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Rita Keegan
South London Gallery
In “Social Fabric Stories”—an index to the fabrics that decorate the impressive train of the garment at the center of the mixed-media installation Trophies Revised, 2021–, invited artists, friends, activists, educators, and archivists offer to Rita Keegan scraps of their own work: homages to times and art scenes past, present, future, and ongoing. These collaborators recall not only Keegan’s art, but also her work behind the scenes, helping to establish the Brixton Art Gallery, cofounding the print technology cooperative Community Copy Art, building the Women of Colour Index. They speak of fabric, both cultural and material, of the texture of cloth and everyday life, of clothes worn, handed down, inherited, like traits or a lineage. This vibrant “social fabric,” in Keegan’s words, undergirds the installation, which reconfigures one of the artist’s germinal works, Cycles, 1992. It also gestures to Keegan’s lifelong interest in collaborative and communal art practices, and the ways in which they...