Claudette Holmes was born in Birmingham, England in 1962. She has been exploring community and women’s issues since 1988, holding her first major exhibition, 'Womaness', jointly with photographer and artist of Guyanese descent, Roshini Kempadoo, at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1990. She also co-curated and contributed to the exhibition 'From Negative Stereotype to Positive Image' at Birmingham Central Library in 1993, one of the first shows to address issues surrounding photography, anthropology, and the portrayal of race. In 2016 she completed an MA in Art and Interdisciplinary Practice and has worked with renowned Polish icon painter, Basia Mindewicz, to inform her current work.
Photographer Claudette Holmes was born in Birmingham, England in 1962. She has been exploring community and women’s issues since 1988, participating in Closing the Gap, featuring photographs by young Midlands artists of Afro-Caribbean and Asian descent at the University of Aston and Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry, in 1982. Holmes had her first major exhibition, Womaness, jointly with photographer and artist of Guyanese descent, Roshini Kempadoo, at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1990, which included her series of portraits of Black women characterised by a subtle use of montage. In 1991 Holmes featured in the film Sistren in Photography (Aphra Video collective), which brought together female Black and Asian photographers from Birmingham – Balbir Kaur, Vicky Okoosi, Dawn Selman, and Maxine Walker – who all talked about their practice, experience, and inspirations. Holmes’ 1992 solo show Manipulated Images at the Picture House, Leicester, showcased powerful black and white photographic prints featuring montage and airbrush techniques.
Challenging stereotypes, Holmes has represented her Black subjects in settings commonly not associated with them, exemplified by her portrait of a young Black woman with an English historical backdrop of an ancient church and a half-timbered building. Holmes declared that ‘My choice in producing images of Black people, and Black women in particular, allows me to present the public alternatives to the stereotypes considered to be the norm’ (Oadby & Wigston Mail 1992, p. 19). Leicester Daily Mercury art critic, Ron Moore, praised the ‘exciting’ exhibition, noting that it ‘is a must for creative camera buffs, as Claudette’s pictures present sensitive and aesthetic invention in interpreting people and environments adopting unconventional and surrealist concepts to enhance her message’ (Moore 1992, p. 46). Holmes co-curated and contributed her work to the exhibition From Negative Stereotype to Positive Image at Birmingham Central Library in 1993, one of the first shows to address issues surrounding photography, anthropology, and the portrayal of race. The exhibition included photographs from her Womaness series, as well as a newly commissioned group of photo-montages which challenged common representations of Afro-Caribbean males, combining colour photographs with Turner's landscapes. According to the Birmingham Daily Post her images ‘confirm that Claudette Holmes, who is only now undertaking formal training, is a talent worth watching’ (Birmingham Daily Post 1993, p. 14). Featuring the work of three other Birmingham photographers (MP and photographic pioneer Sir Benjamin Stone, portrait photographer Ernest Dyche, and Vanley Burke), the exhibition was initiated by Birmingham Central Library in response to the absence of favorable and contemporary photographs of individuals of African Caribbean descent in its vast photographic collections, which contained a significant number of negative, prejudiced, or primitive ‘ethnographic’ images. Each photographer captured images of people of African Caribbean origin at different moments, reflecting various social, economic, political, and personal issues. In 1994, Holmes participated in Manipulative Women, showing the work of five women photographers who altered images using various methods, including computer based-techniques, or incorporating their photographs into collages or constructions. Holmes worked with with hardboard, plaster cherubs and leaves. The show, curated by Birmingham photographer Rhonda Wilson, formed part of the Signals festival of women’s photography.
Other shows featuring Holmes have included Sharp Voices, Still Lives: Birmingham Photography in the 1980s, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1990), and Giant Steps, which showcased posters and was held jointly with Mark Taylor at the Custard Factory, Digberth (1994). Holmes subsequently participated in Vibes at the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry (2004) and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (2005), a group exhibition exploring urban music, from its origins in West Africa to its survival in the West Indies and journey to the West Midlands.
In 2016 Holmes gained her MA in Art and Interdisciplinary Practice from Birmingham City University, before studying with renowned Polish icon painter Basia Mindewicz from the Edinburgh School of Icon Painting at Woodbrooke Quaker Centre, Birmingham, while also attending classes at Temenos Academy, London and Birmingham Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Holmes now paints liturgical inspired iconography from a personal, social and historical perspective and her portrait of Haile Selassie, titled HIM (2020) was included in the exhibition Ikon For Artists, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2021). In 2022 she participated in a series of talks at the Ikon, where Birmingham-based painters, including Graham Chorlton and Rafal Zar, were invited to examine a particular aspect of Italian Renaissance painter, Carlo Crivelli. Holmes explored the archetype of the Virgin and Child by examining Crivelli's artwork from c. 1480, specifically its devotional aspects. She discussed how this archetype was represented in her portraits of Black women, including Queen Menen, Consort and Mother of a Nation (2018), Eva Isadora, Mother. Windrush and the Subsequent Mental Challenges That Came With It (2021) and Cedella Marley Booker, Mother of Rastafari Icon Bob Marley (2022).
Holmes’ work is not currently represented in UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Claudette Holmes]
Publications related to [Claudette Holmes] in the Ben Uri Library