Art From London Markets, a-n feature

 

This week and for the next few weeks I am really busy just making and organising things for the summer when I have a series of events coming up:

I am making a plinth for on of my pieces in:

 

Nautical Perspectives, Commodity Quay, St Katherine’s Dock 1st-15th May, opening times, 11am to 6 except the final day when it closes at 4.

 

I need some prints packaged up for Fortunate Events, East Finchley 10-4 20 May

 

Then I will be to getting on with the pieces for my installation at the Chelsea Charity Street Party for Pocket Arts. 11th June

 

And after that get organised for Kensington and Fulham Open Art Spaces, an Open Studio event with alternative spaces:  I will be showing in Faron Sutaria, North End Road, Fulham.   You can meet me there Friday 24th, 25th and 26th June, between 11am and 4pm,  and on 2nd or 3rd of July.  The event closes at 4 on the Sunday. I will have a range of small works and one big piece available to buy.

 

I will be collecting food stories on the 26th if you would like to come along and contribute to my story bank I would love to see you there.

 

In between I have some pieces to complete if I am going to be able to submit for the next Plastic Propaganda show at Commodity Quay in July, which I really want to do because it is such a perfect location for my work.

 

Better get on with it!

I am feeling delighted that I have been selected for the “Nautical Perspectives” exhibition to be held at Commodities House, St Katherine’s Dock, between 1st and 15th of May. I will be showing 3 works which are concerned with the following three narratives, found when researching the story of international food trade: These are all narratives of deceit:

1. Phoenix Egg

Context:

In the 1300s, before the establishment of the sea routes,  spice and fabrics were traded by Middle Eastern and North African traders who went along the silk road, taking goods back and forth. Spices were an incredibly luxurious commodity, prized highly by the elites of Europe and commanding very high prices. Most of this trade came across the Mediterranean and into Venice.  The traders were aware of the treasure they had, and for a very long time they made up stories: Stories to defend their trade. But also I like to think of them making up stories as a way to make the long hazardous journeys bearable, to make themselves feel brave and  less vulnerable to being robbed.  At this time nutmeg was literally worth more than its weight in gold, it is often stated that a pound of nutmeg was worth the same as seven fattened oxen in 1393.(*1a)  The price of my piece in this show is determined by the current price of 7 fattened cattle at market (*1b).

Story:

They told of dragons and phoenix who guarded the spices in the East and the adventures they had in trying to release the spices from their protection, of winning battles with these monsters and defeating dangers in the pursuit of spice.  They told these stories to the traders in Europe, and for a long time the traders in Europe stayed away, but with so much wealth to be made….

2. Chilli on Gold Square

Context

Sea routes to Asia were established going East but they were long and dangerous.  The second narrative behind my work is the reason the chilli pepper got its name.  So the sailors had been trying, as we all know from school, to find a quicker way to India and the Spice Islands, so jealously fought over by the British and Dutch.  But instead of reaching India they reached America, and there was a desperation to find pepper.  Pepper was so valuable it was sometimes used as currency, and certainly plenty of piratical raids went on across the seas to attain possession of this spice.

Story

Columbus craved peppercorns, had built his voyage on the promise of bringing back pepper. But peppercorns did not grow in South America.  Rather than accept defeat, the hot chillis which did grow in South America were rebranded peppers.

3. South Sea Bubble

Context :

The third narrative is from the South Sea Bubble Company directors. The British and Spanish were at war over who could control trade with South America, the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714).  Due to this war the British Government was in debt. In 1711 the South Sea Company was set up and in opposition to the Bank of England took over a large share of Government debt in exchange for monopoly rights to trade with South America, modelled on the monopoly trade enjoyed profitably by the East India Company.  However this promise only had any meaning if the British won the war, and then they didn’t.

