Keith Piper: Viva Voce, 2024
Commission for Tate Britain

Viva Voce by Keith Piper is a new commission for the former restaurant at Tate Britain, which contains a 1927 mural by painter Rex Whistler titled The Expedition In Pursuit of Rare Meats.

 

Tate visitors and staff have raised concerns about the racist imagery contained in the Whistler mural over the years. In 2020, the room was closed and following a series of consultations, Tate decided that the room would no longer be a restaurant and the mural should be preserved as a historic work of art, but recontextualised. Following these conversations, Tate decided to commission an artist to make work in dialogue with it, reframing the mural for contemporary audiences.

 

Keith Piper, co-founder of the Black Art Group and a key figure in the British Black Arts Movement, is the first artist to receive the commission. In his immersive video installation, Viva Voce, Piper stages an imagined conversation between Whistler and a fictional academic, Professor Shepherd.

 

A lecturer as well as an artist, Piper's film uses the form of a 'viva' oral exam, enabling Professor Shepherd to ask Whistler about his 1927 mural, challenging him on its racist narrative and imagery.

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Viva Voce weaves together live action, archival photography and film, also examining Whistler’s other work from the period, and exploring the social and political melting pot of interwar Britain in which Whistler lived. 

 

Piper notes: ‘I want to give a sense of how and why the mural exists.’ Viva Voce invites us to carefully examine historical images, the motives of those who made them and the context in which they were produced.