Visualising the Commonwealth in Post-war Britain

Talk outline

After the London Declaration of 1949, the British Commonwealth of Nations was conceived less as a political trade bloc than a voluntary association of nations, perceived as conceptually distinct from Empire yet beholden to its historical legacies. A perceived loss of global economic and political power in the wake of the Second World War, the resulting processes of decolonisation and anticolonial, independence movements, alongside increasing immigration from its former and transitioning colonies and protectorates to the UK, were factors which contributed to the proliferation of a kind of visual culture of the Commonwealth which formed during the 1940s–70s. With the assistance of the Central Office of Information, travelling exhibitions produced by government departments, such as the Colonial Office or Commonwealth Relations Office and other mass media, including television and film, mediated certain narratives of the Commonwealth at home and abroad, ranging from socio-economic issues such as labour, international industry and trade, to arts and culture. Exhibitions of “Commonwealth Art”, including the Commonwealth Biennales of Abstract Art in 1963 and 1965, characterised abstract paintings by artists from countries as varied as Canada, Pakistan and Guyana as a visual lingua franca in line with the ideals of a multicultural, internationalising, democratic Commonwealth. By the mid-1960s, artists engaged in global anticolonial, antiracist, liberation movements criticised European universal-humanist values which framed post-war global politics as an absolution of colonial violence. Drawing on recent research for her upcoming book, this talk highlights some of these cultural productions and how they constructed ideas about the Commonwealth and shaped public opinion on matters relating to immigration, race relations and culture.

Speaker biography

Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani is a lecturer in history of art, Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh. She has published on the postcolonial histories of African, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Black British art and visual culture in Britain and beyond. As a postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven Connecticut, she co-curated the exhibition Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction (2022), and has held numerous curatorial positions in the US and UK. Funded by fellowships from Leverhulme and the Paul Mellon Centre, her current book project, The Commonwealth of Art and Visual Culture, examines the visual construction of the “Commonwealth”, reflected or criticised in art practices, films, television and exhibitions produced between 1948–78. Grassroots Artmaking: Political Struggle and Activist Art in the UK, 1960–Present, co-edited with Amy Tobin and Catherine Spencer, will be published by Bloomsbury later this year.

Event format

13.00: Welcome and talk start

13.40: Talk finishes

13.40-14.00: Q&A

Please note that a light sandwich lunch and refreshments are provided at the event.

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