Take Another Look

The visual representation of people from the African Diaspora living and working in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is the focus of a new display in the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery at the Museum of London Docklands.

The visual representation of people from the African Diaspora living and working in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is the focus of a new display in the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery at the Museum of London Docklands.

Take Another Look features prints by artists including Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank alongside newspaper cuttings, most dating from 1780–1833, the period spanning the abolition of slavery. Rather than show people from the African Diaspora in enslavement, they reflect Black Britons in more unexpected roles – soldiers, musicians and sportsmen. Each print tells its own complex and fascinating story.

The exhibition is created from private collector Leslie Braine-Ikomi’s vast collection of paintings, photographs, illustrations and text which depict people of African origin in Britain over the past 300 years. It invites visitors to look closely, discuss and debate the images on display and what they say about the social and cultural attitudes of their time, as well as to reflect on how they have influenced attitudes today.

The 17 exhibits are supported by a photomontage which shares more of Leslie Braine-Ikomi’s collection, along with some of this thoughts and motivations. He explains in the exhibition:

“Each time I find a Georgian print with an image of a person from the African Diaspora I try to find more relevant information: names, what they did, where they lived and how we are part of British history.”

From February 2013 the exhibition will be accompanied by a series of workshops, culminating in an open seminar. This will include a new film made with Leslie Braine-Ikomi, Museum curators and external experts. These will further explore and debate the issues of depiction in London’s rich social history.

Curator, Dr Tom Wareham, said:

“Leslie’s remarkable collection records the changes that have taken place in visual portrayal, from crude record, racist caricature, and then sympathetic portrait. Following the Abolition campaigns in Britain, the presence of a Black British community began to register in the depiction of many artists. Sometimes it is deliberate and boldly stated - as in the sympathetic portraits of men like the late 18th/early 19th century boxer Bill Richmond; and sometimes it is simply ugly and racist.”

“Sometimes it is subtle too. Cruikshank’s illustrations for Pierce Egan’s comic novels about Life in London, for example, usually feature a London crowd and, safely embedded in that crowd, there is usually a man or woman of African or Caribbean origin. The depictions may be crude, they may sometimes be racist, but they are there. They are depicted as Londoners, dressed as Londoners, doing what Londoners do - and there is never a hint of a question of their right to be there.”