Eddie Chambers is an artist, curator, writer and critic who first emerged onto the 1980s British art scene as the founding member of the BLK Art Group. He has curated a number of exhibitions that sought to promote the work of Black artists from the UK and abroad. Landmark exhibitions include ‘Black Art: Plotting the Course’, 1988; ‘ Four x 4’, 1991 and ‘Mildred Howard: In the Line of Fire’, 1999, as well as solo shows for Eugene Palmer, Frank Bowling and Tam Joseph.
Between 1989 and 2006 he wrote regularly for Art Monthly and his critical texts and reviews can also be found in publications such as Third Text, Artists Newsletter and Race Today.
In 1999, Iniva published a collection of Chambers writings from the early 1980s to the late 1990s as part of the ‘Annotations’ series entitled Run Through the Jungle: Selected Writings by Eddie Chambers. The book includes seminal texts and reviews such as ‘Beyond Ethnic Arts’ (Circa, 1985), ‘Black Art Now’ (Third Text, 1991), ‘Whitewash’ (Art Monthly, 1988) and ‘Johannesburg’ (Art Monthly, 1998). To mark the book launch Iniva organised ‘Critic to Critic’ – a seminar that focused on the role of the art critic in the 1990s Britain and the way art criticism has influenced and shaped the British art scene.
Chambers was born in Wolverhampton to Jamaican parents. His education includes a BA in Fine Art from Sunderland Polytechnic and a PhD in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London. His work has been shown in group exhibitions across Britain, including the major touring exhibition, ‘The Other Story: Asian, African and Caribbean artists in Post-War Britain’, at Hayward Gallery in 1989 and the touring exhibition, ‘The Place is Here’ in 2017.
He lives and works between Bristol, Edinburgh and Austin, Texas where he teaches art history of African Diaspora at the University of Texas at Austin.