(1951 - )
Vanley Burke was born in St Thomas Parish, Jamaica, in 1951. He moved to the UK in 1965, joining his mother in Handsworth, Birmingham, where he immediately began capturing the lives of the community surrounding him. ‘I remember realising that all history had to start somewhere and that we were at a unique stage in history in this country,’ he has since reflected. Burke’s first major solo exhibition, Handsworth from the Inside, was held at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and toured to the Commonwealth Institute in London, in 1983. Recent shows at Ikon include At Home with Vanley Burke in 2015, which displayed the contents of the artist’s flat, and A Gift to Birmingham in 2022/23. Blood & Fire: Our Journey Through Vanley Burke’s History at Soho House Museum in 2022 was co-curated by the artist and curators Candice Nembhard and Paul Goodwin. The Vanley Burke Archive of material related to Britain’s Black communities is deposited at Birmingham Archives and Heritage.
