Art From London Markets, a-n feature

She is walking slowly into the Leith…

oil indigo and sugar on canvass, 1m  x 1m, work in progress

So I am working on these pieces building up layers of pigment and darkness dealing with stories from the trade in indigo and sugar and in particular how it was bound up with slavery and forced labour. I am working at making beautiful images to draw you into disturbing stories.  The grief of these stories have an echo, in Padma’s life.  She is old enough to have been born and schooled in Colonial times. And shadowing how imperial stories are cleaned up, to present shiny romantic images for consumer culture her memory is being washed away by her dementia.  She is walking so slowly into the River Leith without a boatman to take her quickly across.  And she does look back searching, but there is only one direction to go; deeper, she cannot return.

Resistance
oil indigo and sugar on canvas 1mx1m
work in progress

I owe a debt to Turner

Last of the 10
oil indigo sugar on canvas 1mx1m

work in progress,

Oh Louder, Olaudah1, Olaudah2, Olaudah3

oil, indigo on boards work in progress
And I find myself exploring voices dead or fading, important to remember.

I am also working on some 3D pieces called Mr Equiano’s Scales, and Indigo Rebellion.

Last few days of the Plastic Propaganda exhibition at Devon House: Open until the 15th May 4pm.

And all this work has left me little time for getting to the market.

I have started work on some pieces related to the indigo trade.  A trade so tied up with the history of colonialism, forced labour, monopoly practice and darkness.   It is possible to buy fair traded indigo now for what it is worth, but that is a new story.  The old stories are dark:  Works in progress:-

This has been a busy week, getting the work ready  and nerves steady and down to St Katherine’s dock for the Nautical Perspectives Plastic Propaganda show. Exhibition on now!

Then getting on with some new work playing with indigo, juggling kids and a four day weekend…. Indigo which whether in powder or block form gets every where, but has a profound beauty when concentrated, giving me an unexpected joyful edge while making my mood indigo pieces. And yet the trade in indigo is so closely tied to the trade in spice and sugar and in turn with the slave trade…. all of which are on the route of / at the root of international sea trade established by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British traders.

Dotted through this blog are little selections from my experiments and works.  The changing colours and tones are remarkable from this one pigment which are all from one reliable source in   India.

The concentration I need to make the work I want to make feels a little dissipated by the other things going on, and on Tuesday I have to take care of Padma.  And yet at the moment I think and dream about indigo.  The stories that surround it and the actual medium itself, so dense and beautiful at one end of the spectrum, and light and suggestive at the other.

And the stories surrounding indigo are complex and illusive.  Romantic on the one hand, associated with wealthy women traders in West Africa, and then tied up intimately with spice, sugar and slavery on the other.  With trail blazing monopolistic Hapsburg Kings and privately owned National Monopoly Companies in Holland and Britain’s (East India Companies):  With the American War of independence: With the relationship between traders, pirates and the Kings and Queens of the continent of Europe. And also so suggestive of loss.  Loss of life, loss of power, loss of one trading system for another, one political system over another, trade as agreement or trade as a product of violence, loss of memory, loss of place,

and over time loss of value.  As one of the earliest most valuable imported goods in some way the stories of indigo are the stories of the development of that trade, complex and morally fraught as it is.

Sitting at our kitchen table where she has sat hundreds of times before Padma says “I am lost”.

Continuing with research into the history of global sea trade, especially early trade in spice, dyes, fabric and sugar and confirm that it is the story of the slave trade.  Making Mood Indigo pieces and playing Nina Simone.

Also slowly slowly working on dutch gilding wheat for my installation piece for Chelsea.