Rita Keegan

Rita Keegan
Born
Rita Morrison

1949 (age 75–76)
New York, New York, U.S.
EducationHigh School of Art and Design, San Francisco Art Institute
Known forPainting, digital art

Rita Keegan, OBE (born 1949) is an American-born artist, lecturer and archivist, based in England since the late 1970s. She is a multi-media artist whose work uses video and digital technologies.[1] Keegan is best known for her involvement with in the UK's Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and her work documenting artists of colour in Britain.

Biography

Born Rita Morrison[2] in the Bronx, New York City,[3] to a Dominican mother and Canadian father,[4] she described her upbringing in the Bronx as having "more in common with an English/Commonwealth background".[5] She graduated from the High School of Art and Design focusing on illustration and costume design, then obtained a fine arts degree at the San Francisco Art Institute,[6] where her teachers included the photographer Imogen Cunningham and the African-American artist Mary O'Neill.[5] Keegan moved to London, England, in the late 1970s.[1]

Keegan originally trained as a painter but in the 1980s begin to incorporate lens-based media, using the photocopier and computer in both 2D and installation work.[7] In 1984 she worked at "Community Copyart" in London. The GLC-funded organisation was an affordable resource centre for voluntary groups to create they own print material in addition to working with artists who wanted to use the photocopier as a form of printmaking.[8]

Keegan was a founding member of the artists' collectives Brixton Art Gallery in 1982, and later Women's Work and Black Women in View. She went on to co-curate Mirror Reflecting Darkly, Brixton Art Gallery's first exhibition by the Black Women Artists collective.[9] From 1985 Keegan was a staff member at the Women Artists Slide Library (WASL), where she established and managed the Women Artists of Colour Index.[10] She was Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive from 1992 to 1994.[2] In 2021 she had a solo exhibition Somewhere Between There and Here at the South London Gallery[11]

Keegan taught New Media and Digital Diversity at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also helped establish the digital-media undergraduate course in the Historical and Cultural Studies department.[2][9]

Selected exhibitions

References

  1. ^ a b Desire By Design: Body, Territories and New Technologies. By Cutting Edge (group). I.B. Tauris. 1999. p. 237. ISBN 9781860642807. OCLC 40834228 – via Google Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ^ a b c d e Cheddie, Janice (2002). "Keegan, Rita". In Donnell, Alison (ed.). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge. p. 167. ISBN 9781134700257. OCLC 51601660 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ Rita Keegan (Video). Sam Wheels. 9 August 2013. Retrieved 8 October 2024 – via YouTube.
  4. ^ a b Chambers, Eddie (1991). Four x 4: Installations by Sixteen Artists in Four Galleries. Bristol. pp. 21–22. ISBN 9780951329016. OCLC 24931119. Retrieved 8 October 2024 – via Internet Archive.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ^ a b Rendell, Clare (October–November 1987). "Actual lives of women artists--Rita Keegan 1987: painter Rita Keegan talks to Clare Rendell". Women Artists Slide Library Journal (19): 10–11. Retrieved 12 February 2024 – via Gale OneFile.
  6. ^ Buckman, David, ed. (2006). Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945. Vol. 1. A to L. Bristol: Art Dictionaries. ISBN 9780953260959. OCLC 77011785.
  7. ^ Taylor, Stuart (10 January 1997). "Rita Keegan on Digital Diversity and the Colour of Computers". Mute. Archived from the original on 27 January 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
  8. ^ Baines, Jess (2015). "Nurturing Dissent? Community Printshops in 1970s London". In Uldam, Julie; Vestergaard, Anne (eds.). Civic Engagement and Social Media: Political Participation Beyond Protest. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 190. ISBN 9781137434166. OCLC 908190826 – via Google Books.
  9. ^ a b "TrAIN Conversation - Françoise Dupré and Rita Keegan in conversation with Deborah Cherry - BRIXTON CALLING!". University of the Arts London, Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation. 14 November 2011. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  10. ^ Arya, Rina (2012). Chila Kumari Burman: Shakti, Sexuality and Bindi Girls. KT Press. ISBN 978-0953654130. OCLC 863042814 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ a b Morris, Kadish (11 September 2021). "Rita Keegan: the return of black British art's forgotten pioneer". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 3 June 2024. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
  12. ^ a b c "Keegan, Rita - Bibliography and Exhibitions". African American Visual Artists Database. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015.
  13. ^ "Mirror Reflecting Darkly – Black Womens Art – Womens Work 4". Brixton Art Gallery Archive. 15 June 1985. Archived from the original on 3 June 2024. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
  14. ^ "Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces". Bluecoat. 1990. Archived from the original on 3 March 2024. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  15. ^ White Noise: Artists Working with Sound: Sonia Boyce, Seán Hillen, Richard Hylton, Rita Keegan, Pratibha Parmar (Exhibition catalog). Birmingham: Ikon Gallery. 1992. OCLC 1302870124.
  16. ^ Putnam, James; Davies, W. V., eds. (1994). Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art. London: Iniva and British Museum. ISBN 0-86159-997-7. OCLC 42372882. Archived from the original on 12 February 2024. Retrieved 12 February 2024 – via Iniva.
  17. ^ Cotter, Holland (24 October 1997). "ART REVIEW; This Realm of Newcomers, This England". The New York Times. pp. E 33. ProQuest 2236700131. Archived from the original on 14 July 2012. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  18. ^ "Exhibitions and Special Exhibits since 1948". Horniman Museum and Gardens. Archived from the original on 9 October 2017. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  19. ^ LaBarge, Emily (December 2021). "Rita Keegan". Artforum. 60 (4). ProQuest 2605262169. Archived from the original on 29 October 2023. Retrieved 8 October 2024.

Further reading