Artists of African and Asian descent have been making art in the UK at least since the early twentieth century. However, despite this longstanding situation, a problem exists where art criticism continues to serve the art-works of these artists inadequately. A peculiar kind of eclipsing has taken place where instead of considering and talking directly about the work, the discussions have emphasised the ethnicity of the artist, and the general problematics of race and identity politics within the art establishment, thus deflecting attention away from how these art-works relate to or have influenced the story of twentieth century art. Coalesced under the term 'Black-British', this term can be considered as 'a metaphor for a political circumstance prescribed by struggles against economic exploitation and cultural domination: a state of consciousness that people of various pigmentations have experienced, empathized with, and responded to.' (Powell, 1997: 10) Here, the research will aim to elucidate a critical perspective on the complexities of trying to draw essentialist conclusions about the nature of a practice on the basis of national origin or diasporic affiliation. Black Artists and Modernism, BAM for short, is a 3-year research programme that will investigate the often-understated connections as well as points of conflict between Black-British artists' practice and the art-works' relationship to modernism. Here, the research sees modernism as an unfinished project that is extended in postmodernism, and it will look at what Stuart Hall calls the "conjuncture" of generations of Black-British artists that were 'for' and 'against' modernist dictates. By focussing our attention on art-works held in major public collections as well as key exhibitions, the research is designed to reach a wide audience from students and academics to a more general audience for the arts. The design of the research will produce a wide-range of materials. These include: An online multi-media website that will chronicle a national audit of art-works by Black-British artists held in public collections in the UK. A series of essays, interviews and videos that discuss key art-works and their inclusion in important collections, as well as historically important exhibitions. A series of public discussions will gather in places like Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Paris. Study days and symposia will be focused on signature art-works and exhibition histories looking at the impact of Black-British art on the broader narratives of modern and contemporary art practice. New displays will appear at museums like the Tate, as a way to re-think the connection between the art-work and the story of modernism. Working with Illuminations, the arts and media specialists renowned for their arts programming (including the Turner Prize programmes on Channel Four), the aim is to record the unfolding research process. Documentaries will be made for a variety of public media platforms including broadcast television. At the end of the three-year programme an edited book 'The Blackness of Modernism: reconsidering art-works, exhibitions and collecting the work of Black-British artists' will be published by Duke University Press.

Soft Estate: Exhibition Proposal by Edward Chell, under the highlight notice 'Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past' Soft Estate is the term used by the Highways Agency to describe the natural habitats that line our motorways and trunk roads, (some 30,000 hectares of land nationally). Whilst roads play a major role in opening up land for housing and economic development, their attendant verges offer a genuine refuge for wildlife and a modern form of wilderness in the midst of intense urbanisation and agro-chemical farming. Our road network, the site of some of our most carbon-intensive activity, is flanked by Britain's largest unofficial nature reserve. The principal subject of this practice-led research is to visually investigate these under-represented areas of roadside wilderness, both as ecological and metaphorical spaces and as reflectors of the complex and changing relationships between travel, the environment and landscape imagery within British culture. In framing this research I will draw on the English Landscape and 'picturesque' tradition of the 18th Century, which informs popular understanding of landscape even today. While early tourists travelled to areas such as The Lakes to capture images of wild places, in today's countryside uncontrolled wilderness only springs up in the margins of our transport networks and the semi-derelict grid plans of industrialised corridors. I believe these Edgelands invite a new kind of tourist, new ways of looking and new forms of visual representation. In drawing on the landscape tradition, and capturing details of the flora and fauna of the verge, my work will engage viewers with landscapes that appear familiar and uncanny, traditional and strangely futuristic. Equipped with a Claude Glass, the 18th C tourist would capture particular views and aesthetically tame them. Today, for instance, the rear view mirrors of automobiles have an equivalent framing effect and would inform images conjured from a contemporary perspective. Modern motorway design incorporates 'Clothoid' or transition curves, features that focus drivers' attention so that they stay alert. These have the effect of smoothing the landscape reminiscent of eighteenth century parks, where curved carriage drives managed the experience of the landscape. Motorways arguably represent the modern equivalent of the spectacular re-sculpting of the landscape undertaken by Capability Brown. This was not without its 'picturesque' opponents. Tour writer and landowner Uvedale Price rejected Brown's projects, describing them as 'levelling', Price no doubt being aware of the political ramifications of the term. These verges are powerful signifiers of environmental degradation, urban development and our increasing separation and alienation from the land itself and at the same time, of optimistic progress. Roads open up access to landscapes they despoil. Through drawing on the picturesque tradition in making this work, I aim to open up new ways for people to visualize and connect with these landscapes. The resulting solo exhibition at Bluecoat Liverpool, Soft Estate, in 2013, will build on projects in which I exhibited work in Little Chef restaurants with a view to reaching a wider public and prompting reflection and debate on the travel choices we make and how these affect our environment. I am currently working towards a related parallel show across the local network of Little Chef restaurants to draw a wider audience to the Bluecoat and prompt reflection on travel and landscape. I have already established a good working relationship with writer and environmental campaigner, Marion Shoard, vice-chair of the British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC). Her expertise in the area of land access and discarded land will provide a valuable sounding board to my researches and her contribution to the Bluecoat publication will provide a 'value added' spin off to the project.