Maud Sulter Live Programme: Call and Response

Part of our Maud Sulter Live Programme

An afternoon of presentations and conversations from artists, curators, performers and academics responding to Maud Sulter: You are my kindred spirit, and Maud Sulter's legacy.

On the final weekend of our Maud Sulter exhibition, the live programme will culminate in ‘Call and Response’, directly inspired by Maud's groundbreaking 1988 essay of the same name. The event will bring together artists, writers, performers and scholars to contribute reflections on Maud’s work and legacy through presentations relating to both their own and Maud’s practice. 

In Sulter’s essay, the artist writes ‘Who makes Black women's work visible if not other Black women?,’ later declaring: ‘No longer being afraid of our erotic, and the source of our creativity: we can go forward to a passionate future. As Blackwomen, as friends.’. This event will echo Sulter’s sentiment of re-centring practices of black, female and queer practitioners, whilst reflecting on personal and shared dialogues between the artists and their work.

Presentations will be followed by an in-conversation moderated by curator, researcher and writer, and co-founder of the independent curatorial project Mother Tongue, Tiffany Boyle.

About the contributors

Sekai Machache (she/they) is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist, film-maker and curator based in Glasgow, Scotland.

Sekai's work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self, in which photography plays a crucial role in supporting an exploration of the historical and cultural imaginary. Aspects of her photographic practice are formulated through digital studio-based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting to create images that appear to emerge from darkness.

In recent works, she expands to incorporate other media and approaches that evoke that which is invisible and undocumented. They are interested in the relationship between spirituality, dreaming and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing against contexts of colonialism and loss."

Sekai is the recipient of the 2020 RSA Morton Award and is an artist in residence with the Talbot Rice Residency Programme 2021-2023.

Their most recent film work titled Svikiro first screened as part of a solo exhibition of the same name at Mount Stuart House on the isle of Bute in September 2023. Svikiro was most recently exhibited in a group show titled Undone with the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the 60th La Biennale di Venezia April - November 2024.

Susannah Thompson is an art historian, writer and critic from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, based in Glasgow.

 She is Professor of Fine Art at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.

 Susannah’s research interests are in the broad area of contemporary art history and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on art from Scotland and the UK and feminist approaches to the intersections between art, criticism and creative writing. Her research has been widely published in journals including Visual Studies, Visual Culture in Britain, Journal for Writing in Creative Practice, The Scottish Literary Review, Journal of Contemporary Painting, and the British Art Journal. As a critic, she writes for Art Review, Burlington Contemporary, Corridor8 and other publications and organisations. Recent research has focussed on the Scottish artist, critic and curator Cordelia Oliver, the letters of Anglo-Scots painter Joan Eardley, the work of the African-American and Chippewa nineteenth century sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and the art, writing and publishing practices of the Scots-Ghanaian artist, curator, writer and activist Maud Sulter.

Marlene Smith is a British artist and curator, and one of the founding members of the BLK Art Group. 

She was director of The Public in West Bromwich and UK Research Manager for Black Artists and Modernism, a collaborative research project run by the University of the Arts London and Middlesex University. Her solo show, Ah Sugar,? opened in August 2024 at Cubitt Gallery, London and toured to the Reid Gallery at Glasgow School of Art.  She has recently exhibited work as part of ‘Women in Revolt!’ at Tate Britain; ‘The More Things Change’ at Wolverhampton Art Gallery; ‘Cut & Mix’ New Art Exchange, Nottingham; ‘The Place Is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain’ Nottingham Contemporary.

Adebusola Ramsay (b. 1983, Lagos, Nigeria) based in Glasgow, Scotland.

A visual artist, whose practice has developed over the last two decades; features evocative colour composition and textural detail, mostly with acrylic medium, exploring different forms of mark-making. Influenced by patterns and symbols, in particular weave/pattern-making of African cloths such as Aso-Oke, Kente and Adire. Graduated in 2004 with Bsc (Hons) Biomedical Sciences at University of Glasgow.

Sabrina Henry is a curator and costume designer.  

Her curatorial practise thinks through questions of post-coloniality as they exist in Scotland to contribute to the wider discourse around the effects of power and modernity with a focus on the geographies of the Atlantic.  In her costume practice she works with artists of various disciplines to connect pre-colonial traditions with the contemporary British experience as a way to re-imagine the future.  Her textile work uses handcraft techniques to create contemporary artefacts that retell the history of Black diasporic presence in Scotland.  

As part of the British Art Network research group The Re-Action of Black Performance, she is exploring how the state of being re-active is used as a theme in Black British performance art.  

The Maud Sulter Live Programme curated by Pelumi Odubanjo accompanies our current exhibition Maud Sulter - You are my kindred spirit, open until 30 March 2025.