Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures Published Today
- 22 October 2024
Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures, edited by Ian Dudley and Maridowa Williams, is published by the Paul Mellon Centre today.
This first major monograph on the pioneering modernist Aubrey Williams (1926–1990) reveals his extraordinary breadth of vision and dynamic work connecting Caribbean, British and Atlantic histories.
Fired by Guyana’s post-war independence struggle and experiences with its Indigenous peoples, Williams created unique, genre-defying paintings from the 1950s onwards after moving to Britain in 1952. Transforming the influences of Amazonian cosmology, Mayan archaeology, astronomy, natural history, music, martial arts, ecological catastrophe, anti-imperialist revolution and abstraction, he became a leading artistic voice of Caribbean decolonisation whose radical works heralded the postcolonial era while anticipating our own transformational times.
With a foreword by Tate Britain’s director, Alex Farquharson, and introduced by art historian Kobena Mercer, ground-breaking new scholarship by Ian Dudley, Claudia Hucke and Giulia Smith explores the Indigenous, transnational and ecological dimensions of Williams’s art. A memoir by the artist’s daughter, Maridowa Williams, gives an intimate portrait and complements perspectives of curators from the Hayward Gallery, Tate and October Gallery.
Beautifully illustrated with 200 artworks, this book encompasses the full range of Williams’s practice, from early abstracts and lesser-known murals and portraits to major late works including the Shostakovich, Bird Paintings, Olmec-Maya & Now and Cosmos series. These are accompanied by an important selection of unpublished writings by Williams himself.
This revelatory volume illuminates the complex cross-cultural dynamics at play across Williams’s ‘World Aesthetic’ and provides an unprecedented insight into his life and work.
Ian Dudley is a visiting fellow in art history at the School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Essex.
Maridowa Williams is the daughter of Aubrey Williams and plays a key role in keeping the artist’s work current and accessible.