Michael Bryan and Marcia X speaking at the Research Network Meeting, November 2014

The two emerging artists presented their experiences as artists who explore race, the black body, identity, gender and representation in their individual art practices and writing. Michael Bryan and Marcia X each showed thought-provoking images of their art works and offered the audience insights into their often difficult experiences in art education. Michael Bryan described how he faced censorship of his performance art at college. Marcia X encountered lack of support or dismissal of her identity-focused explorations. A lively discussion with the audience followed - if you missed the event, you can listen to the streamed audio recordings below.

Disobedient Objects at the V&A: 'Express Yourself' event with Christine Checinska

The second Stuart Hall Library Animateur, Christine Checinska, will be speaking at the Victoria & Albert Museum this Friday evening, 21 November in response to the Disobedient Objects exhibition. 

Christine's talk will be part of the free, drop-in 'Express Yourself' event which starts at 6:30pm.

The talks will focus on how today's protesters initiate their campaigns or change the world using social media, film, "flash mobs, hashtags, selfies, up-cycling, masquerade, TEDtalks, PechaKuchas, films and freedom songs"

Christine will speak about the African diaspora's material culture in Britain as a vehicle for quiet and overt activism; making a statement about oneself, and oneself in the world, from both an individual and collective level.

Research Network: Call for Proposals

The Stuart Hall Library Research Network is a forum for researchers, artists, academics, curators, students and activists to introduce an aspect of their work. It is a meeting place for the discussion of practice-based or more conventional forms of research that may include: curatorial practice; visual arts; film and media; cultural studies; cultural activism; postcolonial studies; literary studies, including criticism and theory.

We are looking for exciting and engaging ways of uncovering your research. This might include individual presentations, presentations in pairs, in conversation/dialogue, or presenting a group project.

If you are interested in presenting at a future Research Network session, send a 200 word proposal outlining your topic to the Library Manager. The meetings will take place in the Stuart Hall Library from 6.30 -8.30pm. Each presentation will be 20 minutes long (2 presenters per session). Previous themes have includedPost-Colonialism and globalisation

• Issues of race and diversity in the visual arts
• Diaspora; social and cultural perspectives
• The intellectual legacy of Stuart Hall and cultural studies
• The politics and philosophy of identity

This is not intended as an exhaustive list and all presentations on practice or research that in some way resonates with the activities of Iniva are welcomed.

The closing date for this round of proposals is the 19th of December 2014.

Did you miss it? Listen to the audio recordings of our October 2014 Research Network Meeting

Librarian Nick Brown with Helen Couchman, Caroline Bressey, Emma Chambers & Gemma Romain 

The audio recordings of the presentations are at the bottom of the page - no need to download

Many thanks to our presenters for their stimulating talks, and to the audience for a lively discussion. Dr.Caroline Bressey and Dr.Gemma Romain of the Equiano Centre were joined by Tate Britain curator Emma Chambers to talk about their research for the Tate Britain display 'Spaces of Black Modernism'. The artworks were selected to reveal that the artistic community in Britain during the inter-war years included artists and models from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It was revealing to hear how these artists played an active and influential role in the art scene of the time, particularly in London. The curators have brought to light the trans-national exchange between artists of the pre-war era. It was fascinating to see the artworks, don't miss the display!

Caroline Bressey will also give a talk at Autograph, Rivington Place on 28 October.

Caroline Bressey

Helen Couchman

Artist Helen Couchman described her project and book 'Workers'- photographs of Chinese labourers at the Beijing Olympic site. These migrant workers often spend years many miles away from home. Helen spoke about the nature of the exchange between herself as the photographer and the labourers. She gave each one a high-quality print of the photograph, which many workers sent back to their families. The photographs enabled them to express a pride in what they had constructed. Helen then talked about her other book ' Mrs.West's Hats'; a photo-essay in self-portraiture and identity. A series of photographs show Helen trying on her late grandmother's many hats. The photographs capture her expression at the instant she saw herself in a mirror. The series elicits responses about family, memory and sense of self. Visit Helen's website to see her photographs.

Many interesting connections between the two presentations emerged over the course of the evening including; identity, portraiture, ways of connecting with the past and with others.

