. Moody exhibited in the 1968 Caribbean artists movement exhibition held at the House of Commons, 1971. Moody exhibited alongside Aubrey Williams, Althea McNeish, Edward Lloyd, Donald Lough and Keith Simon. Simon is the uncle of London-based artist Rita Keegan whose show at the South London Gallery in Orton that is currently on now includes works of Keith Simon, whose works haven't been displayed here since that exhibition in 1971, so sort of 50 years. The exhibition titled Caribbean Artists in England was held at the Commonwealth Art Gallery. The Commonwealth Institute and its galleries had opened in 1962, providing an important exhibiting venue for African-Asian and the Caribbean artists based in London. The exhibition nearly a decade after opening was deemed a venture of great importance, offering a substantial and high profile opportunity for artists who linked to the Caribbean, temporarily resident in England, to exhibit alongside other Caribbean artists who'd made their homes in the nation's capital. So that kind of gives a kind of rough mapping of his activity with the Caribbean arts movement. And I think even though again, maybe not explicitly him being political, but the offering or the generosity to sort of say, yeah, take this artwork and use it. Yeah. Well, generous, but I assume that he knew what they were doing and wasn't adverse to it, so. Yeah. Well, not just, I hadn't realized that the sabbatur was named for the work. Yeah. Wow. It's actually named after his piece, yeah. Yeah. Yes, yeah, I think in my mind, he was not, I don't know, I think in the sort of history that's been written, Aubrey Williams, Althea McNeish are these sort of more central figures and he's more on the periphery, but yeah, he was then very involved across all the activities and the conferences and you're on the different sort of coming together, yeah, thinking through their sort of activities. That's really interesting. So he wasn't quite, you know, he was kind of embedded really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like he was totally, yeah, if they're looking to him as a sort of foundational figure that they're naming this journal after his work and then he's giving them and exhibiting alongside them, speaking alongside them, yeah, that's really nice. I also think Savaku is, is a carib cosmology. So even that in itself of bringing that to the forefront as an image and, yeah, it leads you back to sort of tradition and culture, which again, I feel can be perceived as political and activism. Well, absolutely. And I think it sort of chimes with that thing that really amazing quote that you dug up, where he talks about this idea of sort of the universe. And I think that that's often the sort of picture that gets painted of him, right? That he's sort of interested in universal modernism, right? He's interested, you know, that he's not really, you know, even as he says, he's not really that interested in, I think what we might recognize as sort of a politics of identity, but then you're actually in some ways, yeah, the ways in which just this sort of, those associations with the Caribbean artist movement, the engagement with a sort of, with Caribbean culture. That's really interesting. So again, sort of thinking about your own sort of practice as a researcher and your own approach to this work, I'm wondering how, you know, how are you thinking about these networks? How are these informing your understanding of how we write or talk about or sort of do art history? Because one of the things I find really interesting is that these circuits aren't always readily or sort of at all apparent when we just look at the artist as a solitary, you know, sort of figure. So yeah, so how are you sort of negotiating these things in your work? I think there's definitely the aspect of recognizing recognizing the networks and relationships and community that I have around me. There's maybe part of the same timeline and genealogy. So as an ongoing thread to the work that has come before. But I think that what I feel stood out in my research is the idea of individuals' collections being an absolute or a definitive way to understand Moody. I think Moody's collections come alive when you put them in discussion and in conversation with other collections where he exists. So alongside Tate, there is archive of materials relating to Ronald Moody at Innova, George Padmore Institute and the Black Cultural Archives in London as well as Howard Moody. They have some stuff on Howard Moody. But his artworks are in collections throughout the UK around Europe. Sorry, have I frozen or? No, I think Ego's frozen. The archive, I've kind of embraced the concept of the living archive to continue the much needed debate and discourse on the archival term. Who all describes living as present, ongoing, continuing, unfinished and open-ended. And this affords us the space to practically and theoretically embrace how varied a practice collecting and archiving is. Perhaps more importantly, he cautions us against accepting the burden of a tradition whose tenants constructs the archive as a prison house of the past rather than the place of activation. There continues to be a growing appreciation of Moody's importance as an artist. His artworks in permanent collections include Tate, the Government Art Collection, National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Wells and