Eddie Chambers was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in Wolverhampton, England in 1960. Working with artists such as Keith Piper, Chambers's early exhibitions centred on ideas of 'Black Art', as a racially conscious form of art making, while his later curatorial projects included solo exhibitions of work by Lesley Sanderson, Eugene Palmer, Denzil Forrester, Medina Hammad, Tam Joseph and Frank Bowling. His monographs include Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, (2014), Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (2017) and World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art (2021).
Artist, art historian, and curator Eddie Chambers was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in Wolverhampton, England in 1960. In 1983 he received his BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of Sunderland and in 1998 he completed a PhD at Goldsmiths College University of London, where he studied the responses of the press and public to a new generation of Black artists, active in Britain between 1981 and 1986. Since the early 1980s Chambers has been involved in first organising, then curating, many exhibitions in the UK. Working with artists such as Keith Piper, Chambers's early projects centred on ideas of 'Black Art', as a racially conscious form of art making. Of these early years of practice, he has recalled: 'We were under obligation to make work which unreservedly aligned itself with the struggle of Black people: we fought against racism in our work, and sought to enhance and be part of a distinctly 'Black' culture and its political identity' (Eddie Chambers, Black Art Now, Third Text, Number 15, Summer 1991, pp. 91-96). These exhibitions began with Black Art an' done at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1981. Subsequent exhibitions included Black Presence, first shown at the Watershed Media Centre, Bristol in 1986, D-Max: A Photographic Exhibition (1987), and Black Art: Plotting the Course (1988). In the 1990s, his exhibitions included, Let The Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces (1990), History and Identity: Seven Painters (1991), Four x 4 (1991), The Dub Factor (1992), Black People and the British Flag (1993), Eugene Palmer (1993), Home & Away (1994), Us an' Dem (1994), Phaophanit & Piper (1995), Frank Bowling: Bowling on Through the Century (1996), and Tam Joseph: This is History (1998). In the 2000s his curatorial projects have included solo exhibitions by Eugene Palmer, Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Denzil Forrester, Medina Hammad, Anthony Key, (all 2002), Mildred Howard (2003) and Pat Ward Williams (2005).
In addition to his curatorial work, Chambers’s articles, catalogue essays, and reviews have been widely featured in publications such as Art Monthly, to which Chambers was a regular contributor between 1989 and 2018. His writing has also featured in Race Today, Africa World Review, Circa, Creative Camera, Ten.8, Artists Newsletter and the Greater London Arts Quarterly. In addition, as part of their Annotations series, the Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA), published a collection of writings under the heading Run Through the Jungle in February 1999. He has also authored monographs including Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s (2014), Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (2017) and World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art (2021).
As a visual artist, Chambers’s work has featured in solo and group exhibitions in the UK and Ireland. These have included The Black Bastard as a Cultural Icon (1985), The Slaughter of Another Golden Calf (1984/85), and Marcus Garvey: The Blackest Star (1988). In 1989 Chambers's work was included in the major Hayward Gallery touring exhibition, The Other Story: Asian, African and Caribbean artists in Post-War Britain, curated by Rasheed Araeen. His work was also included in The Blk Art Group, 1983-1984, at the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield (2011) as well as in the 2014 exhibition, As Exciting As We Can Make It, which examined the Ikon Gallery's programme during the 1980s. Most recently his work has featured in No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 at the Guildhall Art Gallery (2015-2016), as part of which he discussed ‘the impact made by notable Black Artists in the late 20th Century, who have gone largely unnoticed in the British Art Arena’ (Eddie Chambers, Framing Black Visual Art - Meet Eddie Chambers and Errol Lloyd, Artlyst, July 2015), as well as in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain (2021–22). In 1989 Chambers established the African and Asian Visual Artists' Archive (AAVAA), the only dedicated research and reference facility in the country, concerned with documenting the history, presence and work of Black British-based artists. He coordinated AAVAA for several years, until the autumn of 1992. Two decades later, AAVAA was de-accessioned by the University of East London and the material returned to Chambers. The material is currently being incorporated into Chambers' ongoing archival project.
Chambers' university-related work began with a 15-month residency as Curator-in-Residence in the Department of History of Art at the University of Sussex between 1995 and 1996. He is now a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, teaching seminars and classes on African Diaspora art. In August 2014 he was appointed as a Field Editor for caa.reviews, the open access, online review portal of the College Art Association and was subsequently appointed Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal (July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2024). Eddie Chambers lives and works between Bristol, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Austin, Texas, USA. His four panelled collage, The Destruction of the National Front which depicts the deconstruction of an image of the Union flag shaped as a swastika, is held in the Tate collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Eddie Chambers]
Publications related to [Eddie Chambers] in the Ben Uri Library