Built around three large sculptural commissions, the exhibition took Buckley’s investigations into the space between Blackness and Britishness as its starting point.
Informed in part by his experience of growing up in Chapeltown, Leeds, as well as his research at Leeds’ Royal Armouries during a residency period at The Tetley, the three commissions – Psychic Armour for Black Northerners, Brotherhood Tapestry and Better Clone Sons – were set against a collection of smaller works. Brotherhood tapestry wove the audience through familiar and unfamiliar imagery – from historical references to West African mask-making and medieval armour, through British Modernist sculpture to the dystopian present and various Science Fiction. Taken as a whole, the exhibition gave a voice to the bleakness of the times in which we live by synthesising the comfortable and the challenging.
Brotherhood tapestry was supported by The Elephant Trust and ran alongside 50 years of Leeds West Indian carnival, an exhibition exploring and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Leeds West Indian Carnival.