1942, Manila, Philippines–2020, Manila, Philippines

This archival material attests to a more buzzing cultural scene internationalised by the early 1960s through mass migration from former colonies and beyond. However, this new vibrancy unfolded within a racialised two-tier citizenship system shaped by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968 and the Immigration Act of 1971. Medalla resisted such marginalisation by seeing himself not as a migrant but as a cosmopolitan citizen. In 1964 he joined Metzger, the Italian-born émigré Marcello Salvadori and others in founding Signals Gallery in London which promoted experimental art. It quickly attracted many migrant artists with its active internationalist policy and brought into its space the concrete poets. Medalla edited the gallery’s Signals Newsbulletin, where he set out a global vision of art. In 1967 he founded the Exploding Galaxy, based in a private house but continuing the same spirit of gathering countercultural figures. Together with the Chilean-born Cecilia Vicuña, who had fled to London after the 1973 coup, and others he founded in 1974 Artists for Democracy, a collective shaped by international solidarity and struggles for liberation.

William Allen Collection