Holding Ground: Caribbean Visions in Britain
Islands in the City: A Constellation of Island Futures in the Centre of Empire brings together thirty-one artworks from an array of artists spanning generations and heritages across the Caribbean diaspora. Through a rich tapestry of mediums and themes, co-curators Sherece Rainford (Gallery OCA) and Louis Chapple (Royal Over-Seas League) breathe the essence of the Caribbean into the heart of St James’s. This exhibition is as much about platforming Caribbean artists as it is about celebrating the wider Caribbean imagination, honouring the stories, cultural traditions and beauty of the diaspora in all its rich and multi-dimensional ways.
I spoke with three of the artists showcased: Merissa Hylton, who works primarily in ceramic sculpture exploring spirituality, ancestry and storytelling; Yvadney Davis, a figurative artist using mixed mediums to examine belonging and identity; and Emily Alice Mitchell, a multidisciplinary artist working across several mediums, with an emphasis on slowness and care around the archive.
1960s Britain was an era in flux for Black people. Most Caribbean nations were still under the tyranny of the British, and those who had migrated to the nucleus of the Empire were contending with a country rampant with systemic oppression. Anti-Black racism was persistent and explosive, and the UK government did not implement the first Race Relations Act until 1965, a lack of care paradigmatic of national attitudes towards anyone not white.
Caribbean immigrants were marginalised, undervalued and, particularly in the arts, largely underrepresented. At a time of heightened animosity and uncertainty, the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) emerged out of necessity. Formed in 1966, CAM celebrated Caribbean artists across visual art, poetry and music, highlighting work that was avant garde in form yet deeply rooted in traditional Caribbean expression and symbolism. Two decades later came the Black British Arts Movement, a radical political and cultural force founded in the early 1980s, instrumental in exposing the legacies of colonialism in Britain and their impact on the exclusion of Black artists. Many years on, in 2022, Tate Britain staged the long overdue exhibition Life Between Islands, co-curated by David A. Bailey, showcasing the work of more than forty Caribbean artists across generations.
There is no doubt that Caribbean artists have long been creating in Britain, and have long been a beacon for evocative art that questions, demands, challenges, disrupts, resists, celebrates and enriches. Yet, like many embodiments of Black talent within a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, they remain unrecognised and underrated. Islands in the City emerges as an antidote, one that holds space for both the present and the not so distant past, a past interwoven with cultural legacies, ancestral memory and a resilience palpable through the artworks.
Neil Kenlock, ‘Black Power school bags’ Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now, Tate Britain.
Grace: How does it feel to be part of this exhibition?
Merissa: It’s an honour. For Sherece to have brought all of us together from different Caribbean islands, with so many different depictions of Caribbean art, it’s just beautiful to see. I’ve never been to an exhibition where I’ve seen that kind of work in one space before, so for me to be part of it is absolutely amazing.
Merissa Hylton "‘River Mumma II study/mood board’ 2025
Emily: It’s really special. The show as a whole felt like a moment at the opening. It’s not often that you have a Caribbean-focused exhibition and a room full of Caribbean people in a space that is so charged. We had the High Commissioners of Jamaica and the Bahamas speaking about how there’s space that needs to be occupied by Caribbean people in the art world. It felt like a moment, like the start of a movement.
Yvadney: For me, I’m not speaking about my culture from the perspective of living in the Caribbean, because that’s very different to being part of the Caribbean diaspora here in the UK. I speak about what it means to be a British Caribbean person, and that’s what’s so beautiful about this exhibition. I know it’s been done before, but not very often. We all talk about back home and what home means, and I’m finally able to embrace that home for me is this unique mixture of cultures. Being in an exhibition with so many other British Caribbeans and members of the diaspora who are exploring similar themes feels like a really beautiful coming together of voices.
Yvadney Davis Sorrow, SE22’ Oil, wallpaper and beads on canvas [61 x 45cm]
Grace: I wanted to speak about this mixture, this diasporic identity of being both Caribbean and British. Many people displaced from their motherland have had to navigate new cultural narratives and forge hybrid identities – what does this hybridity mean to you, and how does it influence your work?
Merissa: It’s a way of staying connected. I’m probably amongst the last generation who were brought up by Windrush Generation parents or grandparents. The fact that I still have that connection, it’s really important to me to make sure that I keep that alive. When I create, it’s always with the intention of keeping that connection, because it feels like we’re hanging on by a thread at the moment. We’re maybe one generation away from kids who don’t know Anansi stories, River Mumma, or the connections from the Caribbean to West Africa. So, as a visual artist, it’s not only my way of keeping my memories alive but of keeping that connection alive for people in the diaspora who haven’t necessarily experienced that connection to the Caribbean directly.
Emily: The way that I identify is British Caribbean, not necessarily Black British, because I’m mixed. In my work, a lot of it is a response to feeling that distance and disconnect. Not just the disconnect from the Caribbean, but also a disconnect from a current place; it’s a lot to hold in one body.
After my Granny passed away two years ago, I felt this real need to start creating something tangible and sculptural – needing to process things physically and make with my hands, rather than editing a film or doing something that felt less tactile. That haptic engagement with different mediums allows me to say a lot of things that I often struggle to articulate. I do a lot of writing, and I find it really hard to write if I’m not making at the same time. There’s something about connecting with a medium in a way that my ancestors have connected; something is definitely unlocked in that process.
Yvadney: Another interesting thing about this exhibition is that there are many crossovers with life experience. I began leaning into different mediums when my Granny died during Covid. She was a big royalist, so I knew her as always trying to be British, despite her strong Jamaican accent. Her home was full of these typically British things: the wallpaper, the doilies, the plastic, things I took for granted. I realised that I have this duty to collect it and make it matter – to preserve something so meaningful that people didn’t think was meaningful because it was seen as tacky or cheap. Actually, Caribbean immigrants came here and experienced so much pushback; these homes were places to be creative, to have autonomy, joy and safety.
