Born in 1939 in Trinidad, Jamaica, Horace Ové came to Britain in 1960, since when he developed a career as one of the UK’s leading black film-makers, photographers and writers, documenting racism and black power and culture in the UK, both positive and negative.
The photographs in ‘The Art of Seeing’ include a swirling performance by Bob Marley and measured portraits of many artists including Chris Ofili, Winston Branch, Derek Walcott, Errol Lloyd and Trevor Thomas, many of whom are represented in the exhibition ‘Get Up, Stand Up Now’ in the West Wing upstairs. The big question is whether to view this exhibition before the other or after that, or perhaps both?
The one weakness in this exhibition is the relative lack of female artists, Madge Sinclair and Marsha Hunt being the exceptions. The exhibition may seek to address one side of representation in British culture, but sadly it fails on another.