Published 2017  by Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Art History, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
48 pages
210 x 170mm, softcover, with colour illustrations
Edited by Geoffrey Batchen
ISSN: 977-1176-58800-5

In the years following WWII, a generation of artists moved from Britain’s colonies to London to pursue their artistic practices. Indian, African and Caribbean artists challenged the hierarchies of colonialism and modernism by becoming the practitioners of, rather than the subjects of, modernist art. This moment, later called New Commonwealth Internationalism, also involved artists from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Their legacy complicates British and New Zealand art histories of this period, and demonstrates the contradictory ways in which artistic modernism was caught up in the decolonisation movements of the twentieth century.

Damian Skinner is Art historian and curator of Applied Art and Design, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira.