UK Diaspora; Elizabeth Rex Lives

This piece is titled 'Elizabeth Rex Lives', and is part of UK Diaspora. It forms a mixed-media assemblage, which was created in 2007 in response to the bicentenary of Britain’s 1807 Act to abolish the trafficking of enslaved Africans. 'UK Diaspora' is comprised of 10 dark-brown,mass-produced, budget canvases arranged to form a schematic map of the island of Great Britain. Materials include photographs from the artist's research trips around the ‘Black Atlantic’, as well as original oil-paintings, digital prints of archival material, and everyday objects such as Ghanaian Cedis, Cuban Pesos, US Dollars, tickets, sweets, Ghanaian sand, the artist's own hair, and manufactured toys. The ten canvases have been pierced with hundreds of nails and screws driven into their stretcher frames.