Annabel Rainbow - The Windrush Series

Annabel Rainbow, the Windrush Series, part of the Unravelling History exhibition

at the Leamington Spa Art Gallery.

Fading memories... A history to record

This series of quilt portraits by Annabel Rainbow celebrates resilience, adaptation and identity, reflecting the lives and legacies of the Windrush Generation. This generation of Caribbean migrants arrived in the UK between 1948 and the early 1970s to help rebuild the nation after WWII. They were named for the HMT Empire Windrush, the ship that carried the first arrivals across hte ocean into an uncertain future. They were answering Britain's call for workers, but faced harsh realities of racism, inequality and cultural dislocation.

The quilts weave together the struggles and triumphs of those who journeyed to the UK, seeking new beginnings while navigating these challenges. Each quilt tells a history, blending imagery, intricate stitching, and painted details to capture the essence of their experiences. Faces and hands remain vivid and present, while the facing painting blending into the background fabric is a metaphor for the sense of gradual erasure of identity and culture many imigrants feel as they assimilate into a new society.

The text that makes up the background of each quilt is taken from the sitter's own words. Together these quilts create a visual space where the voices of the Windrush Generation can be preserved, their courage and determination affirmed, and their place in modern Britain celebrated.

George Saunders - Tailor, Birmingham (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

George Saunders had a tailor's shop on Hurst Street, Birmingham, which is now a National Trust property (Back to Backs). He learned his sewing skills from his father in the Caribbean, but initially struggled to put them to use in England due to racism. For a time, he worked in a biscuit factory before he was able to grow a client base and open his own successful business.

Marcia Watson - Validation, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

Arriving in the UK at the age of 8, Marcia's life quickly became a battle against prejudice, even from her teachers at school. Marcia's gaze seems to reflect a lifetime of resilience and the gentle tolerance of the beloved teacher she became.

looking closer

Rachel Thomas - Most Racism Was in White Church, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

Rachel rests her hands on a stick as she sits beside a plate of fish and chips - her favourite meal and a symbol of adaptation in a new land and culture. The title of this quilt reflects Rachel's experience of prejudice from a space where she would have hoped to find community and acceptance.

looking closer

Iciline Brown - Rehema Motherland, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

Rahema means mercy in Swahili. Iciline can trace her routes back through slavery to Zanzibar in East Africa. Her words recall her early life in Jamaica and her arrival in England. She was later a victim of the Windrush Scandal, when after a trip to Jamaica, she was refused entry back to the UK and her family. It took three years of struggle to get a biometric card allowing her to travel freely.

looking closer
 

Benjamin Zephaniah - The Background's Too Strong, it Needs to be Whiter, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

Zephaniah was one of Britain's most influential contemporary poets. His mother came to Birmingham from Jamaica in 1957. The ground cloth was printed with original sketches of Birmingham by Rainbow. She then used white paint to tone it down and bring balance. This act of whitewashing the backbround resonated with the experience of many of Rainbow's subjects and inspired the quilt's title.

Benjamin Zephania, Icon, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

The image used for this portrait was provided by Benjamin's wife Qian and captures a moment of pure joy on their wedding day. Extracts from his poet The Men from Jamaica are Settling Down, are stitched on the ground cloth.

looking closer

Finally, not by Annabel Rainbow but by 

Women of the African Caribbean Project - Our Journeys and First Impressions (mixed media)

This is one of three quilts made by members of the African Caribbean Project, which brought together a group of women who came to Leamington in the 1950s and 60s to work in hospitals, in factories, on buses, and in other professions.

Together the group used various fabrics, patterns and applied detail to translate their memories and experiences of migrating to England from the Caribbean. Many of these are mirrored in Annabel Rainbow's Windrush Series. The group meet weekly, and the quilts took just over two years to make. 

Unravelling History

Unravelling History: Unpicking the Collections and Reworking Textile Traditions 

at the Leamington Art Gallery.

The work of six internationally renowned textile artists from the Midlands.

Daniel Lismore, The Field Marshall, (mixed media)

Lismore's life-size fabric sculptures are constructed by hand. He wears many of his pieces and the faces are modelled on his own. Each piece is assembled from repurposed garments and objects collected over his time or gifted to him by friends, such as Vivienne Westwood.

His work is about embracing identity unapologetically. His sculptures often evoke the presence of armour, featuring chain mail, military badges and medals. Each sculpture bears the title of a military rank.

The Field Marshall incorporates some of Lismore's earliest experiments in painting on fabric, developed during lockdown. The design has been inspired by the bluebell flower.

I saw an exhibition of his work in Coventry three years ago and you can see that here

Annabel Rainbow, Harmony of Difference - Colour is Not the Problem  (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

Annabel Rainbow, Harmony of Difference - Spread The Love, Show Compassion (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

For these quilts, Rainbow selected colours and patterns far removed from her usual palette. The combination of lime greens, magentas and oranges on a deep red background is unconventional, but creates a sense of balance and unity amidst the contrast. The aim is to express that harmony can be achieved despite our differences and that fostering greater understanding towards one another is essential.

Stephanie Redfern, Puppet Series (paper, fabric, mixed media)

These puppets (four) were envisioned by Redfern as characters for stop-motion animation. Each puppet is individually articulated and can be deconstructed for her to use. The ground material of the puppets and their mounts is Khadi paper: this cotton-based, heavy-weight, and can be stitched like textile. Each piece is heavily and intricately embellished with beading, fabric, paper and even ceramic.

Laura Kemshall, Everything You Could be

                            The Cat Who Walks by Herself

                            Best Beloved (mixed media: machine stitching, acrylic on cotton and canvas)

The subject of this series is Kemshall's daughter and two of their titles are from Rudyard Kipling's Just So stories.

The pieces are a reference to how a young person has the world at their feet and can be anything they want.

Laura Kemshall, Washed in Black, (mixed media: machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

This quilt showcases Kemshall's skill mixing both stitch and painting techniques. She starts by creating a digital print, which she then uploads to her machine to produce the stitched pattern. Other areas are created with free-hand machine quilting and handpainted with acrylic.

Annabel Rainbow, Memento Mori - Throw Your Soul Open to the Sun, (mixed media (free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

This quilt serves as a reminder to embrace the present and cherish the gift of existence, encouraging us to seize the day and find happiness amidst life's uncertainties. Inspired by Victorian samplers, it juxtaposes common hand stitch techniques with freehand machine stitching. 22ct gold leaf is used on the crosses to emphasise life's preciousness.

Annabel Rainbow, Memento Mori -Stepping Off the Edge, (mixed media (free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cottong)

This quilt ponders life's transcience through images like egg timers, clocks and decaying flowers. A bronze figure stepping off the edge represents the journey into the unknown after death. A child's toy, honesty seedheads, and a raven, each carry symbolic meanings of protection, wisdom and fate. The piece includes stitching techniques that reference children's embroiders samplers.

Laura Kemshall, Hand Me Down, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton)

The passing of knowledge and skills through generations of women. The quilts feature the hands of Kemshall's grandmother, mother, herself and her daughter. Four generations of women, all together, all connected.

Jennie Moncur, Wafts and Waves, woven on a wool warp, with wool and linen weft)

Moncur uses colour in an abstract way to form 'jigsaw' compositions. Areas of single colours are juxtaposed with complex floral patterns, creating views of the natural world, framed in bold, fragmented architectural forms.

Jennie Moncur, Purple Emperor, (woven on a wool warp, with wool and linen weft)

Jennie Moncur, Amour Aspect, (woven on a wool warp, with wool and linen weft)

Terry Frost, Madrigal, 1949, (oil on canvas)

Inspired by WH Auden's Madrigal, Frost felt an empathy with the coal miners of the Midlands. The sharp angels and dark tones of the painting evoke an industrial landscape under a grey sky. Madrigal marks a turning pointin Frost's artistic development, where he moved away from traditional compositions and began to embrace the abstract style he would make his own.

Linda Kemshall, Madrigal,  (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton and canvas)

Reflecting the industrial subject matter of Madrigal, Kemshall uses overlapping applique and acrylic paint over dark ground cloth to suggest a built-up, congested street scene in places, and a transparent overlay hints at the smoke of industry.

Linda Kenshall, Madrigal Study Panel, (mixed media: free-hand machine quilting, acrylic on cotton and canvas)

The Quilts of Gee's Bend, at the Royal Academy of Arts.

The Quilts of Gee's Bend, at the Royal Academy of Arts. 

(Part of  Souls Grow Deep like the Rivers, exhibition)

The quilts of Gee's Bend are quilts created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama, along the Alabama River. The quilts of Gee's Bend are among the most important African-American visual and cultural contributions of the history of art within the USA. 

Many of the residents in the community can trace their ancestry back to enslaved people from the Pettway Plantation. Arlonzia Pettway can recall her grandmother's stories of her ancestors, specifically of Dinah Miller, who was brought to the US by slave ship on 1859. The area is named after Joseph Gee, a landowner who came from North Carolina and established a cotton plantation in 1816 with his seventeen slaves.

After the American Civil War many of the formerly enslaved people remained on the plantation working as shareroppers, who were obliged to give part of their crop to the ladowner, and many inhabitants today will bear the surnames of their ancestors' enslavers. The community was able to remain intact due to government loans provided during the Depression which enabled tenants to buy the land they farmed and protected them from forced evictions.

This continuity allowed a unique tradition of quiltmaking to survive and be passed down through generations of women. Most of Gee's Bend quilts are improvisational or 'my way' quilts. Quiltmakers start with basic forms then head off  'their way' with unexpected patterns, unusual colours and surprising rhythms.

When the quilts toured US museums in 2022, their luscious hues, scissored shapes and improvised visual rhythms garnered comparisons to Paul Klee and Henri Matisse. 

 

Rachel Carey George

Martha Jane Pettway, 'Housetop' - nine-block 'Half-Log Cabin' variation, 1945, (corduroy)

Flora Moore, 'Log Cabin', variation, 1975, (corduroy)

Dorothea Pettway, 1960

Marlene Bennett Jones, Triangles, 2021 (denim, corduroy and cotton)

Loretta Pettway Bennett, Medallion, 2005, (cotton and twill)

Essie Bendolph Pettway, Side Seams, 2018, (camouflage, denim and cotton)