London Unseen is a season of trails, tours and events that celebrate the many incredible histories of the city. Curated on behalf of the Mayor of London's Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, the season is supporting over 20 community heritage practitioners to provide over 40 events free of charge to the public.
Raksha Patel, artist and senior lecturer on the BA Painting course at Camberwell College of Arts launches our London Unseen guest blog posts.
In this post, Raksha takes us through two walks that were part of and funded by a University of the Arts, EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) project. Short films of the walks, by Arash Sheikhan can be accessed through the links at the bottom of the page.
Our two walks in Southall and Brick Lane came out of a research project British Asian Visual Art Post Cool Britannia for British Art Network that explores contemporary art from the South-Asian diaspora. Our research places the artist’s voice and lived experience at the centre, with conversations stemming from the studio.
Our two walks extend from this research. We wanted to investigate how locality informs creative output, be that visual, sound or the performative arts, and how material gathered from communities, architecture and history of a locality is then transcribed and transformed through the artistic lens.
In my own practice I photograph and record conversations that come from different regional British South-Asian diasporas and question what it means to be from a community whose roots are from another place yet are still English. This in turn challenges stereotyped notions and cliches that surround a community and a locality for those that live outside of it.
The two walks were funded by an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiative run by UAL (University of the Arts London). Our project was designed and developed by Remi Rana Allen, Raksha Patel and Daniel Sturgis at Camberwell College of Arts and the people that participated in it were UAL students and alumni. Our thinking was to examine the geographical locations of both areas, how they differ historically, culturally from each other whilst having connection to South-Asian history and community. We found landmarks such as prominent factories, breweries, small businesses and in the case of Brick Lane, its rich history of migration and proximity to the Docks. We were interested to see how visitors to each locality would engage with it through their own individual positioning, in relation to how the space is perceived by an artist who has grown up in the area and has a deeper sense of familiarity and nostalgia.
The walk in Southall was led by visual artist Remi Rana Allen. Remi grew up in Southall and led us on a trail that connected her memories and family history to specific sites in the area.
The tour included Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha Southall, a religious venue that holds meaning for Remi as her parents married there. Many of the students had not previously visited a Gurdwara before and engaged with the space in different ways, for example: they made drawings, took sound recordings, filmed, photographed the architecture, people, and wrote about the ambience of the place. All of us enjoyed the langar – the community kitchen where food is given to all, irrespective of class, gender, or faith.
Inside the Gurdwara Sri Guru Sabha. Photo credit: Raksha Patel
The tour also included the Dominion Centre, an arts and cultural venue of historical importance as it was home to the Indian Workers Association in the late 1950’s. The IWA screened films from the Indian Sub-Continent for the local community, but more importantly they set up the first welfare service for recent arrivals, who needed support and advice on amenities, settling, but could not speak or write English.
Work inspired by the Southall walk made by Hayley Garrett
An invaluable resource that we discussed was Southall Black Sisters, an organisation that has been running for over 40 years and continues to help women of colour today who are facing domestic violence and abuse. In 1980 Southall Black Sisters protested about the handling of the murder of Blair Peach, a teacher who had died attending an anti-racist demonstration in Southall, 1979. Remi talked to the group about the Southall riots of 1976, in which Gurdip Singh Chaggar was murdered by white youths during a racially motivated attack.
The tour concluded with a wander around Southall’s many Indian jewellery, fashion and saree shops that are renowned nationwide as a destination for British South-Asian brides to be. The shops are also a source of inspiration for many visual artists and places to purchase ‘materials’ that feed into artistic practice.
Killer Queen, stone, Indian hair extensions, tape, bindi, wire, steel, thread 80 x 70cm 2019. Remi Rana Allen
A few days following the walk in Southall, we were led by sound artist DJ Ritu on a tour of Brick Lane. Ritu shared with us her insights of being in the area as a young child, a young person, through to her connection to the area today. She spoke about its rich changing culture, the local Bangladeshi community from which several prominent musicians from the South Asian diaspora have actively contributed to the British music scene. Her walk was a combination of the private and personal, to the public investigating how a range of events that have taken place in the area have shaped the lives of those that live there as well as the history of the area.
Ritu shared with us her memories of meeting children (the same age as her) in the early 1970’s who had recently arrived from Bangladesh. She met the children at local schools in the Brick Lane area where her parents worked as teachers, and remembers how many of the children did not speak English and had to acclimatise to a new environment, culture, and weather. She recalls inwardly reflecting on notions of cultural identity, and her awareness as a child of the differences and similarities between her life in relation to the children newly arrived from Bangladesh.
DJ Ritu talking to us about the music scene and the local bands Joy and Asian Dub-Foundation. Image credit: Raksha Patel
Ritu reflected how the area and its proximity to the Docklands has been a locality for various diaspora communities to settle and to make their home. How communities have crossed-over in their shared experiences, particularly in the fight against racism and fascism. We spoke about long-standing presence of the Freedom Press bookshop in Angel Alley, a supplier of anti-racist literature. We spoke about the battle of cable street and the anti-fascists and local community drove out Mosely and the British Union of Fascists in 1936, to the race riots on Brick in 1976, the Sari-Squad that fought racists and campaigned for Afia Begum. Our tour ended with a discussion on racism today in Altab Ali park – a memorial green space built for Altab Ali who was murdered in a racially motivated attack.
The two walks culminated in a discussion-based workshop that took place a week later at Camberwell College of Arts. The workshop entailed each of the students leading a discussion-based presentation of art work developed from the two walks. We found that many of the students, despite some having little knowledge of South-Asian culture and familiarity of the areas, were developing artwork that was nuanced, sensitive and considered. The students had begun to merge ideas generated on the walks with wider concerns such as questioning cultural appropriation, who has the permission to make artwork on a heritage that is not their own, the differences between a statue of a god in a Southall temple in relation to similar statues found in the British Museum, as well as notions on faith and capitalism. We hope that we will be able to exhibit the works made from the two walks on a public platform in the near future.
Artwork inspired from the Brick Lane walk made by Jo Sheppard