Cardiff, Pellet House Gallery, Lester, the National Gallery of Jamaica, just to mention of you. The Ronald Moody papers afford us the opportunity to explore and frame Moody as a political ambassador and visionary, a resistor, if you will, with moments of refusal to his embodied tacit knowledge of his homeland and what had become home, Britain, and the colonial systems underpinning them. His collection enables us to be able to interrogate the significance of what may not have been visible or valued at the time. It allows us to view Moody as a persuasive advocate for cultural legacy and ambassador not only in Jamaica, but also in Britain as part of the Commonwealth. It also allows us to view him as an accomplished artist. Moody's papers brings us into focus a number of conjunctures, Jamaican independence, new research and institutions, education development in Caribbean studies, in the Caribbean and in Britain, and public art. The materials held within Moody's personal papers identifies him very much as a network figure, one that expressed an interest in independent thought, part of a generation of independent thinkers that were trying to find a new path and challenge the status quo, whilst engaging discourses of liberation in the midst of seemingly dispensing of colonial rule. In many ways, Savaku can be considered a symbol and emblem of politically engaged radical art and thinking as well as well as a great example of how the archive can embed and support collective and national identity, formation and memory. It should be noted that Moody's critical attention deserves to be directed at the tenacious efforts and tenacious and forensic efforts of Cynthia Moody to ensure her uncle, Ronald Moody's legacy was included in the wider canon of the 20th century art history. Unlocking Moody's life through the archive creates an opportunity to explore a richness of interconnected narratives, exhibition histories, networks and communities in relation to migration, diasporic identities, memory and black artistic presence and contribution and for from the 1920s to the present day. Thank you. There's so much, so much interesting stuff. And again, I think I'm aware of time and I'm also aware that the Q&A box is really filling up. So I think I'm just gonna field one last question to you if that's okay. Sure. We can turn things over. Okay. Because there's some really, really great questions here. So one of the sort of final thing that I want to ask you, and this is sort of a big question and I think we'll probably open up more questions. But again, I think a lot of this is already happening in the Q&A that I really would like to get to that. Again, in the intro lecture, I talked about some of the difficult histories of this relationship between art and politics. Things like the burn of representation placed on the work of black and brown artists and an art world which still I think often deploys artworks and this is something we've spoken about before to say something about the history of race and political struggle and oppression, right? This is a set of expectations of what the work should sort of quote unquote do. So I'm asking you sort of as somebody who's an artist in your own right, an archivist and a scholar, how do you negotiate these tensions between the world and the work in art and politics? Well, as an artist and an archivist, I get to, I suppose, deep dive into these materials and bring them materials to the surface and then resuscitate them. I think this is where the archive really comes into its own and the archive can work as a great tool to remove the need to negotiate in some ways, instead choosing or having the option to just present the materials within the archives that help to illustrate the tensions, the burdens, the history of race, political struggles and multiple oppressions to be able to bring the present day into focus using timelines and individuals' experiences, achievements and possible perceived flaws as learning tools. I'm personally keen not to apply a narrative to Moody that he didn't necessarily subscribe to himself. I think by default and through today's 21st century lens, it's hard not to consider Moody as a political figure when you consider the spaces and places and institutions and organizations and movements he was part of and navigated and the kind of networks and friends he had. However, if there was a burden, I feel, it would be the backlog of work that still needs to be done and explored in relation to Black British artists and archives. Thank you. And actually to that end, there's a really interesting question about that in the chat box. So I'm going to sort of turn over to one attendee who asks, how do you see Moody's archive operating, as you say, within a wider constellation of Black artists' archives in contemporary Britain, many of which are now receiving renewed attention. Do these archives demand alternative methods of archival practice? I don't know if it's alternative methods. I think maybe a task force that can actually, we maybe need to sort of build a critical mass in regards to the kind of task force that exists to actually be able to really get into that. There's been work done by Angelie, Sonia Boyce, there's a history of this work, but I still feel that to really be able to get to grips with them and the backlog and the stuff that's already within institutions, but then there are the artists