Permissible Beauty

NEW PORTRAITS OF BLACK BRITISH QUEER CREATIVE TALENTS

Taking inspiration from this historic series, an immersive installation used specially-created portraits of creative talents from the Black British Queer community, through photography, personal testimony, film, performance and music.

The contemporary sitters were performers, activists, models, artists and musicians, Le Gateau Chocolat, Son of a Tutu, Ebony Rose Dark, Karnage Kills, Julius Reuben and Winn Austin.

Created by photographer Robert Taylor, the new portraits showed the ways the subjects engage with their own lives and the world they live in, and their own creative expression and performance. Our modern sitters showed that beauty does not need to be narrow, but can be a celebration of self-expression, self-acceptance and authenticity.

PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER, ROBERT TAYLOR

"Co-creating Permissible Beauty has been a joyful and incredibly satisfying learning process that has invigorated my sense of what it is to be Black British and Queer. I’m not accustomed to or inclined to collaboration per se, never mind working on a project as ambitious as this, so I affectionately salute the creative team. The cherished centre of the whole enterprise has been the revelatory experience of working with our six remarkable subjects: Ebony, Le Gateau, Karnage, Lius, Tutu and Winn. I feel privileged to have witnessed their notably various, thoughtful and inspiring takes on the subject of beauty, and the complicated business of finding ways to thrive, as themselves, in a challenging landscape."

Image: Permissible Beauty creators, performers and collaborators at the Queen's Staircase at Hampton Court Palace

PERFORMER, SONGWRITER AND ART HISTORIAN, DAVID MCALMONT

"It is a challenge to specifically identify which elements are more meaningful when it comes to such a complex portraiture exercise. Discovering that only one of our six sitters had visited Hampton Court Palace prior to our efforts, certainly qualified our mission. Having been raised by two women, the love for women – mothers, grandmothers, aunts, nieces – that immerses the project is a major boon. Ultimately, I’m stoked at our freestanding, cinematic declaration of Black, Queer, British fabulosity, as Black, Queer and Fabulous are so often promulgated as the preserve of our American cousins. The four glorious days that we all gathered at Hampton Court Palace to bring the portraiture to life will never be forgotten. Permissible Beauty has evolved into an exceptional chapter in British beauty that has been missing until its making."

Image: (left to right) Robert Taylor and David McAlmont in the Communication Gallery at Hampton Court Palace

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Permissible Beauty was developed by Black artists and creatives - acclaimed singer-songwriter, performer and art historian, David McAlmont, and celebrated portrait photographer, Robert Taylor - in collaboration with Professor Richard Sandell (RCMG, University of Leicester), and Mark Thomas (Soup Collective).

Permissible Beauty is led by RCMG, University of Leicester and generously supported by Arts Council England through a National Lottery Project Grant. The installation has received additional financial support from the University of Leicester’s Economic and Social Research Council funded Impact Acceleration Account.

A NEW FILM

The Permissible Beauty project also includes an Arts Council funded film, directed by Mark Thomas (Soup Collective), that blends history, interviews with participants, contemporary music, image and song.

It features the six contemporary sitters and David McAlmont, accompanied by a soundtrack composed by British-born Ghanaian-Russian-German composer, producer, DJ and broadcaster, AFRODEUTSCHE.

The film project is led by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries in partnership with Historic Royal Palaces, English Heritage and National Trust, and supported by Arts Council England through a National Lottery Project Grant. It will be shown at film festivals in 2023.