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. 

Vanessa Bell - A World of Form and Colour: Furniture, Textiles, Ceramics

 

Vanessa Bell - A World of Form and Colour: Furniture, Textiles, Ceramics.

 at MK (Milton Keynes Gallery)

This is the third post on this exhibition. You can see the first part here and the second part here

I am going to reproduce the introdution from the first post so that each post can stand independently, but if you have seen it,  then skip the introdution and go straight to the photographs.

We went to to Milton Keynes (you can see my post on the town here ) especially to see this exhibition. It's the largest ever display of work by Bell and it was fantastic. There were some paintings that I was hoping to see which were not part of the exhibition, particularly Strudland Beach, but it did not matter, as there was so much wonderful work there to see. There is a post on Strudland Beach which you can see here . You can also see all three versions of that iconic painting here .

Bell was a pioneering modernist. Her work was at the forefront of British abstraction, but she also produced many portraits, still lifes and landscape paintings. At the same time, she created conditions in which artists could flourish. This involved organising the Friday Club for artists to meet and co-founding the experimental design collective, Omega Workshops. 

She was also an important part of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of influential English artists, writers and intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. Collaboration formed an essential part of Bell's approach to art, including with her sister, Virginia Woolf, and the artist Duncan Grant with whom Vanessa Bell's all-encompassing approach to art found its ultimate expression in Charleston, the farmhouse they shared in East Sussex.

Vanessa Bell was born into a wealthy literary family living in Kensington, London. She studied art in South Kensington and at the Royal Academy Schools. Following the death of her parents, Bell moved, together with her siblings, to 46 Gordon Square in the unfashionable Bloomsbury area where she rejected Victorian attitudes and sought a radical new way of living. She began the Friday Club where male and female artists were regarded as equals and exhibited together.

In 1913, Vanessa Bell,  Roger Fry and Duncan Grant co-founded the Omega Workshops. Here, they rejected Victorian and Edwardian styles and challenged the barriers between fine and decorative art by designing modern furniture, textiles and ceramics.

Design for a folding screen: Adam and Eve, 1913-14, (graphite, bodycolour + oil on woven paper)

Art historian Christopher Reed has discussed Bell's representation of Adam and Eve as an 'ambition to have Eden without the Expulsion... These energetic nudes dance their way through a narrative that promises to end, but in the enveloping warmth of the yellow light they reach into'.

Nude with Poppies, 1916, (oil on canvas)

Bell paintd Nude with Poppies as a preliminary design for a bedhead commissioned by her friend, and Clive Bell's partner, Mary Hutchinson. She worried about its reception: 'I hope she won't be horrified to hear there's a nude figure of the most romantic description with poppies'.

Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry, Omega painted desk, 1912, (paint on wood)

The Omega Workshops, established by Roger Fry in 1913 with Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell as co-directors, sold furniture, fabrics and household accessories designed and made by artists. Objects were shown anonymously and sold unsigned. In the run up to the launch of the Workshops Bell wrote to Roger Fry: 'I do think we shall have to be careful, especially in England where it seems one can never get away from this fatal prettimess. Can't we paint stuffs (fabrics) which won't be gay and pretty?'

looking closer

Decorated fan, 1913-16, (silk and ivory)

Omega rug design for Sir Ian and Lady Hamilton, (oil on paper)

For this scheme Bell painted friezes, inlaid furniture, created mosaics and stained glass, and designed a special rug for the entrance hall. The final design is shown here, as well as a more densely packed preliminary design.

Tea Things, 1919, (oil on panel)

Design for Omega bed-end: Vase of Flowers, 1917, (oil and gouache on paper)

Maud

White

Pamela

Designed 1913, printed 2024, (linen, cotton and nylon)

Three textile patterns for the Omega that are attributed to Bell

After Bell moved to Charleston in 1916, she and Grant began an ongoing project of decorating and redecorating the walls, doors and furnishing. Charleston was a home and refuge for the artists and their unconventional living arrangements as well as a complete work of art and one of their most important legacies. Charleston also provided a haven for others, many of whom were gay, including the economist John Maynard Keynes and authors Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster and Raymond Mortimer. At the same time, Bell and Grant strarted receiving commissions to decorate society homes which were published in magazines including Vogue and The Studio.

From the 1920s onwards Bell also designed dust jackets for the books published by Hogarth Press, owned by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, including all of Virginia Woolf's all publications. From the days of the Omega Workshops, Bell had been producing and decorating ceramics and textiles and this continued after the Workshops' closure in 1919, working in collaboration with potters including her son Quentin and designers including Clarice Cliff. Bell and Grant's largest ceramic production was the Famous Women Dinner Service commissioned by art historian Kenneth Clarke in 1932, which included 50 decorated plates celebrating famous women throughout history.

Doors of Duncan Grant's bedroom at Charleston, 1918

In early 1917 Bell decorated the fireplace in Duncan Grant's bedroom and in 1918 painted the two doors. 

Decorated Screen, 1920, (watercolour and gouache, with chalk, charcoal and graphite and with paper collage elements)

Decorated by Vanessa Bell Table, 1950, (painted wood)

Vanessa Bell, Vase and Flowers, 1929, (oil on canvas)

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Fire surround, 1929, (oil on wood)

Duncan Grant, Bacchanale, 1929, (oil on canvas)

Duncan Grant, The Toilet of Venus, 1928, (oil on canvas)

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Chairs, 1929, (wood and Cane)

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Famous Women Dinner Service, 1932-34, (50 hand-painted Wedgwood ceramic plates)

In 1932, the art historian Kenneth Clark and his wife Jane Clark ordered a fine dining dinner service from Bell and Grant. They received a service including 50 plates painted with portraits of famous women, as well as the artists themselves. The famous women they chose to depict came from across the world and from ancient history to the contemporary.

The Famous Women Dinner Service forms part of a wider ambition to record women's histories, with Virginia Woolf later writing: 'The history of England is the history of the male line, not the female. Of our father we know always some fact, some distinction. They were soldiers or they were sailors; they filled that office or made that law. But our mothers, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, what remains?'

Bell described the dinner service in typically modest and tongue-in-cheek fashion, as 'portraits of celebrated females - it ought to please the feminists - of all times'.

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Studies for the Muses of Arts and Sciences, 1920, (oil on canvas)

In 1920 John Maynard Keynes commissioned Bell and Grant to decorate his study with panels on either side of the door and bookcase, as well as curtains and furnishing. The artists planned eight figures - four male (by Grant) and four female (by Bell) - representing the muses of the arts and sciences, although, as Bell wrote 'in fact we're always changing theirs arts and their sciences'. Their recent experience of visiting Italy and of seeing Italian Renaissance fresco painting may have influenced these decorations.

From 1931 Bell and Grant began collaborating with the potter Phyllis Keyes. Keyes supplied many pots, jugs, tiles and vases for the artists to paint.