The audio recordings of the event are available below.

Stuart Hall Library Call for Volunteers

Dear Library users and friends, 

The library team are looking for volunteers to help. This is an opportunity for:

• those with an interest in libraries
• pre-library school applicants to acquire basic library skills

You will gain valuable insights into how a special library collection is managed and organised by working on tasks which may include:

• Indexing and abstracting
• Journals maintenance
• Basic catalogue work
• Collection care
• Archive listing

There will also be a range of other tasks, some of which are quite mundane and some more interesting. Professional library qualifications are not essential, but knowledge of how to use a library and search catalogues is required. We can provide training in library and information work, research skills and related areas. You will need to be available approximately one day per week for at least two months.

Lunch and travel expenses up to £10 per day will be reimbursed. Please email a CV and covering letter to Nick Brown, Library Manager, nbrown@iniva.org explaining why you would like to volunteer at the Stuart Hall Library. 

Best wishes from the library team at Iniva
Stuart Hall Library, Iniva, Rivington Place, EC2A 3BA

Listen to Clothes Cloth & Culture talks by Sue Jones & Michael McMillan

If you missed the event 'Saga Bwoys and Bedouin Women’on 25 September; audio recordings of the speakers are available at the bottom of this post. The photographs are of the 'conversational artefacts' chosen by the speakers. The cardigan and embroidery are now on display in the library with accompanying texts by Sue and Michael.

Michael McMillan - Garbicci cardigan or ‘yardie cardie' 

Sue Jones - embroidery by her mother

Join us for our October Research Network Meeting 16 October 2014 at 6:30pm

Presentations by Dr. Caroline Bressey and Dr. Gemma Romain on the Tate display 'Spaces of Black Modernism' and artist Helen Couchman on her photographic practice followed by an informal question and answer session.

Artist Helen Couchman will be talking about her first two books, 'WORKERS (Gong Ren)' and 'Mrs. West's Hats'. She will present the books and describe how her surroundings prompted each project. WORKERS her first book is a portrait of Chinese migrant workers building the Olympic Stadiums in Beijing in 2007/08. Her second book "Mrs. West's Hats is a memorial piece about her late grandmother. The projects explore themes of repetition, participation, portraiture, self-portraiture and the role of photography as a record and a celebration.

Further information can be found at www.helencouchman.com

Helen Couchman moved to London to study first a BA and then an MA in Fine Art. More recently she was invited to do a period of PhD research into her own practice ending in 2012.Couchman lived in China for nearly seven years and during her time there exhibited in Hong Kong and numerous times in Beijing as well as back in the UK and in New York. Previously she had often produced new bodies of work while working abroad, Cyprus (2003), Armenia (2004), Vermont (2005) and China (2006). She worked in New York City on new work relating to that city and Beijing (2012/2013).
Couchman will be artist in residence at The Asia Society and is planning an exhibition at CFCCA, Manchester both in 2015. She is currently based out of the UK and working in Oman on her third book.

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Dr. Caroline Bressey and Dr. Gemma Romain will present on their research and curation with Tate Britain of the current display ‘BP Spotlight: Spaces of Black Modernism: London 1919-39'. The display brings together artworks which demonstrate the trans-national exchange between artists from diverse ethnic backgrounds during the inter-war years. The artworks were selected from the Tate Collection and public and private collections. Between the wars, a cosmopolitan network of artists exchanged ideas in London's art colleges, studios and clubs. They were instrumental in shaping the cultural and political identity of the city.
Caroline and Gemma are researchers at the Equiano Centre at University College London. The Centre was founded to support research into the Black Presence in Britain. Spaces of Black Modernism builds on research from the Drawing Over the Colour Line project.

Dr. Caroline Bressey is a lecturer in the Department of Geography, UCL. Her research focuses upon recovering the historical geographies of the black community in Victorian Britain, especially London. Parallel to this are her interests in ideas of race, racism, early anti-racist theory and identity in Victorian society. A large part of her research uses photography and this interest led her to collaborate with the National Portrait Gallery, London, on the representation of black and Asian people in their collections. She has worked as a curator with the National Portrait Gallery and Museum in Docklands.


