Chantelle Purcell - Artist Interview
Writer, editor and curator Anneka French recently sat down with Hinterlands resident artist Chantelle Purcell to hear more about her work..
Could you explain your initial ideas in relation to the festival?
I'm a British Jamaican artist and I also work as a curator. My work is very much to do with entwined histories, folklore and experience. Within my work I explore identity and belonging and how this is connected with place. Over the past year, I've been interviewing different women from the Afro diaspora (African and Caribbean women) and thinking about the context of British waterways as well as the cultural value of water for these communities – its symbolism, spirituality and the resiliency of water. This particular stretch of the waterway feels quite abandoned. It’s been forgotten in terms of its value in an everyday context for a lot of the communities that are working or living in the nearby area, especially in Upper Edmonton, where the lack of green space is really prevalent. These were my starting points for the project.
Can you describe the engagement sessions you have held?
I’ve used the project to create space for conversations with individuals to happen. To hear their stories and perspectives, the project has been about journeys. I also carried out a community engagement session with Platinum Academy, a performing arts college near to Silver Street Station. I worked with three Caribbean performers and a choreographer to develop a performance that embodied the energy of water. From that engagement I have created a series of photographs that I plan to present along the waterways. The work is centred around reclamation, activating the hinterland of space with words and images. During the engagement session, I have used questionnaires and Q&A interviews to draw out personal stories. The outcome of the engagement session with Platinum was a 90 second performance set to Wade in the Water. I've got video recordings of this performance but the photographic images feel quite poignant and capture a moment in time. Currently I am exploring different ways to celebrate these stories and photographs with different surfaces like glass, wood or fabric. I’m also experimenting with repeated motifs and how these come together in space. I want the work to highlight the link between fertility and water, as well as its cultural value within an urban context.
You worked with the theme of water for the banners you presented in August 2023.
Yes, that project was called Reflections and it's a series of musings that respond to interviews I’ve held with Caribbean and African women to gather their thoughts and feelings around water and the idea of connection. These reflections resulted in textile banners, acting as a way to reclaim these harsh spaces. Banners historically have been used as a form of activism or to represent marginalised voices and bring communities together. The series has been a physical way of creating an archive of text or sayings. To develop the artwork, I plan to develop the work further into an installation. The idea is to get people to rethink the place they're in, how it's transforming through regeneration and what future that place might hold in order that it better serves a wider pool of communities.
Will the new texts be musings based on the feedback you've had from those interviews and surveys with others or they are direct quotes?
Earlier works were my own musings based on the conversations I have had. However I am hoping the festival will directly feature the participants' voices more literally. I'm still in the process of making these into something that’s cohesive based on the space and the site.
What do you hope the work might provoke?
Personal connection. When you're delivering community engagement or co-designing with communities as an artist, it's always nice to have connection and pride in the work. There is also an element of making the space less harsh, almost more human. The canals were always designed for industry, with various trades throughout the centuries running through it. The area now contains Bloqs, garages and the Aviva bus station. The canals were never designed for us as communities to enjoy, so it’s important the work creates a sense of escape and a connection to place. I'd hope that the work does those things and gets a viewer to see the space from a new perspective, by providing insight into someone else's thoughts, feelings and experiences.
What other earlier work within the context of Hinterlands have you undertaken?
I've connected with the Enfield Caribbean Association and individual women like Black historian Avril Nanton who delivers walking tours throughout London, a woman from the Windrush era featured in Windrush Voices and a local cultural purveyor who has dedicated her work to empowering young musicians. The dialogues and conversations have been really inspiring and reminded me of the power of coming together as women. During the last festival in August 2023, I also had a sculptural installation that was, again, about personal reflection, thinking about offerings. In many cultures and in mythology water has a symbolic connection. I was thinking about deities and the healing power water can have. I created a structure where people could tie promises to a sculptural installation and climb underneath and hear recordings from earlier conversations. This was titled Reflections on Water. It was used as an interactive artwork to encourage engagement.
