Rita Keegan Explained

Rita Keegan
Birth Name:Rita Morrison
Birth Place:New York, New York, U.S.
Field:Painting, digital art
Training:High School of Art and Design, San Francisco Art Institute

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. 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 in the Bronx, New York City,[1] to a Dominican mother and Canadian father,[2] she described her upbringing in the Bronx as having "more in common with an English/Commonwealth background".[3] 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,[4] where her teachers included the photographer Imogen Cunningham and the African-American artist Mary O'Neill. Keegan moved to London, England, in the late 1970s.[5]

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.[6] 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.[7]

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.[8] 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.[9] She was Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive from 1992 to 1994. In 2021 she had a solo exhibition Somewhere Between There and Here at the South London Gallery[10]

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.[11]

Selected exhibitions

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG2Dosvm2yU "Rita Keegan"
  2. Book: Chambers. Eddie. Four x 4: installations by sixteen artists in four galleries. Bristol. 1991. E. Chambers.
  3. Rendell. Clare. Actual lives of women artists--Rita Keegan 1987: painter Rita Keegan talks to Clare Rendell. Women Artists Slide Library Journal. October–November 1987. 19. 10–11. 12 February 2024.
  4. Book: Buckman. David. Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945. 2006. Art Dictionaries. 9780953260959.
  5. Book: Desire By Design: Body, Territories and New Technologies. 1999. Cutting Edge, The Women's Research Group. I.B.Tauris. 9781860642807. 237.
  6. Web site: Taylor. Stuart. Rita Keegan on Digital Diversity and the Colour of Computers. Mute. 1 December 2015. 10 January 1997.
  7. Book: Baines, Jess. Uldam. Julie. Vestergaard. Anne. Civic Engagement and Social Media: Political Participation Beyond Protest. 2015. Palgrave Macmillan. 9781137434166. 190. https://books.google.com/books?id=4uq_CQAAQBAJ&q=%E2%80%9CCommunity+Copyart%E2%80%9D&pg=PA190. Nurturing Dissent? Community Printshops in 1970s London.
  8. Web site: 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. 21 September 2015.
  9. Book: Arya. Rina. Chila Kumari Burman: Shakti, Sexuality and Bindi Girls. 2012. KT Press. 978-0953654130.
  10. News: Morris. Kadish. 11 September 2021. Rita Keegan: the return of black British art's forgotten pioneer. The Guardian. 12 September 2021.
  11. Book: Cheddie, Janice. Keegan, Rita. Donnell. Alison. Alison Donnell. Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. 2002. Routledge. 9781134700257. 167. https://books.google.com/books?id=VfdpdZ9DwH0C&q=Companion+to+Contemporary+Black+British+Culture+rita+keega&pg=PA167.
  12. Web site: Mirror Reflecting Darkly – Black Womens Art – Womens Work 4. Brixton Art Gallery Archive. 15 June 1985. 1 December 2015.
  13. Book: Chambers. Eddie. Four X 4 Catalogue. 1991. 0951329014. Diaspora Artists.
  14. Web site: Keegan, Rita - Bibliography and Exhibitions. African American Visual Artists Database.
  15. Web site: Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art. InIVA. 12 February 2024.
  16. News: Holland Cotter. Holland. Cotter. ART REVIEW; This Realm of Newcomers, This England. The New York Times. 24 October 1997.
  17. Web site: Exhibitions and Special Exhibits since 1948. Horniman Museum and Gardens. 21 September 2015.

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