5 Questions with... EVEWRIGHT

1. Can you tell us about this artwork? 

Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories is an art installation located at one of the walkways which was used by the passengers who arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948 and disembarked the ship at the port of Tilbury. For three days the boat sat on the estuary at Tilbury while parliament debated the fate of the passengers, refusing them entry to the United Kingdom.  

In 2020, Evewright Arts put out a call for contributions from the Windrush generation and their descendants to send us recordings, photographs, and documents from parents and grandparents to be part of the art installation. We had a wonderful response with contributions from around the country. 

Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories is a site-specific image and sound installation located on 432 panes of glass on 72 windows. This is a space where anthropological Black British stories can sit and be still. A conversation place, a space where our Black ancestors crossed over to Britain. It is a place that holds the spirits of the traveller, the travelled and children coming home to the Motherland. The art installation is free to attend and will remain open to the public through to 2022. 

2. You received funding from Arts Council England – what has this money enabled you to do?

Funding from the Emergency Response Fund supported Evewright Arts during the pandemic in 2020. The grant was essential to our survival at a very challenging time during the mid-point of Covid-19 – it contributed to salaries and studio rent, and helped us to upgrade badly needed computer equipment to support our work. It complimented the art project funding for the installation, which was provided by a Windrush Day Grant and a Creative Estuary co-commission.

3. What inspired you to create the Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories and can you describe the creative process that took place?

I had previously completed a very intensive period of landscape site-specific drawing installations called Walking Drawings Across the Estuaries. It was based on a journey I had embarked on, travelling the length of the island of the UK, exploring ideas around limitation, loss, boundaries and belonging. It inevitably ended with long conversations with my mother about her and my father’s journey from Jamaica in the 50s and 60s and the beginning of our lives here as part of the now labelled Windrush Generation. I felt that those stories were underrepresented artistically considering their intensity and value. So, I wanted to find a new way to engage and represent using traditional high art aesthetics. I also wanted it to be in a location where the audiences I wanted to communicate with, lived or visited on a day-to-day basis.  

That’s when I decided that the experiment should begin in a Caribbean takeaway because they were one of the few spaces that were Black owned and controlled, where Black people would meet and eat food and share stories. The Caribbean Takeaway Takeover in Colchester in 2018 became the catalyst for Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories. 

4. When photographing and hearing the stories of members of the Windrush Generation for this project, were there any that particularly stood out to you? 

The twelve photographs curated as part of the original installation that has been reprised into Tilbury Bridge Walkways of Memories are actually photo-etchings. Prints using etching press is a technique that is almost 100 years old, which is an important thing for me to share with you. The image and the words are both equally important. Preservation and archive were important considerations in producing this work, as etching will outlast bromide prints by hundreds of years. For instance, Rembrandt’s etchings completed more than 400 years ago are still well preserved.  So that approach to the work was very clear from the outset. Every sound recording was special in their own way and we are blessed that we have them. When we spoke to Essex Record Office before we started collecting the audio stories, they did not have any recordings from the Windrush Generation in their archives. So, it was vital that these oral recordings are preserved, to add to our collective cultural narrative before these first-hand accounts from elders are lost.  

My mother Clarice Agatha Reid RIP’s recording of her life story is of course very special and precious to me. She passed away Good Friday, 10 April 2020. It was her story that started my journey to the making of Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories.  Her story is of resilience and triumph through a difficult marriage with my father, holding on to and bring up eight children despite pressures from the state system to surrender them into care. She had a very courageous spirit. 

5. Is there anything taking place this Black History Month that you are looking forward to?

I did two Artist Walk and Talk tours at Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories on Saturday 16 October. It is such a special place. I love to see the reaction of the audience to the art installation. It is so atmospheric when you hear the bang of the bridge as it rises and falls with the tide. I love the way the colour of the light changes and reflects on the images. It’s very rare to have an artwork at a location where an important event happened. So, for Black History Month, and beyond, there is no other place I would rather be. 

Artist EVEWRIGHT

www.evewright.com 

www.evewrightarts.org