How have you worked with Bloqs?
I've taken the opportunity to learn some new skills at Bloqs. I was lucky enough to learn how to use the laser engraving machine to engrave text into different materials.
More widely, I’ve used Hinterlands as an opportunity to connect people in the area that wouldn't otherwise be connected and to have intimate conversations with women that I wouldn't have otherwise been connected to this stretch of the River Lea. It’s created space for reflection and provided access to this space.
Can you say more about your wider creative practice?
My work as a fine artist took a pause but joining Hinterlands was a great opportunity to pursue my visual art interests. I primarily work as a curator in the capacity of empowering younger artists and communities to connect. Projects include Hive Curates, a creative workplace provider and studio dedicated to promoting contemporary arts and Otherlandz which was all about empowering culturally diverse women artists. This has really come through in the work I create.
An artwork that got me back into making again was “The Grip” inspired by my granddad who travelled over to the UK in the ‘50s from the Caribbean. That work was centred on migration, cultural identity and the memories that are evoked from objects. As a second generation Caribbean descendant, my identity is informed by the elders in my family. The Grip was tied to the idea of cultural preservation, unpacking what identity means for a whole generation of Windrush communities. In terms of my wider practice, I'm often looking at narrative including poetry and spoken word but also thinking about memory and experience, especially the experience of others, and about place making.
A lot of my work is centred around sound because in Caribbean culture we often learn through song and spoken word. In Jamaica song was born out of resistance and activism, in that way history feels ephemeral. I'm always exploring the cacophony of image, text and words coming together, thinking about how we learn history, how we hold on to our own stories and how those stories inform our sense of identity. I'm challenging that or thinking about miscommunication, rewriting, transmission chains and how we create new legacies. Hinterlands was a great opportunity for me to start to delve into these ideas again. After The Grip I was able to move on and think about how I could create space for other Caribbean people. I don't necessarily feel like I belong in certain contexts, even though I set up an artist studio space in the nearby area of Upper Edmonton around Meridian Water you don't see many women of colour. My work is very much to do with connection and belonging and I think it's because I'm personally searching for my sense of self; how I hold on to my own identity being British and Jamaican.
This enquiry is a clear thread throughout your work.
It would be remiss not to touch upon the effects of colonialism in Britain and London. The canals and waterways were designed for global trades that supported colonialism. There are a lot of mixed feelings on water for the women I've interviewed. Some have refused to talk to me about this because they find water to be a space of trauma. Some women that I've spoken to haven't learnt to swim because their parents or grandparents found water to be unsafe. It’s a charged context and the canal is a charged place but I'm hoping the work can be an opportunity to think about water for future communities as a space for healing. A lot of Caribbean women are still finding their place in the UK. Imperialism is really evident in an urban context. It's everywhere around us, in the buildings, the waterways, the attributed wealth but also in how things have been designed in terms of supporting that historic trade. I'm trying to reclaim the space through words and conversation positively.
Anneka French is a writer, editor and curator
She works for art publishers Anomie and Hurtwood as Project Editor and contributes to publications including Art Quarterly, 1000 Words, Burlington Contemporary and Photomonitor. Recent commissions include those for Alexander Berggruen Gallery, Photoworks+, Grain Projects, TACO! and Fire Station Artists’ Studios. She has worked on publications including Turner Prize 2021, Kathryn Maple: A Year of Drawings (2023) and the forthcoming The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 3 (2024), Tang Shuo: Shadows of Boulder Hill (2024), Raghav Babbar: Indian Summer (2024) and a monograph on Susie Hamilton (2024).
Anneka is an independent curator currently working with Coventry Biennial. She spent four years as Co-ordinator and then Director at New Art West Midlands (CVAN) and spent six years as Editorial Manager of contemporary art magazine this is tomorrow. Anneka has worked at art galleries including Tate Modern, Ikon, The New Art Gallery Walsall and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
