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Lead, threads and petals: A response to the Wentworth Blackamoor

Date uploaded: September 10, 2014

Leeds visual arts commissioning organisation Pavilion, present an installation, performance and discussion responding to the restored Blackamoor statue at Wentworth Castle Gardens, on Wednesday the 24th of September from 6pm to 8pm.

Also known as The Kneeling Slave, The Blackamoor was a popular lead garden statue during the 18th Century, signifying the profitability of The Atlantic Slave Trade. The event includes contributions from artists Carol Sorhaindo and Joe Williams, and historian Patrick Eyres. It forms part of Pavilion's ongoing investigations into the politics of Capability Brown garden sites across Yorkshire.

Coach travel from Leeds is available, for more information click here to book you place. The event is free but a £5 donation to cover the coach cost is welcome.

About the contributors;

Carol Sorhaindo draws inspiration from the natural world as a means of exploring identity, human empowerment, freedom and representation. For this project she will create a new textile installation within the landscape that draws on theories of ruin and entanglement, as well as the botanical specimens and historic narratives of the site.

Joe Williams will collaborate with Sorhaindo to present the connection of transatlantic narratives to the Wentworth landscape. His initiative, Heritage Corner, emerged from the Diasporan Stories Research Group in Leeds, and seeks to counter previously excluded African perspectives through performance and story-telling.

Dr Patrick Eyres is editor-publisher of the New Arcadian Journal, which engages with the cultural politics of landscape gardens. The 50th edition (2011) explores the significance of The Blackamoor statue in 18th-Century British gardens.

The event is funded by the Capability Brown Festival and Heritage Lottery Fund as part of a series of pilot projects leading up to a national Capability Brown festival in 2016.

Image: Carol Sorhaindo, 2014

Image: Carol Sorhaindo, 2014