Greetings Card
late 20th century (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Many artists, designers, photographers and other creative workers make their own Christmas cards for private use in which their investigations of self, gender, the body, death and the sacred may be seen in concentrated form. Donald Rodney (1961-1998) was a key member of the Pan-African Connection and its successor, the Blk Art Group. This group was central to early debates around the theories and practices which helped to shape the emergence of an identifiable Black British art movement in the 1980s. Shot through with ambiguity, Rodney's work, while commenting - sometimes polemically - on the ethnic specificity of the sickle-cell anaemia from which he suffered, eschewed the obvious tactic of presenting himself as a cipher for the disease, or the disease itself as a metaphor for the political condition of being black in Britain.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Black cover paper, adhesive tape (masking tape and brown tape), staples, tracing paper, marker pen and lenticular postcard |
| Brief description | Christmas card by Donald Rodney |
| Physical description | 2 sheets of A4 black paper folded in half and inserted one inside the other and secured with staples and adhesive tape. Outer sheet has hand cut aperture through which lenticular postcard depicting the face of Christ alternating with the Turin Shroud, mounted on the inner sheet, is visible. A torn piece of tracing paper is affixed inside for the greeting. |
| Dimensions |
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| Production type | Unique |
| Marks and inscriptions | MERRY / XMAS / FROM / Donald Rodney (On tracing paper insert, hand written in black marker pen) |
| Gallery label | Meaning
Is a greeting card anything made - be it a wooden plaque or a paper lantern - to convey a message or greeting or to mark an event or occasion? Is it a particular format - something that opens and closes, an object type - something disposable made of ephemeral materials, or a medium of communication - including performing telegrams and virtual cards sent by e-mail? Artists in various media have begun to address the greetings card phenomenon for a variety of reasons - with some intriguing results. Every Christmas, the fine art handling company, Momart, commissions an artist to create a limited edition gift which it sends out as its corporate greeting. Meanwhile, many artists, designers, photographers and other creative workers make their own Christmas cards in which their investigations of self, gender, the body, death and the sacred may be seen in concentrated form.(15-6-2000) |
| Credit line | Given by Mark Haworth-Booth |
| Production | Reason For Production: Private |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | Many artists, designers, photographers and other creative workers make their own Christmas cards for private use in which their investigations of self, gender, the body, death and the sacred may be seen in concentrated form. Donald Rodney (1961-1998) was a key member of the Pan-African Connection and its successor, the Blk Art Group. This group was central to early debates around the theories and practices which helped to shape the emergence of an identifiable Black British art movement in the 1980s. Shot through with ambiguity, Rodney's work, while commenting - sometimes polemically - on the ethnic specificity of the sickle-cell anaemia from which he suffered, eschewed the obvious tactic of presenting himself as a cipher for the disease, or the disease itself as a metaphor for the political condition of being black in Britain. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.172-2000 |
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| Record created | March 28, 2000 |
| Record URL |
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