Antelope, The Hop and Turner

In London Trafalgar Square on the Fourth Plinth we saw “Antelope”

by Samson Kambalu from Malawi

It restages a photograph of a Baptist preacher  and pan Africanist

John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley as a sculpture

“The photograph was taken in 1914 at the opening of Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi. Chilembwe has his hat on , defiying the colonial rule that forbade Africans frm wearing hats in front of white people. A year larter, he led an uprsisint against colonial rule. Chilembwe was killed and his church was destroyed by the coloonial police.

Chilembwe is larger than life, while Chorley is life-size, revealing the hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples in the history of the British Empire in Africa and Beyond”

The Hop

outside the Hayward Gallery we saw The Hop by Jyll Bradley

honoring working class Londoners who escaped the pollution of the city to be paid to harvest hops in rural England.

And finally, at the Tate Britain I end with JMW Turner whose images of disaster catastrophe, floods, fires, Destruction of Sodom,  Snowstorm ( Hannibal crossing the Alps), The Flood, Whalers,

seem like where we are today!