that have yet to be, that are out there and the stuff's behind the bed and all just like Cynthia Moody, there's a relative maybe striving to get it into a collection. So I think outreach comes to mind, task force that is diverse, that is able to work with these kinds of collections. And then I think collection guides and finding aids, access and accessibility, and maybe it's not so much, I think the culture of how we get to research, I'd like to see change, the culture within reading rooms. So having the opportunity to do, you were talking earlier about artists in silos, but also it's kind of that thing of researchers in silos and having those kind of conversations that mean that we kind of share information or get to research together and look at these materials together and have conversations around it. And that's not necessarily the culture of most reading rooms. So the building of trust as well. So there's maybe cultural changes within archives. And I think as a profession, we need to be, there's a lot that goes on, I think with archives and within the art world, I think within the archival profession is very different. That's really interesting. And I think it's interesting what you're saying about even the way that archives are sort of made accessible or not in our previous conversation, you were saying that you only just came upon a sort of full exhibition list of Moody's that I think hadn't really been registered in the record before. Yeah, so there was some, it was labeled as sort of printed material and copied material. But actually the reality was that it's, it was his early exhibition history. So, I mean, maybe it's because I'm an artist, I'd love collection guides with images and pictures that get you to, because I mean, it's that pathway in and it's not always possible to know what you're looking for or what you're gonna be inspired by before you go into the archive. So, opportunity is to really, for people to sort of know what's in the archive and build relationships with feeling empowered to go into archives, it still feels like such a privilege that I get to do this kind of stuff. And it feels like a norm to me, but it's not a norm to most. Yeah, no, I think you're right. Yeah, there's a whole sort of process and you sit in the quiet room and even if you see somebody, you know, it's inevitably do in these places, it's that sort of, what are you doing? Oh, great, okay, I'll see you for a coffee later. Yeah, that's really interesting. So just to say to the audience, I can see, yeah, the question's just piling in, but again, if you do have a question, pop it into the Q and A and we'll try and make sure that everybody's questions are answered. So another sort of archive-based question, Chita Atil writes, archival constellation, thank you. I was thinking about how you managed to track time when focused on an artist whose social networks and influence expand beyond his singular biography. So how do you manage mapping time? I mean, I'm gonna sort of put the work of, I'm gonna say I haven't had to because Cynthia Moody done such a good job of doing it. She was really forensic in her, she was confronted with a whole load, years and years of materials and she was a documentary, she was a filmmaker herself and I think she used her kind of film skills and she really, so she created documents and basically a catalog of his works where he exhibited and so there's, I would give the credit to her. So rather than me sort of saying, oh, I've been mapping stuff around and I found this document, I would actually just sort of say, Cynthia Moody made it possible to sort of add his timeline to other people's timelines and I think that's what begins to happen. You're able to sort of overlay moments in time and see where people were. So I would love to explore how he knew Mamre and what was going on there and why Mamre is in his address book and that's a story I'm told, you know, it's so. Yeah, I mean, as you were talking, there were quite a few of those. Yeah, as we said earlier, that relationship with Alan Locke, whether that was something that's sort of in Paris, I was also wondering sort of about the Nardal sisters if he was sort of involved with there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's Salons there, that's really, yeah. So I do think there's probably a kind of link back to the Nardal sisters and just that space that they had created to accommodate that he was able to maybe land into once he got there, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. So another sort of question about your relationship to, you're sort of all new practice. So again, from anonymous attendee who asks, do you see your practice as blending traditional archival and art historical practices or are you doing something rather new and different? Is it your approach or your subject matter that is distinctive, do you think? Interesting. I suppose I'm still in it. And the thing is, is actually having opportunities to test out my practice or what I can see is possible with archives. So I think I stay within the framework of what I've been taught and maybe not so neutral though, maybe not neutral at all. But so there is the tradition, but I do think there is a huge space to be explored where the creativity can come in. So again, I definitely have an interest in how collection guides are formed and what that can look like or what that means or