Following acclaimed presentations at both Spike Island (Bristol) and Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham), Whitechapel Gallery brings this important and timely exhibition of the late British artist Donald Rodney (1961–1998, UK) to London.

His distinctive multi-media works encompass drawing, painting, installation, photography, animatronics and digital media and are known for being bold, acerbic and deeply personal, particularly in their address of the Black British experience in the context of the UK’s colonial history.

Rodney was born in West Bromwich to Jamaican parents, and grew up in Smethwick on the outskirts of Birmingham, an area which became a focus of racist politics in the 1960s. He studied art in Bournville, Nottingham and London throughout the 1980s, and first gained visibility as a member of the Blk Art Group: an association of young Black artists, critics and curators formed in Wolverhampton in 1982 to highlight issues around race and racial identity.

Defying material or thematic categorization, Rodney’s practice was marked by a commitment to artistic investigation. He continually experimented with new materials and technologies to explore life as a Black man living with a chronic illness.

Rodney lived with sickle cell anemia and was frequently in and out of hospital, undergoing invasive treatments which led to increasing immobility and profoundly challenging experiences. He harnessed his condition as a way of addressing the many prejudices and injustices he encountered and often used it as a metaphor for the illnesses and injustices of society at large. Rodney maintained a consistent practice of recording his experiences, thoughts, political and artistic concerns in a series of sketchbooks, which were a constant resource for continuing to formulate and testing out new ideas.

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.

This exhibition – developed in collaboration with the Donald Rodney Estate, with loans of work made possible through the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund – brings together the majority of Rodney’s surviving works from 1982 to 1997, the year before he died.

The title of the exhibition, Visceral canker, is taken from a 1990 work comprised of two wooden plaques displaying heraldic images, linked together by a system of medical tubes through which theatrical blood is pumped. It exemplifies both the raw, corporal nature of Rodney’s work and politics, and his persistent scrutiny of the ‘canker’, or disease at the heart of society. Through this work, Rodney examines how the inhumanity of Britain’s colonial history continues to structure life today.

Visceral canker features one of Rodney’s earliest surviving paintings, How the West was won (1982), made while Rodney was an undergraduate student at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University). It was here that Rodney first met British artist Keith Piper, who became a close friend, and who encouraged him towards a more politically explicit art practice, which allowed him to confront and explore issues of Blackness as a central focus.

The exhibition also includes the seminal work, The house that Jack Built (1987), a mixed media installation featuring a crudely fashioned figure seated in front of a house made of X-rays onto which Rodney added text and drawings. From the late 1980s, Rodney made extensive use of medical X-rays in his work, exploring the creative and metaphoric possibilities of the medium.

Another significant work on display, is the 35mm slide installation Cataract (1991) – the first time it has been reconstructed for public viewing. The work consists of three unsynchronised slide projections that produce overlapping images of four different, fragmented Black male faces, including Rodney’s own, and explores the way constructions of Black masculinity are so often compromised and denied autonomy through prejudicial and reductive stereotypes.

Exclusive to the presentation at Whitechapel Gallery is the inclusion of Camouflage (1997), a major work which Rodney presented at South London Gallery the same year, in what was the last exhibition during his lifetime. It shows a large piece of camouflage fabric, onto which a racist slur is stitched, using lettering cut from the same fabric so that it is barely legible. The work draws attention to the way in which everyday racism can remain an insidious presence, even when not visible on the surface. Also, uniquely on view at Whitechapel Gallery are two artworks based on books: Rodney’s personal copy of the Bible, as well as a plaster cast of the 1984–86 edition of the catalogue for the Arts Council Collection. Both are displayed in close proximity to the work, My catechism (1997), which comprises plaster casts of the entire set of the Children’s Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Towards the end of his life, Rodney’s practice increasingly broke new ground and works such as Autoicon (1997–2000), an interactive digital artwork initiated by Rodney and finalised by a group of close friends after he died (known as ‘Donald Rodney plc’), anticipated machine learning technologies. Referencing Jeremy Bentham’s infamous nineteenth-century Auto-Icon, the work simulates both the physical presence and creative personality of Rodney. Consisting of a Java-based AI and neural network, the platform engages the user in text-based ‘chat’ and provides responses by drawing from a dense body of data related to Rodney, including documentation of artworks, medical records, interviews, images, notes and videos.

A comprehensive publication, Donald Rodney: A reader has been produced for the presentation at Whitechapel, featuring contributions from the exhibition’s curators as well as scholars and artists including Celeste-Marie Bernier, Richard Birkett, Eddie Chambers, Janice Cheddie, Alice Correia, Lubaina Himid, Virginia Nimarkoh, Gregory Salter, Maud Sulter, Diane Symons and others, and is available to purchase online and at the gallery for £20.

Donald Rodney: Visceral canker is curated by Gasworks Director Robert Leckie and Spike Island Director Nicole Yip and adapted for Whitechapel Gallery by Gilane Tawadros, Cameron Foote and Carolina Jozami.

The exhibition is presented in partnership with Spike Island and Nottingham Contemporary and is part of the West of England Visual Arts Alliance programme with loans of works generously supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund.

Further support come from the Henry Moore Foundation, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Pilgrim Trust.