Marlene Smith
As an A-level student Marlene Smith attended the opening of the 1982 exhibition, The Pan Afrikan Connection: An Exhibition by Young Black British Artists held at the Ikon Gallery in her hometown of Birmingham. The exhibition was organised by a group of Midlands-based art students who had come together initially as the Wolverhampton Young Black Artists before becoming the Pan-Afrikan Connection and eventually the BLK Art Group.
Drawn to the power of the work and finding common interests with the group’s members, Smith joined the BLK Art Group in the summer of 1982. As a member of the BLK Art Group Smith was instrumental in the organisation of the First National Black Art Convention at Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1983), the Radical Black Art Working Convention (1984) and a number of exhibitions including The Pan-Afrikan Connection: An Exhibition of Radical Black Art (Africa Centre, 1983 and others).
After the group disbanded in the mid-1980s, Smith took on an assistant curatorship at Finsbury Park’s The Black-Art Gallery. During this period at the BAG Smith organised a series of important exhibitions alongside developing and exhibiting her own creative and curatorial practice. Her mixed-media work Good Housekeeping I, which was exhibited in the seminal exhibition The Thin Black Line (ICA, 1985), clearly demonstrates some of Smith’s concerns during this period; the use of found materials and an engagement with black feminisms via a searing indictment of the racist policing practices that led to the shooting of Dorothy ‘Cherry’ Groce that year.Outside of her work at the BAG, Smith co-curated exhibitions such as The Image Employed (Cornerhouse, 1987). After a stint as the Director of West Midlands Minority Arts Service, Smith returned to the BAG as Director in 1991.
She is still an active curator, researcher and facilitator and her work has been exhibited in recent exhibitions including The Place is Here (Van Abbemusuem, NL; South London Gallery; Nottingham Contemporary; MIMA, 2016-7) and Get Up, Stand Up Now (Somerset House, 2019).
