This exhibition was curated by Rasheed Araeen, one of the founding fathers of the Black Art movement in this country.  A few years later he was finally given the opportunity to put together his definitive exhibition, The Other Story, at the Hayward Gallery.  Most of the artists in Third World Within were included in that exhibition.

I liaised with Rasheed on behalf of the Collective to help stage the show and, remembering how pleased he had been at the time to be offered space in Brixton, was surprised and disappointed to find that there was absolutely no mention of the Gallery or Third World Within in the catalogue essays in The Other Story – an ironic gesture, coming from someone who had talked so much about the iniquity of the establishment writing a history that specifically excludes certain people and events.

In Rasheed’s impressive retrospective exhibition curated by Nick Aikens and staged at the Baltic Centre in 2019, Brixton Art Gallery’s Third World Within exhibition finally received its due acknowledgement as being the precursor to The Other Story. A copy of the catalogue was displayed in the show and reference was made in Kate Fowle’s catalogue essay (page 298).

CATALOGUE

Artists in show:
Rasheed Araeen, Saleem Arif, David A Bailey, Sutapa Biswas, Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Uzo Egonu, Mona Hatoum, Merdelle J-Irving, Gavin Jantjes, Houria Niati, Keith Piper, Kumiko Shimizu