Publications

Default Positions: African Icons and stereotypes from Georgian print culture in The Ephemerist 158 (Autumn: 2012), pp.10-13.

Quotation:

"...Whether in travel narratives describing outlandish savages, as mischievous or impassioned characters in plays and comic operas, through grotesque caricatures or even as passive subjects in abolitionist discourse, African people were represented in a reductive ethnic shorthand of peculiar and diminutive traits that codified black bodies as other, subjugated, uncivilised, exotic, obtuse, hyper-sexualised and marketable. The period’s emphases on these ideas, through continuous reproduction in image and text, became so normalised that even now, in research, it can be difficult to distinguish facts from fictions."

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Abolitionists, African Diplomats and ‘the Black Joke’ in George Cruikshank’s 'New Union Club' in McGrath, Elizabeth and Jean Michel Massing, eds. The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem. Warburg Institute Colloquia. Vol. 20. London; Turin: Warburg Institute; Nino Aragno, 2012.

Quotation:

"Viewed as a historical reaction, The New Union Club clearly seeks to undermine the notion of a black republic (as emblematized by Haiti), and it does so by turning order on its head and using racialized burlesque to represent London’s Africans as disorderly candidates for citizenship – a strategy designed to discredit the efforts and achievements of Society members and of their prominent African-American guests. On one level, this is the ‘black joke’. Yet the visual outcome is also an outrageous comic performance, and a far cry from abolitionist images of either tortured or grateful Africans. Marcus Wood is then surely right to describe the Africans in this print as still ‘strangely empowered’, a group to be taken seriously. 

The translation of Marryat’s text into image also raises interesting questions about authorship and autonomy, since we cannot truly distinguish between the design and intentions of Frederick Marryat, and the subsequent articulation of his ideas by George Cruikshank. What seems clear, though, is that designer and etcher shared a cultural outlook which included coarse and unforgiving mockery of Africans – evident not only in the images they produced together, but also in works they produced separately in the decades that followed. Cruikshank went on to illustrate crudely rendered characters for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Marryat produced novels and children’s literature peppered with Black caricatures such as those in Jacob Faithful (1834), or Mr Midshipman Easy (1836)."

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‘Exhibiting Difference: A Curatorial Journey with George Alexander Gratton the “Spotted Negro Boy”’ in Laurajane Smith, Geoff Cubitt et al., Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums (Routledge, 2011)

Quotation:

“George Alexander’s unusual and spectral presence in the contemplative setting of the All Saint’s Church, was disarming, and in a way that only emphasised the painting’s role as a memorial, eloquently giving autonomy and place to a child who could have easily been forgotten. It was, therefore, George’s humanity as an isolated child, a visitor as well as a commodity, which stood out most clearly. This sense only intensified when I was informed George was buried in the adjacent graveyard, and not alone, but with his final owner John Richardson who had commissioned the portrait. There I also found two bolted headstones and a footstone marking the spot. For me this was the ideal way to experience the intricate and complex dynamics of history, as a conversation between the individual, monument and memory and its unexpected outcomes.”

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‘Isaac Mendes Belisario’ in Print Quarterly, XXVI (2009) I. 

Quotation:

"A highlight of the catalogue is the reproduction of William Berryman’s ethereal watercolours of Jamaican life and scenery in a volume entitled Drawings of Jamaica (1808-1815), from the Library of Congress. Previously unpublished, these sketches and images provide an alternative, perhaps more intimate, notion of the picturesque. Berryman’s images illustrate “areas normally invisible to the casual visitor,” such as huts and provision grounds. His soft life studies of enslaved men and women evoke a haunting sense of voyeurism - especially when viewed in the context of his taxonomic titles, such as Woman beating Cassava and Driver, cold Morning."

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‘Transforming Heritage Leadership: challenges and goals’ in Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions (Cultural Leadership Programme, 2009)

Quotation:

"What became clear over the course of the symposium was that the UK’s heritage sector would be not be able to make a radical shift towards meaningful inclusion without strong vision and clear direction from its leadership, who should be informed by more nuanced concepts of heritage and identity. In his keynote speech Doudou Diène conceptualised heritage as ‘the ultimate expression of a multicultural, dynamic interaction’, in which memory, identity and enfranchisement are the focus of a collective reclaiming of history and its various social, cultural and ethical values. Within this vision Diène called for a re-engagement with forms of intangible heritage that encompass spirituality, belief systems and methods of cultural empowerment and appropriation that are often immeasurable and undocumented. Such notions of heritage cannot be perceived exclusively through a closed institutional lens that fails to engage with respective communities or honour their expertise. Thus, the negotiation of intangible heritage necessitates a community-focused dialogue, driven by inclusive cultural leadership."

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