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State Secrets & Black Power: Transforming Archival Research into Painting
28 May 2026, 6:15 pm–8:00 pm
The SPRC warmly welcomes artist Rudy Loewe.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
The UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation
Location
-
G11 Common GroundGround Floor, South Wing, Wilkins BuildingGower StreetLondonWC1E 6BT
In this lecture, artist Rudy Loewe will present their PhD research, which interrogates Britain’s attempts to destroy Caribbean Black Power movements during the 1960s and 70s. Loewe uses painting to expose the Information Research Department, a once top-secret unit within the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, responsible for creating propaganda about global resistance movements and anti-communist states. Loewe will discuss how they envision this history in their painting as a way of spotlighting the continuation of British colonial legacies in the present.
Join us at 6.15pm for refreshments, and so we can start the lecture promptly at 6.30pm.
Propaganda Machine, Trinidad #5, Rudy Loewe (2023). Photography by Jonathan Bassett.
About the Speaker
Rudy Loewe
Artist
In 2025, Loewe was the ninth exhibiting artist for the Art on the Underground Brixton Mural Programme. The Congregation honours the historic role that Brixton has played as a gathering space, particularly for London’s black communities.
Their solo exhibition 'Intimacies of Care - Spaces of Grief & Possibility’ reimagines a mental healthcare system that is equitable and supportive and will be showing at Wellcome Collection, 10 July 2026 – 7 February 2027.
The lecture will be followed by a Q&A.
Accessibility: the venue is step free, and wheelchair accessible, and there are wheelchair accessible toilets on the same floor.
More about Rudy Loewe