The touring exhibition Criminal Ornamentation: Yinka Shonibare CBE Curates the Arts Council Collection showed at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester - 21 September-16 December 2018, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter - 19 January-17 March 2019, Longside Gallery, Arts Council Collection, Wakefield - 5 April-16 June 2019, Southampton Art Gallery - 28 June-28 September 2019
Selecting works from the Arts Council Collection as a starting point, British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE curates an exhibition that revels in pattern and ornament.
The title of the exhibition is a provocative reference to the influential essay ‘Ornament and Crime' by early twentieth-century architect Adolf Loos, which condemns the use of decoration and craft. "Adolf Loos was clearly a man of his time in his snobbish revolutionary zeal to abandon ornamentation as he saw it as the pre-occupation of the working classes and degenerates", Shonibare explained.
Challenging such attitudes, Criminal Ornamentation brings together over eighty works that embrace colour, ornament and pattern. Reflecting Shonibare's own practice, the exhibition explores the use of decoration as a powerful means of social and political identification and expression.