Intended for Jamaica
2024- Selected Works
Cyanotype: Denbigh Jamaica photo montage over original engine drawing from the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023).
'On the basis of some information and a little guess work you journey to a site to see what remains were left behind and to reconstruct the world that these remains imply...to yield up a king of truth.'
The Site of Memory, Toni Morrison
Intended for Jamaica is an artist-led body of work that has responded to unseen archives held in the Boulton and Watt Collection at the Library of Birmingham and informed by fieldwork in Jamaica.
The new work focuses on challenging dominant, prevailing narratives about Birmingham’s industrial heritage and, sets out to recover the erased histories of enslavement and imperialism that are entangled within this history.
The work seeks to shed light on the sale of the Boulton and Watt Co. steam engines from Soho Foundry near Birmingham to sugar plantations in Jamaica. It is an illustrative and reflective exploration that focuses on the power of bringing together historical artefacts and organising them in a way that connects them to the sites that they are associated with to 'yield up a kind of truth'.
Photograph: The Spanish Have Landed, St Ann, Jamaica, (2019).
Cyanotype: Boulton & Watt Order Book original
volume in the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023).
Cyanotype: James Watt photo montage explores his entanglements with slavery, steam power, sugar and Jamaica, (2023).
Plan of a Steam Engine, Lord Penrhyn, Jamaica, 1790, erected on his Denbigh sugar plantation by an unknown manufacturer. Lord Penrhyn was one of the first plantation owners to use a steam engine to power his sugar mill in Jamaica and was party to the subscription scheme developed in c1780 between Jamaican planters and James Watt. Engine drawning copyright: Institute of Mechanics, BAW/3/1.
Sugar Pavillion, Denbigh Agricultural Ground, Denbigh, Clarendon. Site of historic enslavement owned by Lord Penrhyn, 2023.
Cyanotype: Recovering the Past James Watt Junior montage with sugar plantation names connected to the Boulton & Watt steam engines that he supplied from Soho Foundry, to Jamaica, 2023.
Photograph: Loading Sugarcane on the wall of Frome Sugar Factory, Westmoreland, Jamaica, (2022).
Laing & Andersons Steam Engine for a sugar mill 1814, Boulton & Watt Collection next to a cyanotype fragment of a Boulton & Watt pump cylinder supplied to Dry River Estate (1821).
Blueprint Fragment of Boulton & Watt page from the Catalogue of Old Engines cyanotype from the section marked Engines Supplied to Sugar Plantations, (2023).
Photograph: Ruins of the windmill, Green Park Sugar Plantation. In 1815 Boulton & Watt supplied a steam engine to the estate (2023).
Cyanotype: Drax Hall, Jamaica. Cyanotype made in response to an original engine drawing (c1841) in the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023).
Photograph: Sugar Mill ruins Drax Hall sugar plantation, Jamaica (2023). In 1841 Boulton & Watt supplied a steam engine to the estate, (2023). The area is still named after the Drax family.
Cyanotype: Worthy Park, Jamaica cyanotype made in response to an original engine drawing (c1845) in the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023).
Cyanotype: Inside Worthy Park sugar factory, Jamaica made in response to the 1845 sale of a steam engine to the estate by the Boulton & Watt, (2023).
On the Road to Worthy Park Sugar Estate
Worthy Park Sugar Estate
Not My King Protest, London, 2023.
On the Road to Worthy Park Sugar Estate
Slider Gallery of Photographs : from the series Intended for Jamaica, (2024).
Photograph: Hyde Hall Great House, Jamaica, made in response to the sale of steam engines to the parish of Trelawny by Boulton & Watt, (2023).
Photograph: Golden Grove Sugar Factory, Duckenfield Farm, St Thomas, Jamaica. In 1850 Boulton & Watt sold a steam engine to Duckenfield Sugar Plantation, 2022.