Dr. Gemma Romain is a historian who researches Caribbean and Black diasporic history. Research Associate for the AHRC funded project ‘Drawing over the Colour Line'.
Vera Douie Fellow at the Women's Library, documenting interwar Black histories within the collections. Leverhulme Early Career fellowship at Newcastle University, project entitled 'Negotiating Slavery and Freedom: petitioning and protest in the nineteenth century British Caribbean'. She has worked for various museums and archives including The National Archives UK and the National Maritime Museum. She has taught at Birkbeck College, University of London on the subject of Black hidden histories in museum and archival collections.

Podcasts from 'The Subversive Stitch Revisited: the Politics of Cloth'

Hey Paul Studios, Uterus Embroidery (CC BY 2.0)

Members of our Clothes Cloth and Culture Group will be excited to see that Goldsmiths have made available audio recordings of the speakers at The Subversive Stitch Revisited: the Politics of Cloth event as podcasts on their website.

Amongst the other recordings, you will be able to listen to the presentation by Dr. Christine Checinska, the Second Stuart Hall Library Animateur. Christine was a speaker at the Goldsmiths event which was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in November 2013. Her presentation was entitled Second Skins: cloth, difference and the art of transformation. Both Christine and Iniva contributed to the planning of the event.

The event was dedicated to the memory of  Rozsika Parker, the author of  The Subversive Stitch: embroidery and the making of the feminine (1984). The keynote speaker was Professor  Griselda Pollock, who collaborated work with Parker during the 1980s to produce key feminist art texts.

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Reporting on 'Bedouin Women and Saga Bwoys' at the Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group 25th September 2014

Dr. Michael McMillan talks about his Gabicci cardigan and 'yardie' style

The Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group autumn programme got off to an inspiring start last night with presentations from Michael McMillan and Sue Jones, delivered in a conversational style that has become characteristic of our monthly textiles hub.

The evening was particularly thrilling at a personal level since parallels could be drawn between the inspiration points for my own body of research – my father’s elegance provided a catalyst for my doctoral research into the creolised aesthetic of the Empire Windrush generation and the impact of the African-Caribbean presence on English male dress; my mother’s stitching provided the creative spark for my current concern with ‘crafting difference’ and the way in which history might somehow be worked by hand, concerns which underpin the ethos of the Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group itself.

At first glance McMillan and Jones’ papers may seem somewhat unrelated. As you will hear from the podcast, through sharing ideas about cloth and memories marked by the wearing of particular clothes, the connections between the two became clearer as the evening progressed. Both spoke of the way in which clothes and cloth allow those without a voice to speak about themselves and the way in which they would like to be seen. Both spoke about cultural entanglements - for McMillan across the islands and across the Atlantic, for Jones across Jordan and England. They pinpointed cross-generational exchanges. They discussed the idea of repeating stories of rebellion and the role that the ritual of dressing plays in the struggle to be seen.

Dr. Sue Jones talking about her mother's embroidery

The richness of McMillan and Jones’ presentations reminded us of centrality of clothes and cloth to the human experience. Jones’ conversation piece, a linen tablecloth embroidered by her mother, demonstrated to us the way in which cloth becomes saturated with cultural meaning as craft techniques and family keepsakes are passed from one generation to the next. This is what motivates each of us to engage in this ongoing conversation with everyday stuff.

© Christine Checinska 26th September 2014

Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group. 25 September 2014 'Saga Bwoys and Bedouin Women’

Bani Hamida Weaving Project, Makawir Centre, Jordan. Photo: Sue Jones

Three Jamaican immigrants (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury on board the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush', smartly dressed in zoot suits and trilby hats. Photo: Douglas Miller/Getty Images

Join us on Thursday 25th September 2014 at 6:30pm - 8.30pm to hear presentations by Dr Michael McMillan and Dr Sue Jones followed by an informal question and answer session. The meeting will be convened by Dr Christine Checinska, the 2nd Stuart Hall Library Animateur.

