The Sweetest Thing

Joy Gregory:

I love the idea of telling stories. If somebody tells you a fairy story and you think, ‘Oh, I know that fairy story’ but then if different elements come into that story that make you look at it in a different way. And so you begin to investigate how those things all relate in a different way.

We are on the site of the only known sugar refinery in Topsham. Unrefined would come down the river, be offloaded here, refined here in these boiling houses or in this refinery. And then the white sugar, which was like this extremely precious commodity, would then be transported around the country by sea and by river, but also across to Holland.

And then this house here was later built. And to me, it talks of a lot of country houses where you don't actually make the immediate connection with sugar and slavery. For me it sort of sits on the surface of this terrible, dark history that lives underneath which is completely buried.

Tom Cadbury:

This is physical evidence for sugar refining in Exeter. We can't find any records in the documents of that happening, but the archeologists digging up pieces of pottery which are clearly to do with the sugar refining industry, proves that it was a big business in Exeter.

Joy Gregory:

Imagine that when this was full, the shape of this, I think the thing that came out of it which would've been that shaped.

Joy Gregory:

It would've been known as a sugarloaf.

Tom Cadbury:

That was what they were aiming for, a refined sugarloaf.

Joy Gregory:

The main thing I've been working on for the commission has been a tapestry and the idea of which came out of seeing the Combesatchfield textile in the store at RAMM.

Wow, oh my goodness, that’s so much brighter!

Morwenna Stephens:

Yeah. A lot of dirt came off this.

Joy Gregory:

It was amazing to see something that was from 1700s which is exactly the time when this was all going on.

This is the figure that I was really interested in. The figure looks like he or she is floating above the ground. It's a very beautiful piece and I wanted to make, like have a conversation through another textile piece.

My usual medium of working used to be photography, or is photography, but I find myself wanting to do things that sometimes sit a little bit outside of that. But this is the first time I've ever done a tapestry or worked with textile.

In this case, I've used cyanotype, which is sort of like a photographic process which has enabled me to make these photograms of the hair. So I used my own hair that I've been collecting over a number of years, spread across and sort of like streaming, almost like a water but actually connects one piece to the next. It forms a backdrop for the whole of the drama to take place and the drama is within each of the images.

So the sorts of images that I’ve bought together are sort of like images of the houses which are in Devon, along with images from the Caribbean of people loading the hogsheads of sugar onto the docks. And then down here, sort of like the bottom end of the sugar production, so putting it into those cones and the jars.

Down the side are these images of people in slave restraints to prevent the enslaved person from drinking or eating any of the sugarcane. And then next to those are the images of sugar shakers, which are silver sugar shakers, which I've based on ones in the collection at RAMM which are sort of like objects of refinement and culture.

To represent the connection to Devon, I've included some very well-known houses. So this person here, Thomas Daniel, he owned estates in Antigua, Barbados, British Guyana, Montserrat, Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago. He had 7,376 enslaved people, which he regarded as his property, or chattels. And his compensation that he received was £250,000, so a quarter of a million pounds at that time, which is the equivalent today of £33,905,450.11.

Compensation was given by the British government on the abolition of slavery for the loss of property being the loss of their property as enslaved people. The money that they received they actually put into different forms of industry here in the UK and it accounts for the wealth of so many places across the UK, including London.

The images are embroidered into the fabric of the cloth. I've chosen to have them machine embroidered because it talks about the idea of industry which I think is really important.

Bringing all of these images together tells both sides of the story from both sides of the Atlantic. It's about bringing both sides of those histories together which often are divorced.

The second piece of work that's in the exhibition is a series of five photographs of people that have been or are, descended from the enslaved of the Caribbean. And, I decided to photograph the backs of their heads because I think it was important that people didn't project individual identities on them because what they represent is the present. They are the descendants from that event that began in the 1560s.

The framing of each of these images relates to one of the images that's in the textile which is from a painting by Carl Holsøe, which is of his wife reading a letter. And I decided rather than to have them read a letter, that I would get them to read a book.

The book represents free time and education which would not been available to their ancestors. It's a space of home, a space of safety and a space of, I suppose, independence and where you can have your own dreams.

I think my job as an artist is to actually create a curiosity so people want to dig deeper, but also to make something that is very beautiful, to talk about an ugliness and not feel, ‘Oh my god, this is all my fault. I should be hanging my head in shame.’

No, your job is to actually do something about that, to make a big change so that when we move into the 22nd century, we're not still living with the history of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

Acclaimed artist Joy Gregory created a commission responding to the themes of RAMM's exhibition 'In Plain Sight: Transatlantic Slavery and Devon'.