Liz Johnson Artur: Artist's Talk and Private View Tickets and Dates

‘Black Music is the soundtrack to my Archive. And women are the heartbeat.’ - Liz Johnson Artur

For over 30 years, photographer Liz Johnson Artur has been documenting connections across diasporic communities, celebrating the everyday practices of living in the African diaspora.

In this event, the photographer introduces her new exhibition ‘Black Balloon Archive’ housed in the entrance hall of the British Library. She explores the creation of the exhibition, drawing on her archive of works, and its themes of pleasure, intimacy, beauty and love in Black British music cultures.   

This exhibition accompanies Beyond the Bassline: 500 years of Black British Music (26 April – 26 August), which maps the ever-evolving history of Black music in Britain, through music, photography, props, absorbing soundscapes, artworks and films produced by artists and collectives across the UK.  

Liz Johnson Artur is a photographer who has lived and worked in London since 1991. For the last 30 years Artur has worked across Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean, capturing images of the African Diaspora in all its beauty and complexity. In 2019, the South London Gallery hosted Artur’s first UK solo show ‘Liz Johnson Artur: if you know the beginning, the end is no trouble’ which documented Black-British Life in London. Artur has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including Tate Modern, FOAM, Amsterdam, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Brooklyn Museum.

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