 

The treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713, only two years later, so the South Sea Company now held  British Government debt and only very limited trading rights with the remaining British South American colonies; select Islands in the Caribbean and British Guyana. It was 1717 before any South Sea Trading ships even set sale.  South Sea Company ships were limited  and the company profits were based on slave trade and interest on  loans to the British government, but when has that stopped a good story?  Certainly the slave trade was not an appealing one, so…

 

 

Story

In an effort to increase investment the South Sea Company Directors told stories, exaggerated stories of the profits they were making, and of the treasures to be found in South Sea trading.  Bubble stories with no substance except a shiny surface.

 

Which through 1720 first lead to rapid rises in stock valuations, but by Autumn in the same year, price crashes and prosecutions happened,  Company and Government Officials were accused and found guilty.

 

And this bubble, in the way of bubbles, created more bubbles, more crazy investment companies on the same model, and investment frenzy, with share prices in all sorts of dubious companies bubbling up. In January 1720 shares in the South Sea Company were £128 by May £550, by June, after receiving a Royal Charter £1050, but in July……in July the investors lost confidence, in August stock was valued at £800, and September £175, and across Britain people had lost their fortunes, there was a massive economic crash. *2

 

 

I invite you to come to the “Nautical Perspectives” exhibition at Commodity Quay, St Katherine’s Dock, just next door to the Tower of London.  It will be open from 1st to 15th May 2016.

 

And thank you to a_nblogs who are promoting the a_n edition of this blog this week.

 

My work is a project, the Art From London Markets Project, a reflection of our relationship to food in London explored through art, image making, community interactive events, installations  and blogging both as a record of the project and as part of my practice.

 

Looking back at the stories collected in Hammersmith last October, I am making works trying to distil the essence of the stories collected, each culminating in its own single iconic image.The current narrative I am working on was a double remembering, the pomegranate in the interactive art event evoked for the story teller another moment of remembering.

 

 

 

The pomegranate evoked the memory of her childhood self being transported.  Transported by the glimpse of a pomegranate at the front of a greengrocers on a grey London street. Transported all the way back to the sunny Tunisian garden of her infancy.

This story is the story of the particular, a particular childhood that spanned Tunisia and the UK, but also the loss and longing that transience brings with it, a universal.  The pomegranate in this image has a particular individual symbolism, but is also pregnant with diverse cultural symbolisms.

 

The copper gild I am using holds the place of the intense Tunisian sun.  I will preserve its sheen with a shellac varnish, and it will change and play with the interaction of natural light here lightening and darkening through a day.

This story comes from a small collection from random people, people invited to story collection events through invitations handed out in markets, and social media reaching a random audience and there is a common theme in many of them, memories of other places: from Hong Kong, Jakarta, Tunisia, Liverpool, Israel, Romania, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Germany to Finchley, Liverpool and Highgate.  This is London, international and culturally diverse.

 

Longing

 

The culture and population is constantly in a state of flux and change.  The process of story collecting captures a small moment in time of the individual who shares the story, but also of who the city is in any particular place and a particular moment in time.  These works are an attempt to take the time to notice and record who we are now.

In interpreting the pomegranate story I have to decide whether to represent the grey London street or not, this has aesthetic and conceptual considerations.  For a while I play with the possibilities of bringing in the grey using a mini-me piece to look at the interplay of the colours: I made a small sketch with the broad colours and played with that so that I could make some decisions within the space of time offered by the gilding,  a  slow process requiring wait times to reach the perfect tack.  I started by adding scratchy charcoal and leaving a light halo around the Tunisian sun.  Then I added painting medium which gave a glossy intense shine,  but it was so intense and in competition with the copper.  I added white paint and took out the halo, played with the smoothness and tones of the grey lightening and then bring back in some dark tones.

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And while I am doing all of this practical problem solving, I think back to the original storytelling and realise that the child had been transported back to the sunshine.  If I am going to concentrate on the memory within the memory there should be no trace of grey.

 

I have also been in the process of putting together some proposals for  Installations in public spaces which include a story sharing element where the installations provide a context which is not emotionally neutral, exploring themes that are prevalent in current discourse about food both in social media and more traditional media.

