Image: The New Art Gallery Walsall
The New Art Gallery Walsall will present 'Ten.8 afterimage' on Floor 3 from 1 May to 13 September 2026, a group exhibition curated by Pelumi Odubanjo in partnership with International Curators Forum. The show explores the legacy and enduring impact of 'Ten.8' (1979–1992), the photography journal founded in Handsworth during a period of major social and political change in Britain.
According to the gallery, 'Ten.8' emerged from the Midlands’ radical cultural and political landscape and helped shape critical debates about representation and the politics of photography. The exhibition brings together photographic works made in the 1980s and 1990s with more recent artworks, using that dialogue to examine how images have been read across different historical moments and how questions of visibility, power and representation continue to resonate today.
The journal’s wider context is central to the exhibition. The gallery says 'Ten.8' offered new ways of thinking about photography’s social, cultural and political responsibilities, and its editorial and critical reach extended across major shifts in late 20th-century Britain, including the Handsworth and Brixton uprisings, Thatcherite neoliberal reforms, and the rise of Black British cultural politics. The exhibition also places the journal in relation to global conversations around feminist movements, gay and lesbian rights, and struggles against apartheid, colonialism and state violence.
'You may quote no invented facts' —
The exhibition features work by 34 artists, including a newly commissioned piece by British Ghanaian visual artist Heather Agyepong. Other artists named in the gallery’s material include Ajamu X, Dawoud Bey, Zarina Bhimji, JEB (Joan E. Biren), Derek Bishton, Brian Homer and John Reardon, Vanley Burke, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Gon Buurman, Renee Cox, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Joy Gregory, Sunil Gupta, George Hallett, Claudette Holmes, Roshini Kempadoo, Dave Lewis, Cynthia MaiWa Sitei, Masterji, Ming de Nasty, Ingrid Pollard, Franklyn Rodgers, Donald Rodney, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, Jo Spence in collaboration with Rosy Martin, James Van Der Zee, Maxine Walker, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis.
The installation also draws on the material history of the journal itself. Image captions reference the complete set of 37 issues of 'Ten.8', loaned by David A Bailey and formerly owned by Nick Hedges, alongside works such as Franklyn Rodgers’ 'Monolith 1' (1992), Maxine Walker’s 'Black Beauty' series and Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s 'Body Weapons' (1992), which appears in the gallery’s permanent collection. Other displayed material includes a selection from the Masterji Family Collection and Heather Agyepong’s 'Survival ’26' and 'Survival ’26: Unfixed, Still Becoming', both commissioned by the gallery and International Curators Forum.
Public programming around the exhibition includes a BSL tour on 4 July and a symposium on 5 September. The symposium will run from 11am to 3.45pm, with speakers Ajamu X, Shaqúelle Whyte, David A Bailey, Joy Gregory, Ayesha Jones, Roshini Kempadoo, Pelumi Odubanjo and Ian Sergeant. The schedule includes an exhibition tour led by Odubanjo, followed by panel discussions titled 'Reading Black Images: from Ten.8 to the present' and 'Survival and self-representation: from the 1980s to today'. The exhibition is free admission and runs on Floor 3 until 13 September 2026.
