The dominoes skittling down the streets that burnt in the Fire of London coincided with the last day of Sugar and Spice. I sat with artist Susan Eyre whose partner was involved in the setting them up. We were invigilating on the last day of SS and we talked about her fascination with dark matter and the fall out from the referendum. It was really interesting and I’d love to hear more about her collaboration with research scientists, and hopefully see some of the work that gets produced.
A more ancient example of the overlap between art and science can be seen at the Science Museum, where in a rather small space they have packed an information dense exhibition about Leonardo and his designs. Dont miss the timeline at the start which places this work in its historical context. This complements very well the more comprehensive exhibition in Amboise near Tours which was where Leonardo spent his last few years. If you can’t get to Amboise I recommend you rush to the Science museum before this exhibition closes on Sunday…be quick.
Last weekend a huge fire burnt on the barge in the Thames, and all this week Radio 4 has been playing Samuel Pepys. A memorial for the fire of London. A reminder of another time when Britain suffered great divisions in society. The lovely thing about the project run by Artichoke arts within this context, was that it was all about collaboration and social bonding. An idea so pertinent to this time. Can this be a phoenix moment? At least this fire was not deadly, it was beautiful. And a part of me found it moving in a melancholic kind of way. Collaboration on the production of something beautiful and still beautiful as it all went up in flames, ephemeral.
Phoenix egg
So Sugar and Spice is over and all taken down, some of the work has another destination which has been confirmed but delayed, so is now blocking up my living room, over crowding it, I’m going to have to find it a better temporary home. My work in Sugar and Spice documented the way in which the legal abolition of slavery in Britain was a growing likelihood at the time of the building of the Telford design in St Katharine Docks. It asked several questions – about people as commodities, about whether the design was influenced by the growing likelihood of abolition, about whether the design was a negative response to more organised labour- simply a way of saving money, or inspired by better ideas about what it means to be human?
I have just been watcing BBC 3’s “Making a Slave” on i-player. 13000 or more people are living in slavery in Britain now and this programme gives a glimpse into the way in which people are kept under control, so that you don’t need to ask the question how could that happen now, here. It illustrates how. People are still treated as commodities in some farms factories and building sites across the country. Every now and again this makes the news:- When an enormous tragedy like the cockle pickers happens. But for 13000 it is an enormous tradgedy every day, and these numbers are believed to be an underestimate by some experts.
SO here it is, slavery may be illegal, and some people at least do escape, but it is happening here and now. The programme is based around the testimony of an ex-slave, a modern day Olaudah Equiano, who had his true identity disguised, presumably out of fear of recriminations.
By comparison 13000 is just under the population of Ringwood, the next town to Fordingbridge where I grew up. It is more than twice the population of Fordingbridge, my home town. If a whole small UK rural town had been taken over by gangmasters think of the scandal, the newspaper coverage, the 10 o’clock news…and yet that is effectively what has happened, it is just hidden, more dispersed, and the people affected are mostly new to Britain. The Somerset case was in 1772, which set legal precident, found that no one could be held a slave here. And it was the also true then that the person about whom the ruling was made was not born here, he was in fact trafficked. It is not that the legislation does not exist, it is that we are not implementing it properly as a society.
When the food or clothes you buy seem impossibly cheap, or the quote for the build excessively low we should think again. When the manufactured product says Made in Britain, that is not a guarantee that the people making it have been treated fairly and paid at least minimum wage. When we are encouraged to further “free up” the work force from the “strictures” of regulation, think 1984 doublespeak. Casual labour practices and hiring by the day are the gangmasters bread and butter.
What is clear is that our systems are failing. 13000 is alot of people.
So to finish up the holidays we took a trip to the The Summer Pavilion at The Serpentine. Even on a hot day it feels somehow like entering a glacier. The curve created with the geometrical shapes quite astounding. The day we visited was hot, and yet still this resonance. I love the way the cubes created windows through which to view the children playing in the park outside. Another thing to catch before summer finally disappears and the real ice comes.