 

This work and others made from the stories collected in October will be shown at in Kensington and Fulham Open Art Spaces, Faron Sutaria, North End Road, Fulham.  So in  a nice circular way the works produced are going back to the geographic roots of where they were told. This show is open on the weekends of 24th to 26th June and 1st to 3rd July.   If you come in on the Sunday 26th (10 am to 12) you can share your story with me and become part of the project.

 

Combining my research with the school holidays I take my smallest child with me.  My smallest loves street food, so this week at her request we visted Borough Market.  It is her favourite of the markets she has come to so far, and we ate  the most delicious Egyptian concoction, a small pot of rice with chick peas, tomatoe sauce and onions that was so savoury, so delicious, and as the Cathedral seems to have decided it nolonger wishes to be a picnic site we walked round the corner from the market to the replica Golden Hinde and sat and ate on the wall there under the sign that let us know that the church owns the wharf too.  Later we managed to catch the last chance to see the Calder show at the Tate.  Floaty suggestions of form with no colour or bright primary colours.

So the Golden Hind was part of a fleet of ships under St Francis Drake dedicated to undermining Spanish advantage in trade with South America.

The trade that brought  chocolate, potatoes, physalis, tomatoes, maize, chilli,

tobacco, and amazing supplies of gold to Europe.  Europe who exportedchicken pox, measles and a barbaric attitude to cultures other their our own.  The food still informs the European diet………..

Any way that got me thinking about tomatoes….the dominant role of tomatoes in the cooking of Portugal Italy and Spain, and thier story in the development of global trade.

This trade was marked by piracy between Spanish, Dutch, Portugese and English ships, and it is really interesting to read the cleaned up language talking of “acquisitions”, and “interceptions” on the Goldenhinde.com website. It does not mention the role of the Drake family in the slave trade, or in piracy.  This was one of the ships key in establishing Elizabeth I Empire, and that was not a clean or comfortable story.  It is a bit like listening to some of the current coverage from Panama, out of control global elites interested in lining their own pockets and transferring wealth across the globe without regard to any one else, dressed up by some as “legitimate” business.

 

The pattern of global import and export is still under the influence of the legacy of the slave trade, the East India Companies of Britain and the Dutch, the slave trade and the Eurpoean Colonialisation of Asia Africa and the Americas.  Tea originated in China, but is grown in India and South Asia, sugar cane originated in South and South East Asia but is grown across the Carribean and in the US. Coffee originated in Ethiopia but was grown in Asia and now across Asia South America and Africa……..the legacy of European trade lives on.  This fact calls in to question some ideas about “localism” and National identity. In the Italian slow food tradition aubergines (India) and tomatoes (America) certainly feature, so what is local? When does our idea of a traditional crop start and when is something too new?  Or really is it never too new, can’t newness be exciting rather than threatening?

And isn’t it a mistake to equate anti-foreign with slow food any way. Across Eurpoe our food has international roots.  In London our population comes from all over the world, this is reflected in the variety of foods on offer, and given that the story of London is a history of its people, and the culture of London is cosmopolitan and always has been, London localism includes Kent apples and Lincolnshire beetroot, and chilli and garlic and ginger, enjera, cassava, bananas…..fejoa

And it got me reflecting on the first stories I collected and the memory shared of the tomatoes ripening in the kitchen draw, these plants with hundreds of years in the UK adapted by clever growers low tech solutions to the lack of sun.  And then about the pregnant girl from New Zealand who lived here and craved fejoa, but found them too expensive.

That day in Borough market I found them for 80p, not cheap, they are small, but not so expensive she would not have been able to buy herself a pregnancy treat….

And as I write this and eat a fejoa which tastes faintly medicinal, (in fact it reminds me of the smell of germaline from childhood scrapes), it makes me think that there is something behind pregnancy cravings beyond the familiar.

