Rita Keegan (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

• 1983: Women's Work, Brixton Art Gallery, London ^[12]
• 1985: Mirror Reflecting Darkly: Black Women's Art, Brixton Art Gallery, London ^{[12] [13]}
• 1990: Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces, Bluecoat
• 1991: Family Album: An exhibition by Brixton Black Women Artists, Copyart Resource Centre, London
• 1991: Four X 4 curated by Eddie Chambers, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton ^[14]
• 1992: Trophies of Empire, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Bluecoat, Liverpool curated by Keith Piper ^[12]
• 1992: White Noise: Artists Working with Sound, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
• 1993: Rites of Passage, ICA, London (solo)
• 1995: Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art, InIVA and British Museum, London ^[15]
• 1997: Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966–1996, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Caribbean Cultural Center (Manhattan), New York ^{[2] [16]}
• 1998: Family Histories: Eating with Our Memories, Sleeping with the Ancestors, 198 Gallery, London (solo) ^[2]
• 2006: Transformations, Lewisham Arthouse and Horniman Museum, London (solo) ^[17]
• 2021: Somewhere Between There and Here solo exhibition at the South London Gallery ^[11]

References

Further reading

• Rita Keegan, "The Story So Far", Spare Rib, February 1990, Issue 209, p. 36.
• Rita Keegan, "Once Upon a Time", Spare Rib, December–January 1988, Issue 197, p. 44.
• Guy Burch; Françoise Dupré (2011). Brixton Calling!: Then & Now: Brixton Art Gallery & the Brixton Artists Collective. ISBN  978-1-902770-13-0.

External links

• "Rita Keegan" (YouTube video, posted 9 August 2013), SamtheWheels, 2008.
• Women of Colour Index archive record at The Women's Art Library at Goldsmiths College, London.