Outside Narration - Curated by Keith Piper

A highlight of the Graves Gallery displays is a powerful exploration of alternative and outsider perspectives on our recognised histories curated by artist Keith Piper, one of the co-founders of the seminal Blk Art Group.

The display is led by Piper’s own large-scale work The Seven Rages of Man (1984-2018), which imagines seven ages, or rages, through which the black dispersed population has passed, but also the future to come.

Alongside the work, Piper presents objects from the city’s collection offering visitors a chance to reflect on the histories they represent, including currency issued by the Royal Africa Company, which transported more people into slavery than any other British company in the history of the Atlantic slave trade, and t-shirts protesting South African apartheid in the 1980s.