Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker

12 Feb-4 May 2025

Overview

A major survey exhibition of the late British multi-media artist Donald Rodney (b.1961, West Bromwich; d.1998, London).

Visceral Canker encompasses the majority of Rodney’s surviving works from 1982 to 1997 including large-scale oil pastels on X-rays, kinetic and animatronic sculptures as well as his sketchbooks and rare archival materials. The exhibition showcases the extraordinary breadth and influence of Rodney’s work, confirming him as a vital figure in British art, and introducing him to a new generation of audiences.

Rodney experimented with new materials and technologies throughout his all too brief career. Working across sculpture, installation, drawing, painting and digital media, Rodney’s wide-ranging practice resists simple categorisation both thematically and materially, due to his innovative approach to both mediums and technical processes.

Rodney lived with sickle cell anaemia and harnessed the condition to confront the prejudices and injustices surrounding racial identity, Black masculinity, chronic illness and Britain’s colonial past. At his untimely death in 1998 from complications arising from sickle cell, Rodney left a multifaceted and influential body of work which has influenced artists, writers and filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.