A glass cabinet sat in the corner of the ‘Front Room’ in many Caribbean homes. It kept treasured items on display. Wedding gifts, best china and glassware, souvenirs, and framed family photos were a usual part of the collection. Early ‘Windrush’ migrants kept up the tradition, until British born offspring transformed the parents’ home into ‘uncluttered’ spaces. Many homes of Caribbean heritage may now only boast white walls, carefully selected art pieces and a laptop. The ‘Caribbean Front Room’ has been recognised as a passing historical feature, recently retained in art form by ‘Black’ British artists. My version of the Cabinet is a tribute to that tradition, as a member of the ‘Windrush Generation’.
‘The Caribbean’ was a place of intense industry, under European and British rule for over three centuries. Mainly through enforced chattel slave labour of Africans, it produced sugar, a wealth commodity. Wales participated and benefited from such exploitation, though this relationship remained a skeleton in the cupboard until turn of the century.
Long fought for emancipation from enslavement was won five years after the 1833 Abolition Act. British material and colonial impact, combined with the various cultural practices of the eventual multinational workforce, form rich traditions to the present. Religion, education, culture and leisure overlap in surprising ways.
Audrey West’s range of activities include artwork, creative writing and languages, alongside equalities training, Psychotherapy and community activism. Her 2001 MA in Cultural Memory synchronized these interests. It also raised her awareness of the post-traumatic legacy of Transatlantic slavery that she addresses in her work through personal and collective narratives.
Audrey moved from London to Barmouth in 2017, where the topography of this small town resembled her birthplace in Jamaica. Soon after arrival, she discovered a surprising historic family connection to Jamaica. Audrey continues to work with galleries and cultural venues, schools, and community organizations and individuals across North Wales and further afield, addressing cultures, diversity, and equality.
Audrey has participated in various solo and group exhibitions. Examples:
- 1986 televised black women artists: Some of Us Are Brave, All of Us are Strong.
- 2010 solo exhibition at London’s Marylebone Crypt Gallery
- 2010 solo exhibition at London’s Stoke Newington Gallery.
- 2019 at MOMA Machynlleth with Pete Telfer’s Culture Colony Intervention.
- 2019 St John’s Gallery, Barmouth.
- 2022 joint exhibition at Storiel Gallery alongside Gareth Griffiths.
- 2023 with Utopia’s Bach Artist Collaboratory.