Young Fathers receive abuse after portrait gallery comments
0 Prize-winning Young Fathers Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham ‘G’ Hastings A Mercury Prize-winning band has experienced a racist backlash after complaining that British art galleries are full of images of privileged white people.
Young Fathers, who won the Mercury Prize in 2014, made the controversial remarks in a video commissioned by the national portrait galleries in Edinburgh and London. The Edinburgh-based trio – two of whose members are black – commented that the people in the portraits are “a long line of inbred spawn, soon to die out themselves”.
The band then suffered racist abuse online including comments on band member Alloysius Massaquoi’s Facebook page where he was told to “go back to your mudhutculture” and called an “antiwhite racist”.
The video was removed, at the band’s request, from Youtube and the National Galleries of Scotland website on Tuesday but was posted again later.
The video was commissioned as part of an exhibition on the theme of male image, identity and appearance from the 16th century to the present day with a selection of portraits from the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Young Fathers rose to prominence in 2013-14 with their album Tape Two winning the Scottish Album of the Year award, and features band members Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham “G” Hastings.
The band’s video was commenting on the fact that gallery walls are overwhelmingly filled with portraits of rich, privileged ruling classes of the past.
Bankole is seen shadow boxing in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and mimicking the poses in the fine oil paintings. Massaquoi narrates the film saying: “They are signs of wealth, the insignia of status. They are a gravestone that a dog pisses against, shifting, cracked in clay.”
The four-minute film created a backlash from extremists who called it “anti-white” propaganda.
One commenter said “When a non-native person comes to your country and attacks your ancestors in such an insulting way, that sort of reaction is justified.”
Another post asked: “Why do you have a black man chimping out in a museum?”
The National Galleries Scotland and National Portrait Gallery London released a joint statement in which they said: “The views expressed by the band relate to issues around privilege and inequality and conventions of historic portraiture and its display.”