The Shadow Class

Installation view Murray White Room, 2008
Photograph: John Brash

Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between... clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all attitudes of pain, abandonment and despair. ...They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows..

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Installation view Murray White Room, 2008
Photograph: John Brash

The Shadow Class is a project on contemporary slavery, and the myriad forms that exist today. Each work in the series depicts a type of bonded/forced labour. The project arose from research based upon themes in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, culminating last year, with the bicentennial anniversary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It was in reaction to this anniversary that my investigations shifted from concerns of expression within Conrad's novel to exploring the reality of slavery today; whilst still taking up occularcentric literary motifs that I identify in Conrad's work: light, darkness and shadow. He uses these metaphors to explore and critique themes in his novel: the shifts and barbarisms of colonial powers, and the ambivalent binaries they create: master/slave, civilised/savage. Heart of Darkness in its subtle and psychological journey in many ways anticipates the writings of Post-colonial theory, whereby the journey out is replaced with the journey in. It is this approach and manner that I see relative to my art production: a visual practice that employs cut-outs, specific lighting and shadows to create installations that engage with principals of hybrid theory. Following on with some of these themes the project became involved with the reality of slavery in our ostensibly Post-colonial, Post-slavery present day.

Using the silhouette of my cast shadow performing various roles of forced labour, was a way in which to both illustrate the many forms of modern slavery and my personal feelings towards the specific subject, which is deeply mixed, complex, and strangely ambivalent. I am very aware to this being a highly charged and fraught subject to attempt to contend with: Slavery is not yet something I have come into direct contact with, least of all possibly ever experience. The prospect holds at its worse inception an indulgent or condescending sweep of the over-privileged interpreter attempting a speaking for of an underprivileged voice - maybe a dipping into from an elite perspective. Perhaps in many ways it holds forth the same complexities and arguments that the current phenomenon of slum tours or poorism holds. My hope that what this work will communicate is my sense of wanting to learn more about the reality of modern slavery, and to better elucidate upon this misconception that slavery is a thing of the past, when in fact it is an active and urgent agent of today. Effecting millions of people, and impacting still in many ways owing to the legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Untitled (carpet weaver) The Shadow Class, 2007-08
felt, cotton, sequins and glass beads
134 x 73 cm
Photograph: John Brash

Untitled (DVD Seller) The Shadow Class, 2007-08
felt, Supacloth and cotton
dimensions variable
Photograph: John Brash






Untitled (domestic) The Shadow Class, 2007-08
felt, cotton, glass beads and plastic beads
99 x 72 cm

Photograph: John Brash





Untitled (ranch worker) The Shadow Class, 2007-08
felt and nylon
dimensions variable

Photograph: John Brash

Untitled (child soldier) The Shadow Class 2007-08
felt and nylon thread
173 x 98 cm
Photograph: John Brash

Biju knew he probably wouldn't see him again. This was what happened, he had learned by now. You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names.

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Untitled (flower seller) The Shadow Class 2007-08
felt and cotton
170 x 77 cm

Photograph: John Brash

Untitled (sex worker) The Shadow Class 2007-08
felt, hosiery, plastic beads and cotton
74 x 123 cm

Photograph: John Brash