A student response to the Caribbean Living Room

This project was a collaboration between Junie James of ACKHI, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi and Art & Design Foundation students from Oxford Brookes University.

In 2018 Junie James from ACKHI in collaboration with women’s group BK LUWO curated an exhibition exploring the idea of the Caribbean Living Room which has toured Oxford, showing first in the Museum of Oxford and later with the support of Fusion Arts, showing in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. The re-creation of a typical Caribbean living room was influenced by memories of the educational television series ‘How we used to live’ which didn’t reflect the experiences of Black British families. Junie James set out to create a space which reflected her own childhood memories and those of others from Oxford’s Windrush generation. The exhibition includes items collected by Junie James and donated by friends and visitors.

The Caribbean Living Room is a space which holds connections with homes in the Caribbean through objects, pictures, coloured glass, vibrant silk flowers and particular items of furniture. There are also echoes of the traditional Victorian parlour, a space which was used for special occasions and filled with ornaments and objects. But the living room was especially significant as a safe space to socialise and party with friends in the hostile environment of post-war Britain when pubs, churches and social spaces excluded Black people. These small spaces were filled with clashing colours and patterns; an expression of the vibrant cultures of the Caribbean and their newly evolving forms in the mother country.

Students from the Foundation Art & Design diploma at Oxford Brookes University collaborated with Junie James and Lecturer Rachel Barbaresi to explore ideas around belonging and the cultural spaces that emerged as migrants from the Windrush generation became established in Oxford. Through conversations with Junie and work with projections and experimental photography we explored connections across time, place and cultural experiences through the Caribbean Living room.

 

 

 

 

During the project we visited the archives of Fusion Arts (once known as ‘Bloomin’ Arts’) a community arts organisation who worked with local groups to set up carnival and other creative and cultural activities which involved Oxford’s Windrush generation. We also discovered an archive of 1980s slides taken at a carnival in Trinidad by the late Ruth and Alastair Clark, relatives of Rachel Barbaresi, whose close friendship with a couple who migrated with the Windrush Generation led to visits to Trinidad after the couple returned. These visual threads resonate with the reflections, textures and surfaces in the Caribbean Living room, evoking a nostalgia for heat, light, colour and the memory of another time and place expressed through arrangements of glass, china, crochet and furnishings.

Students have worked with these images, our recorded conversations, recent news about the Windrush scandal and other material gathered throughout the project to create short films, collections, images and objects which respond to themes emerging during the project. The work mixes analogue and digital, paint and light, drawing and photography in playful collage whilst staying close to the stories shared by Junie which we hope to share with a wider audience through this project.

We recognise that whilst celebrating Windrush Day, the Windrush scandal is still ongoing and many who came to help Britain in the post-war era have experienced terrible injustices and are still waiting for compensation.

This work was created as part of a collaboration between Junie James of ACKHI, artist and Lecturer Rachel Barbaresi and the following students from the Foundation Art & Design Diploma at Oxford Brookes University: Zaina Abbas, Ruby Campion, Maeve Clenaghan, Emilia De Haën, Lee Drew, Bethia Howard, Harriet Jonas, Ellen Ludlow, Georgina Mason-Stubbs and Joe Walton.

Students responded to conversations with Junie James and to her exhibition ‘The Caribbean Living Room’ exhibition recently shown in an empty shop in Templars Square shopping centre.

With thanks to Fusion Arts for the use of archive images, Oxford Windrush Group for inviting us to be part of Windrush Day 2020, OCSLD at Oxford Brookes University for supporting this project through BTAP funding and colleagues who have facilitated this live project within Oxford Brookes University.

In memory of Ruth and Alastair Clark.