Back to the point what makes a food local: Is it that it is grown locally?  Is it that it has grown there for a hundred years or that it has always grown there?  In which case do British people really want to go back to a diet or turnips and pidgeon?  Is a potato grown in Lincolnshirenot English?  Or is it that it is good, delicious nutritious and people in the locality like it and know how to make it?  One of the greatest pleasures of living in a city like London is the capacity for a whole range of food from different food cultures from across the globe including the British Isles.  My feeling is that it is important to protect food knowledge and traditions in an inclusive way.  It is important to support diversity.

And I have been returning to some of the other stories picked up along my way, I am making a big pomegranate image, a reflection on nostalgia…..

The central icon, the pomegranate relates to a story shared about how the sight of pomegranates in shop fronts reminded a child of the Tunisian garden she had left behind…. and developing from that…..

the pomegranate also holds in its grasp our relationship with traders from the middle East during the Middle Ages, and……..

as it becomes a clearer image the compulsion I have to enlarge and clarify this image has its roots in the current situation in the middle East and the refugee crisis and my discomfort at our dehumanising response to it.

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Recently I have been working on a series where the narative is that of the origins of international trade of food stuffs, rather than the personal narative of market users.  Last summer we spent a fantastic afternoon walking though the streets of Cahors former spice quarter: The area  where the English traders would buy from the French, who in turn had bought from the Venetians, who before that had bought from the Phoenicians or other Middle Eastern traders who had procured spice from, according to their stories, the dangerous Phoenix and dragons  that guarded them fiercely somewhere at the other end of the Silk Road.

 

This was before Vasco da Gama, but it is the start of the story of international trade.  The silk route traders must have had plenty of time as they traveled along the great roads to make up their stories.  The stories of the Phoenix with sharp beak and long talons which could arise from the dead.  Of the dragons and monsters to the East who were busy protecting their hoards of magical spices so much in demand in Europe.  The wealth of this trade lives on in the buildings of the spice bazaar in Istanbul and the wealth displayed in the many buildings of Venice.

In Europe where a nutmeg was worth more than its weight in gold, and where that value was 7 well fattened oxen.   If you wanted to buy 7 well fattened cows today, and lets face it they are not such a  common currency these days, unless you happen to be a farmer or butcher, you would pay £868.(Farmers weekly current average price for cull cows described as well fleshed with even fat cover, the nearest I could get to a fattened ox.)…but you would not pay that for one nutmeg would you? It  makes an economic issue out of a hot cross bun.

 

 

These prices were the engine behind many wars in Europe and across the globe in the name of European powers,  wars, naval exploration and international shipping.  Spices were the oil of its day.  So this week I have been thinking about the history of International Trade and the role of spice in motivating various European powers in building shipping fleets and the perception of easy money to be made in creating economic crises.

 

 

The East End of London used to be the centre of the import trade in the south East.  Both the wealth and extremes of poverty associated with the British East India Company have their geographic origins here.  The history of London as a market is the history of the river.  There have been trading posts here since the earliest traces of settlement.  The legacy of this is the massive range of markets across this area, probably denser than the rest of London, and the range of people, probably more diverse and mixed than any other part of London.  The East End has also long been the artist quarter, which is why Bow Arts Artist Quarter is so well named, with a lower (although no longer low) cost of living, and old warehouses, factories and religious buildings used for studios.  This is shifting, the City creeps across the East End, with development projects which displace rather than carry people with them all built on the perception of easy money to be made.

 

 

Many people think of Bengali immigration as a new thing, however it has its roots in ship workers stepping ashore in Limehouse from the ships of the East India Company after the Mughal Emperor made an exclusive trade agreement with the EIC in 1634 that allowed the EIC the sole trader status in spice and sugar from the Bay of Bengal.  The Chinese population in Limehouse, London’s old China Town have a similar history.  Here is where trade and reputation are not always fair bed fellows, because why is it that in popular culture it is the Chinese who brought opium to the UK when in fact it was the British EIC that took Opium to China from India.  The British East India Company that had its own armies, that resisted control by state powers, and in many ways was the first UK based Transnational Corporation. If you have been watching “The Night Manager” think Richard Roper in period costume.

So this area has always been tied up with making massive sums of money, at the same time as having a concentration of poverty.