  

What the Bedouin women taught me - re-connecting with my mother's craft skills - Dr Sue Jones

I went in the opposite direction of my mother's life as a housewife and home-working seamstress - non-domestic, professional, university educated, without children and travelling around the world doing consultancies.
But my work always related to my background - concerned with poverty, income generation and women's lives and empowerment. I made a particular connection with a Bedouin women's weaving project in Jordan.
It is only by reflecting on this very long term relationship with the older Bedouin weavers and their daughters - that I can see how they helped me re-focus on my mother and her craft skills.
It leaves me with current questions to share here - about women's involvement in craft work now and how far their work can be seen and acknowledged as creative or is it just a source of income? What was it like for my mother?

Dr Sue Jones: As an anthropologist and professional urban planner, Dr Sue Jones has been involved, since the 1980s, in consultancies, lectures and writing textbooks about poverty and community projects around the world, including Africa and the Caribbean.

In 2006, she completed a 20 year longitudinal PhD thesis of Bedouin women and their weaving project in Jordan. Since 2009 she has been a Visiting Research fellow at Goldsmiths, focused on Material Culture in the contemporary context. This has included: (2011) an exhibition about the weaving project, (2013) a special Issue of the journal Textile -Materialising voices from the Middle East and (2014) a film with the Bani Hamida women. She is currently researching textile case studies around the world.

‘Saga Bwoys and Rude Bwoys': Migration, Grooming and Dandyism - Dr Michael McMillan

I have been always struck by how men of my father's generation were so well dressed in those iconic black and white documentary photographs depicting their arrival after a three-week transatlantic journey by sea. Their neatly pressed suited with and a white breast pocket handkerchief, polished brogue shoes, white starched shirt with throat straggling tie and a trilby hat cocked at an angle. In Eastern Caribbean vernacular, they were ‘Saga Bwoys' or ‘Sweet Bwoys', a masculine persona who in my rite of passage from being short pants ‘coloured' boy to a black British young man I saw as an exemplar of ‘good grooming' in his sartorial attention to detail as words for the ladies danced off his tongue like Lord Kitchener's Calypso. These ‘Lonely Londoners' would later become Jamaican ‘Rude Bwoys' swaggering as if to a Ska or Reggae beat in their two-tone mohair suits with the attitude and creole chat of the best dressed chicken on the street. In my camel Crombie coat, suede trimmed Garbicci cardigan or ‘yardie cardie', pleated Farah slacks, Bally shoes with shiny buckle stepping out like a ‘Rude Bwoy' in a ‘Causal Style' to ‘rave' at a Sound System dance. ‘Saga Bwoys' and ‘Rude Bwoys' are constituents of the contemporary ‘Raggamuffin' geneology that as subcultural black masculine practices have been self-fashioned in the rhizoid network of racial, transcultural and diaspora exchange and transfer.
Yet there has been a limited focus on how and what postwar Caribbean migrant men contributed through the material culture and performativity of the ‘Saga Bwoy' and ‘Rude Bwoy' to a diasporic understanding of black dandyism. Using Carol Tulloch's ‘style-fashion-dress' amongst other conceptual framework: this presentation will begin to explore the ontology and materiality of a process that saw the aesthetic embodiment and reconstruction of diasporic ‘Caribbeanness' in a British context of the dressed black male body; a body that would come to reconfigure the streets of urban Britain with fresh dynamic masculinities in motion.

Dr. Michael McMillan is a writer, dramatist, artist/curator and scholar of Vincentian migrant parentage whose recent play includes: a new translation of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan (Trenchtown) (MAT tour 2010 & 2012) and curatorial work includes: My Hair: Black Hair Culture, Style & Politics (Origins of the Afro Comb, Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology 2013), I Miss My Mum's Cooking (Who More Sci-Fi Than Us, KAdE Kunsthal, Amersfoort, Netherlands 2012), The Waiting Room (Stories & Journeys, Gwynedd Museum & Art Gallery, Bangor, North Wales 2012), The Beauty Shop (198 Contemporary Arts & Learning 2008), The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum 2005-06), The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Black Dog Publishing 2009) www.thefrontroom.org.uk/ He has an Arts Doctorate from Middlesex Univ. 2010 and is currently an Associate Lecturer in Cultural & Historical Studies as well as Associate Researcher RAS project at London CSM/Wimbledon CSM, UAL.