Trophies of Empire
… But what is a ‘Trophy of Empire’? Are we as black people trophies? Or are the old ‘slavery’ ports of Liverpool, London and Bristol trophies? Maybe the trophies are the Caribbean islands pressed into reluctant service for the cash crops they produce and have produced. Because ‘Trophies of Empire’ makes no attempt to identify adequately the said ‘Trophies’, the title rapidly evaporates into an attractive yet meaningless distraction.
Despite being the brainchild of the most brilliant mind amongst Britain’s community of black artists, ‘Trophies of Empire’, hindered by a meaningless though imposing exhibition title, manages to resemble something that doesn’t quite fit together or convince. On reflection, it seems that the undoing of the project’s construction was the apparently irresistible temptation to tie neatly the 500th anniversary of 1492 in with the Single European Market which is supposed to have been created this year. But both the wretched and interminable Columbus quincentenary celebrations/protests and ‘Europe 1992’ are as bogus as each other. The British people, xenophobic as they are, are hardly likely to ever consider themselves ‘European’ or belonging to an economically and politically homogenised Europe. And the current fashion for depicting Columbus as a nasty and horrible man is ultimately as facile and as unenlightening as the history book depiction of him as a pioneering hero…
…So much for Wilberforce. So much for Hull. Liverpool too should have been left to die with dignity. For heaven’s sake the city is already on the ropes and has virtually stopped breathing. Impoverished and degenerate as it is, Liverpool consists of little more than Beatles nostalgia and Brookside.
Consequently, the artists who responded to the open submissions brief were offered an impossibly overstuffed lucky bag of historical and political grievances top inspire them. Little wonder that the lesser work in the exhibition is muddled. One contributing artist even felt compelled to include a series of detailed visual references to the current British monarchy. Heaven knows why. After all, the days have long since passed when European royalty was synonymous with the growth of Empires. And the British royal Family has for quite some time been reduced to harmless and irrelevant figures of pantomime and buffoonery. Why torment them further?...
The above extracts are from an exhibition review by Eddie Chambers, "Trophies of Empire”, Art Monthly, London, Number 162, December 1992/January 1993: 13-15