finding aids. If there was any kind of creativity or exploration that I've been playing around it would maybe be in that kind of area. I would say I'm hybrid in my approach, really, but still learning. So having the opportunity to maybe work with Rita Keegan over the last few years and develop an exhibition and work around her collection and work with living artists has been a huge opportunity and having spaces like the Women's Art Library and people like Althea Greenham that really supported my practice and on a level of trust, which means that kind of thinking around how we use a reading room or how we access materials, I can broaden and test and push. It does really require opportunity to really be able to see what it is I'm doing or creating opportunity to experiment with this thing called archives. So interesting, thank you. I have next sort of a little group of questions sort of around Moody himself. So I'm gonna start with Michael who asks about his relationship to Egyptian art at the British Museum, seed set earlier that he was really heavily influenced by that. And I sort of wanted to add to that because I'd written a question to that too that that was sort of triggered by that relationship with Alan Locke. And that's the idea that Egypt as this sort of originary, what Locke calls an ancestral, the ancestral arts, becomes a really important sort of touchstone maybe within the development of sort of black Atlantic art histories. So we see during the Harlem Renaissance lots of artists referencing Egypt, we see even before that Admonia Lewis doing, so yeah, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more and as Michael asked about that relationship with Egyptian art and aesthetics by the British Museum. I think it was that, I think that connection to stillness and his interest in metaphysics and really the possibility of humanity and humankind. I was listening to a symposium from the title, the Living Archive, Diasporic Archives, 1977 symposium. And Guy Vert was talking about how Moody used wood grain was a very unique way. So this might not be completely attached to, but I think there's a particular mask of the Egyptian, there's a particular mask that's still on display now at the British Museum. And when I look at it, I very much see, I wonder, there's a part of me that would love to know what was on display in that moment in 1928 in the Egyptian rooms that gave Moody that feeling. But there is a particular piece, a wooden face, sort of upstairs in the Egyptian, one of the Egyptian rooms upstairs that really echoes Moody. And I do wonder if that was one of the pieces that influenced him. I wish I had an image to sort of share, but yeah. I also think it was a hub, the British Museum was a hub and a space, so meeting place. So he was, he's always referred to, when learning to become a sculptor, he relied on his friends that were artists and sculptors. So I imagine that there was this kind of, it was a meeting place where he would meet, they would discuss. So I feel like it was a crucial space, not just for him, but for many. Yeah, and that was the other thing that occurred that within the moment of British sculpture, you have these sort of origin stories from a number of artists, like Henry Moore, who see the Mexican sculptures of Egypt and that sort of gives us the work that they end up making. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, so again, so even there thinking about the British Museum as a sort of social, yeah, as you say, a sort of network space, not just, yeah, this idea of the artist pilgrim who goes and comes away again. That's really interesting. Kirsten Hacker asks, and yeah, when did Midans appear again? So obviously it's now in Tate, right? It's on by Tate. So when did it come back? So again, through the wonderful work of Cynthia Moody, she spent over a decade trying to locate Midans and she wrote, I think, to over 30 institutions in that time. And I think it was Uzugunu who was able to sort of locate or knew that some of the holdings of the dismantled Harmon Foundation had been sent to certain places. So that was how she ended up being able to locate it in the end. But I think it was 1993 when she first got to see Midans. So I really do think, and because it was the sculpture that he never got to see again and there was some kind of grief that held, I do think that sculpture is particularly very special and it does feel special to get to see it. And it did feel very knowing the story through Gemera Romain. It felt very special to get to see it as part of spaces of Black modernism after it had been gone for so long. So where was it? Where did it end up? So it was at Baltimore. Did it stay there then? Or did it- No, it was kind of stuff in storage, taken into storage. And then it was found, I can't remember the name of the university, but it was in a sort of university sort of holdings, just sort of how it got there, we're not quite sure. But I mean, there were many stories from an artistic perspective of getting your work back after you've had an exhibition, that's the whole thing. Getting your work back in one piece is a thing. So yeah. And actually that, I think, I believe that that actually leads us quite well to Festak, right? Because when there are issues around that, yeah, so Van Berge asks, great to see here, your presentation. Thank you. Please may expand more on Moody's time at or in