Sunseeds of Slaves

A visit to the Whitworth Gallery is exactly what we need on this grey morning. It certainly doesn’t feel like summer and it’s strange to think of all that sunshine and warmth last weekend. 

I love the Whitworth and we don’t visit nearly as often as we should. The gallery spaces are so well considered and the glass-walled extension floods the place with light. 

I also love just how experiences often link together. I’d never really thought about wax print and the links of these textiles to colonial power until we visited The Serpentine Gallery last Sunday, and here I am standing in a gallery devoted to the same. Here of course, it’s simply a celebration of design rather than Shonibare’s comment on colonialism, but it brings home its importance - and its beauty. 

There’s also a celebration of female textile designers, particularly the work of Shirley Craven - beautiful designs based on the abstraction of flowers and landscapes. 

The main exhibition is Carnivalesque, a collection of vibrant paintings by John Lyons. Harking back to his childhood in Trinidad, they celebrate the traditions of carnival, but also the nightmarish atmosphere of folk tales;  there is definitely something disturbing about these paintings. Lyons is also a poet, and I particularly like this: 

Sunseeds of Slaves

The new sunseeds of slaves
sprouting up through rubble
in England’s cityscapes.

In this city’s bush
no navel strings are buried;

no sufferings eased
by sighing bamboo grove.

Lost are earth’s wisdoms
passed through fingers 
familiar with yams and tania
in Carib soil.

Across the generation gap
they pelt words like stones 
against living brow-bone;

but theirs is a more urgent pain. 


My main’s a gallery view, with another view in extras. The first collage shows Carnivalesque, the second wax prints, and the third the work of Shirley Craven