Yvadney Davis ‘Daylight Come’’ Oil, wallpaper and beads on canvas, 61 x 45cm
When I’m doing research or beading, the act feels like I’m giving voice to my ancestors and reverence to what they did. Even with the beading, I do that because of my love of those tacky beaded curtains; I find it magical just going in and out of them. But also, beads were used as currency in the Slave Trade. It’s being many things all at once, which I think is what it’s like to exist here as someone from the Caribbean diaspora. Interestingly, I’ve had similar conversations with people who are from Ireland, South Asia, and Africa. Maybe it’s a migrant story.
Grace: For all of you, and like you said, Yvadney, perhaps for anyone who has been displaced from their motherland, the importance of ancestral memory and the archive is apparent. Why are these significant to you, and how can they be seen in your work?
Emily: As an archivist, I am very passionate about archiving differently. It took me a while to break away from the idea that to preserve our stories, they had to be told in the same way, like a traditional archive. That whole model was created to oppress and document unspeakable crimes and traumatic experiences in a way completely detached from emotion. It took me a while to realise that archiving didn’t need to mean cataloguing family pictures in perfect order. When I’m making collages out of photos from different years and places, that is archiving. It’s bringing things out of the archive and putting them together in a way that makes sense thematically, semantically, emotionally. I think if we approach the archive in a nonlinear fashion, reaching for things that make sense differently, it can be really healing.
Emily Alice Mitchell "They who swim within the pilgrimage of my blood." (2024) [Two-channel moving image installation] 44 minutes 17 seconds
Merissa: A lot of the artwork that I produce is like my visual representation of things. Some people, like my parents, will have photo albums with physically printed photographs in them. My memories, I turn into pieces of art. Generally, I do a lot of spiritual and ancestral work. The moment I started taking that more seriously, my work changed. The stories were more potent, and the work I put out seemed to connect with more people.
I always create for myself; I don’t create on demand. So if it comes, it comes, if it doesn’t, I get on with life. But when I have had the inspiration to create something, it has been through some kind of ancestral influence. I never have a plan with my work; I find that when I let myself be directed, that’s when the pieces I’m happiest with are born. And those pieces are usually the ones that get the strongest reaction from people.
Yvadney: I’ve always grown up with so much mystery around my identity. It can only go back so far because so many records were destroyed, and what records there are of enslaved people are just numbers and names. And yet I feel that ancestral connection – the creativity and musicianship that run through my family must have come from someone who didn’t have that voice. Now I feel like I am that person who can finally put it all together and contain it. It’s a constant quest to make sense of things that aren’t there. Even with the beads, it’s taking that back to the transactions of my ancestors. It’s this need to collect and preserve, and most importantly, to say that it matters. It’s important. It has value. It has meaning to everything that we are today.
Merissa Hylton ‘River Mumma. Mami Wata. Yemoja. Oshun. La Sirene,.’ 2025
Grace: The space where your work is being shown, the Royal Over-Seas League, has very explicit colonial and imperial ties. When you first walk up to the entrance, there’s a plaque that says the building is dedicated to the citizens who lost their lives fighting for the Empire. And then as you walk past the reception, there’s a massive picture of the Queen. How does it feel for you to exhibit in a place like this?
Yvadney: It feels defiant. It feels deserved. When you walk around anywhere in this country, my ancestors built this place; this is mine. It belongs to me – by right, by sorrow, by tears, by sweat, by blood. I feel like this is a reclamation. Even me existing here – my great-grandfather was the only one of his brothers to survive the First World War; all his brothers died. They’re the lost soldiers that place should be dedicated to. It’s awkward, and yet the reason my Granny was such a royalist was because she grew up singing to the King and then the Queen. She even went to see the Queen Mother when she passed away. It’s crazy, but for me it’s a reclamation, and it’s what I’m owed.
Emily: It’s definitely a reclamation. For me, it felt quite heavy to acknowledge it. What I was thinking about when we were in the space was how much my Granny would have loved it. I loved it because it felt defiant, and she might have loved it because, for her, it was seen as an achievement to be in those spaces. It’s a very charged place to exhibit in, and a place that we deserve to exhibit in.
Emily Alice Mitchell ‘Maracas Park’ 2025
Merissa: We need to have more exhibitions in places like that. The British Empire went around and colonised half the world. So if you’re going to celebrate Britain and its history, do it in its entirety. Make space for people who are living the repercussions of the Commonwealth and of colonisation. I’m here because Britain went over to Jamaica and then invited my grandparents here. This is something they would never have imagined – to see artwork by their grandchild in a space like that. We need to be in more spaces like that. British history needs to be told in its entirety. It never has been. It’s always been glorified and glossed over.
Islands in the City: A Constellation of Island Futures in the Centre of Empire
Co-curated by Sherece Rainford of Gallery OCA and Louis Chapple of the Royal Over-Seas League, the exhibition runs through 9 November 2025.
It brings together more than twenty artists – Annis Harrison, Anthony Daley, Brianna Lois Parker, Carla Amour, Charmaine Watkiss, Eden Mullen, Emily Alice Mitchell, EVEWRIGHT, Ikesha Avo, Jordan Zayas Kelly, Katasha Rose, Leeroy Zozo, Lynn Parotti, Merissa Hylton, Natalie Charles, Paula Ogun Hector, Roisin Jones, Simon Frederick, Sonia Elizabeth Barrett, Venetta Nicole, Yvadney Davis and Yvette Miller – working across painting, sculpture, collage, photography and mixed media.
Find out more here.
