The New Black Vanguard

Breaking down long-established boundaries, The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion exhibition is set to arrive at Bunjil Place Gallery from 21 March to 7 June as part of the Photo 2020 International Festival of Photography. Travelling from New York’s Aperture Foundation and curated by Antwaun Sargent, the exhibition presents fifteen artists whose vibrant portraits and conceptual images challenge the idea that blackness is homogenous, with works serving as a form of visual activism.

Reinfusing the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body with new vitality and substance, works include those that have been widely consumed in traditional lifestyle magazines, ad campaigns, and museums, as well as on their individual social-media channels.

The exhibition will feature photographs by Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obasi, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel, Dana Scruggs, and Stephen Tayo. Opening up conversations around the roles of the black body and black lives as subject matter; the images collectively celebrate black creativity and the cross-pollination between art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image.