17 March 2015

Family album with a twist

Yinka Shonibare at the William Morris gallery
The new show at the William Morris Gallery consists of twin images contrasting a Victorian photograph with a contemporary re-creation. At first sight there is not much to see, just three dual images and two dresses, until you realise the amount of effort that has gone into making each image. In a sense, the fact that the originals are all photographs of William Morris's family is not essential, just a reflection of the fact these were commissioned by the gallery, but seeing them in this context does add a layer of interest. And the models are all local people who auditioned to participate, full beards and mutton-chop whiskers being pretty essential qualifications for the men.
Yinka Shonibare is best known for his ship-in-a-bottle on the Fourth Plinth. I'm not even going to pretend to fully understand the symbolism, but exploitation of the third world is clearly an underlying theme: his plinth sculpture was a Victorian sailing ship with the sails made of African printed fabrics. The colours are bright and decidedly un-Victorian. It's deliberately jarring and uncomfortable to look at.
Here, he continues the same theme. The models are wearing meticulous copies of the clothes in the old photographs, some in authentic sober colours, while others are made of brightly coloured African fabrics, and the models themselves are ethnically diverse. So you look at the sepia original, and find exactly the same pose and the same clothes disconcertingly echoed in colour. What comes across finally, is that it is next to impossible to copy an expression. Some of the faces have remarkably similar expressions but there is always a difference, however tiny. Where one has a humourless stare off-camera, her modern counterpart betrays just a hint of humour. And the Victorian gent with a slight smirk is paired with a look that is just the same, except the smirk is missing. For me, that was what made the show particularly fascinating.
The fabrics are wax-resist printed cotton made in Europe for the African market. The image above is a piece bought on Walthamstow market.