afterglow of the Pan-Affas he attended. Here I'm thinking of 1996, Dakar and of course, Frank Bowling, Luzo Gono and Arby Williams were there and also Festak 77, where he went again with Gono and Williams, but also that sort of younger generation of photographers, including Neil Kenloch, I'm at Francis and the filmmaker Manel Shabazz. Yes, how might these monumental gatherings have been from Moody? I think it really, that particular Festak in particular, I really think, again, brings him into that kind of ambassador kind of role. It was a huge achievement and a lot of work here. And to be honest, you can read a lot. Most of that material within his archive is digitized and able to be read on the TAKE website if you want to explore it more. But also, I think Len Garrison was one of the people. So going into the Black Cultural Archives and look at reading Festak through Len Garrison's lens and actually, I'm wondering if that was the moment when Len Garrison thought we need a Black Cultural Archives because it's not that long after that Black Cultural Archives begins and is set up. So I feel that that particular trip to Nigeria is really something that we need to really explore a little bit more of what the impact was. And I did see, I did meet Neil Kenloch once outside Brixton Library. And he literally said that that trip for him Moody really encouraged him to participate. He was very young at the time, but that trip and being included changed his life in regards to photography. So I think the long lasting impact, whether it's the Black Cultural Archives, but also within Len Garrison's collection, there were photographs of their trip. And but more importantly, there's a collection of papers within Len Garrison's Festak material that I think that in itself is a project to sort of go back and look at what they were talking about and what they were presenting during Festak. And also, can you imagine the idea of sort of say, hey, everybody, let's go to Nigeria and for this huge festival. And in some ways that was a political, you know, because it wasn't both that and Dakar and sort of from Rome, African de Présence, where he gave a talk, I think that's 1959. It shows, for the person that asked about the timeline, it begins to show an ongoing timeline where he is part of sort of radical black thinking and thought around diaspora. He was consistent in that way from the beginning. Absolutely. Well, just thinking Dakar is being rooted in sort of Leipzig or is in Negritude, right? This is like the Negritude festival. And again, those links are so interesting between, you know, if he's involved with the Nardal sisters in Paris as a sort of someone sort of in a lot of ways, birds, Negritude out of all these engagements across the Atlantic with, it's brilliant. That's just brilliant. It's so interesting. I'm very aware of the time and our eight o'clock cut off. So I just want to ask you one final question. This is coming from Andrew Craig. And I'm sorry, I know that there's another question. Maybe you can, Andrew, if you want to write, we can sort of pass your question along. But Andrew Craig asks, would you identify your practice as a researcher and archivist as a form of political activism? Your work exposes an ongoing process of revisionism or the cultural legacy of people of African heritage? Big one. Well, no, for sure. I mean, it's why, you know, it's, there was no turning back once I started to see certain legacies and certain histories that just weren't part of, that weren't within the archive. No, maybe they were in the archive because sometimes they are. They're just not cataloged. So we can't find them. But I think projects like the Remembering Olive Collective and Black Women's All Histories really transformed. Yeah, there was just no going back. But what I did know was that if I didn't do an MA, I would forever be a volunteer with no voice. And so that's kind of why I retrained as an archivist because I do think the culture needs to change. And when we think about, you know, the archival, archives can be hostile as well, a very hostile environment. And if we think about civil rights, you know, it's not a joke. And when you think about the Windrush records that were just destroyed the other day, there's a huge cultural destruction within archives. And so I do think advocacy and widening and democratising, pluralising archival space is sometimes taken for granted, but really is very important. And so, yes, I would say that it is a kind of, it's not even a kind of, it is activism and it is political. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much. I go, that was such a generous conversation. I feel like I'm going to email you now and ask you 40 questions. Sorry. Thank you so much, though. This has been so fabulous. And thank you to everybody who joined us and thank you for everybody who joined to everybody who joined us and your presence. So before we sign off, I just wanted to say, you know, please do join us next week for our next sort of installment, same time, same place. You can sign up on Eventbrite if you haven't already. When we'll hear from the artists and photographer Ingrid Pollard in conversation with Glasgow women's libraries, Adele Patrick. So we're sort of returning to the archive to hear about Ingrid's recent work in the lesbian archive of the GWL. So thank you so much. I go as a total pleasure to talk to you.