CARIBBEAN TAKEAWAY TAKEOVER
IDENTITIES & STORIES.
POP-UP EXHIBITION AT THE MIGRATION MUSEUM LONDON
Caribbean Takeaway Takeover, an interactive pop-up art and sound installation showcasing the stories of Windrush generation elders by artist EVEWRIGHT.
The Caribbean takeaway is an important cultural meeting place in the Caribbean community. A home from home, the kitchen is where meals are prepared, but also where stories are exchanged and shared. Going back to African roots, cooking and the Dutch pot or cooking pot was the central place for the family activity. The takeaway has just as much cultural importance as the barbershop and the hairdressing salon for black communities living and working in the UK.
For one month, the Breathing Space Café at the Migration Museum will be taken over, repurposed and transformed into an art installation featuring limited-edition photo etchings of 12 Windrush Generation elders produced by EVEWRIGHT, along with audio interviews and sound recordings of these Windrush Pioneers compiled by his team at Evewright Arts Foundation (EAF).
It will be an immersive experience, with walls and table tops covered in vinyls, photographs and documents of participants to reflect their lives and memories. Listen to Alford Gardner’s experience on the Empire Windrush in 1948, hear how these elders tackled racism, and how through their perseverance and resilience they were able to overcome barriers to make a life in Britain and the impact they have made on Britain today. Visitors will be encouraged to commemorate their own parent’s arrival by adding their own stories to passport postcards on our memorial wall or online.
The programme will include a Caribbean Activity day and spoken-word event on Saturday 22 June as part of nationwide Windrush Day celebrations and an artist talk as part of the Migration Museum’s TalkingART Lates series will be held on Thursday 27 June. To register go to www.migrationmuseum.org/event/talkingart-lates-developing
More information on all of these and other events to follow.
S&S Caribbean Takeaway in Essex was the original takeover location for the art installation, which is now being brought to London and updated to include a number of stories from Caribbean elders in London as well as stories from its original staging in Essex. This project is in partnership with the Migration Museum and supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
EVEWRIGHT, a Black British artist, uses a diverse range of media spanning moving-image, drawing, performance, painting and sculpture. Influenced by his heritage his practice explores the relationship between the body, identity, Britishness, and spaces they inhabit in public and virtual realms.