The Seven Rages of Man. Mixed Media Assemblage. 1984 (Reconstructed 2018)

Piper takes the viewer through the seven historical ‘ages’ charting the past, present and a projected future, using an allegorical ‘first person’ storytelling structure.

It begins with a recollection of life in pre-colonial Africa, then in the second ‘age’ discusses the brutality and horror of the Atlantic slave trade and plantations of the ‘new world’. The third ‘age’ recalls the grinding poverty of the plantation economies following the end of official slavery, but its continuation in other forms. The fourth panel shows Piper as a young Caribbean migrant who has arrived in Britain, referencing the Windrush generation. The fifth panel recalls the anger, disillusionment and growing militancy of ‘second generation’ migrants leading to the ‘riots’ of the mid 1970s and 1980s. The following panel presents a projected maturing of political thought and tactics, leading to the final panel that anticipates a symbolic return to a liberated and united continent of Africa.

Seven Rages of Man

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