WEBVTT
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(lively music)
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This series is very near and dear to my heart.
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It's the Market Woman's series.
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My great-grandmother was a market woman.
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My grandmother was a market woman,
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and my great-grandmother's mother was a market woman.
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So the market woman is deep inside of who I am.
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(lively music)
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I think the market woman is the most ubiquitous figure
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that comes out of the Caribbean.
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She is used to represent the Caribbean,
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but interestingly enough, she is almost invisible.
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For me, the market woman came off the ships
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where she was enslaved and started walking and selling
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and she has not stopped since then.
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And I think we in the Caribbean owe an enormous debt
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to this woman who has fed us for centuries now.
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I'm an art historian.
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I was trained in art history in the UK university,
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but did not really recognise until I came back
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to the Caribbean and began to work with these images
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that it was no longer acceptable simply
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to utilise these images and to reproduce them over
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and over again as though they were the truth.
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And there's a whole history behind the market woman,
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the whole history of legislative practise,
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which tried to control these women.
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This is not visible in these prints and these other images,
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which actually demonstrate quite a bucolic image.
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To me, the importance of what Jacqueline is doing
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with her dinner series
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is disrupting this kind of iconography.
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(tranquil music)
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I think making a series is really interesting
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because sometimes nowadays
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you get a a modern dinner plate service
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and they're all absolutely identical.
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You know, the pattern is unique.
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If you look at the plates really quickly,
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you might just think, oh, they're a repetition.
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And in a certain sense, they are repetition,
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they are a series, they're the same size,
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you got the beautiful gold rim,
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but actually, they then have this multiplicity.
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And actually the way that you've got some botanical images
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and some fruit
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and some flora then juxtaposed
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with these different female images, you really have to stop
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and engage meaningfully and slowly
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and careful with each one
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to work out actually what's going on.
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(pensive music)
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I'm thinking a lot about the market woman.
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And so I go ahead
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and I find the kinds of images that I think I want to use
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and I start put things that fall naturally together.
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And so the only thing
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that was not intuitive about this process was the fact
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that I knew that I wanted to have both contemporary women
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and women from the period of slavery.
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I talk to these women, you know?
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I talk to my ancestors.
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I say to them all the time,
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"Could you please help me to tell your story?"
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I wanted to give these women back their beauty,
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their femininity, their sexuality.
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I wanted to make plates that if my great grandmother
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or my grandmother, who kept decorative plates,
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took one up and look at it,
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they would feel good within themselves.
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So it was important for me for the plates to be beautiful.
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I think being able to work with Jacqueline,
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who is a Black contemporary woman artist,
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allows us to have that lived experience,
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that genuine authority.
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She is able to reinterpret these images in a way
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that I think most other people wouldn't be able to
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and reflect and give dignity,
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and give power back to these women.
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And I think it allows us as curators, us as visitors,
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to then have a much more nuanced understanding.
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The plates are made using a process called slip casting,
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using liquid clay in plaster moulds.
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And once they're fired
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and glazed with the glossy finish,
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we apply the transfers to them.
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The transfers are produced
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by a company just up the road in Stoke, so it's really nice.
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The whole piece is produced in Stoke-on-Trent.
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They are water slide transfers, a digital equivalent
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of the old Spode transfers that used
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to be produced on this site.
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The final process is the gold lustre painting,
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which I've had to do by hand.
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What does it feel to you
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that you have a father who is a farmer?
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I'm quite privileged actually to have had that exposure
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to that part of the world.
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It really connects me
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and I think it really influences why I'm so connected
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to the world around me and nature and things now.
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And I think that's exactly
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what the market woman represents.
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This connection to the earth, to all around her,
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to her community, to farming, and to farmlands.
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Yeah.
(Emma chuckling)
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I love being here at this old Spode factory.
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They closed in 2008
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and since then, it became almost like a time capsule.
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Things were just literally left
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as they were on the last day.
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The Stoke Council are starting to rejuvenate the site.
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So a lot of the work I do, the techniques have been used
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for hundreds of years.
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Spode first set up here in 1776,
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so they've been doing the mould making since then.
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(tranquil music)
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I think having my work come from Stoke
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and to be in conversation with Wedgewood means
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that I am being in conversation with myself
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as a Jamaican woman, but also with a history
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that brings forward both the beautiful and the ugly.
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What am I to say?
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I don't love the dishes
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that come from Wedgwood or Spode, I love them.
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I am enamoured with them.
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I'm entranced by them,
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but I can see so many things in them, you know,
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at the same time.
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So when I look at wild flowers, I am wondering,
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are these our Jamaican wild flowers
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or were these flowers transported to Jamaica?
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And so many histories spring to mind for me,
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so many stories, so many questions.
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I feel that in having the work come from here,
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come from England in particular,
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extends my history
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as a Jamaican woman whose country still is part
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of the monarchy and the Commonwealth.
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The work that Jacqueline is doing is hugely important.
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The sheer production and the value in that production
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and the women, I have to say, that she's working
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with both in terms of curatorial
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and in terms of the ceramic practise,
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you could regard it as transformative
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in the way they understand, recognise
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and approach this kind of repositioning, this dinnerware
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and say to themselves, "Hang on a minute.
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This was done based on industrialised practises
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that were brought into being in Britain on the backs
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of Caribbean wealth that was shared from the fields
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and into the households in Britain.
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The recognition that Jacqueline is bringing
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to this process is huge
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and has huge potential in helping both Caribbean
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and European populations to understand
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that the relationship has shifted,
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the relationship has changed,
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and the relationship has evolved, but it's still there
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and it's still recognisable in a number of different ways.