Empire Songs |
Spring / summer 2026 Collections
|
Subservience or Gunpowder
(2026) |
Union Versus Dominance
(2026) |
Angels & Demons At Play
(2026) |
Sheesh Mahal
(2026) |
I started these collections on theme of Colonisation as part of my work on Hegemony back in 2022. I began by looking at natural colonies, how species encroach upon each other. The project has since moved some distance. I always knew that at some point I would address the British Colonisation of India. My family lived under Colonisation and were involved in the partition walks, some of them never arrived at their displaced locations.
Watching the Gaza Genocide unfold and continue has been so cathartic for so many. The constant delay of the cessation of suffering of the Palestinian peoples, whilst observing western organisations support it. For me I was able to understand the very nature of the British Empire, and the level of savagery, that took India from one of the worlds leading cultures and economies back to agriculture. In my youth, more than 40 years visiting India was a world away from my life in the UK, there were no toilets in the villages, people had close to nothing. There was so much poverty but India began the road to recovery. I was told of a prophecy around that time by a Niner, that India would return to become a world superpower, and a leading economy, and its remarkable to see it happening. I wish the same for Palestine, that it rises to its former glory.
Each of these collections address aspects of The empire. Sheesh Mahal (2026) highlights just one of 130,000,000 + untold stories of life under the 'British Rage'. In the Punjabi town of Hoshiarpur, Creatives sculpted and carved full scale scenes of everyday and spiritual life in India. Their level of skill and craftsmanship counteracted the British narrative of the uncivilised, and they were given the option of stopping being stopped. I last saw the Museum about 25 years ago. It is a remarkable place, but it is in a state of dire disrepair and is something that really needs preserving. This work is also a head-nod to Dr C. S. Chan a renown collector of Sikh artefacts who shared many antiquities with me. I wanted to engage with Sikh history, and much of this work references Punjabi and Mughal minature painting that the doc introduced me too.
Angels & Demons At Play In The Garden Of Delights (2026) engages with how the British attempted to relegate thousands of years of spiritual belief and replace it with their own ideologies through the use of gunpowder. It is old adage of replace their God with our God, then replace our God with me. This still plays out across the world, where the use of force is destroying West Asia for extraction.
Subservience or Gunpowder (2026) is a homage to the mother, sisters, daughters, aunties, grandmas who suffered under the British, and despite the degradation they encountered they managed to keep their faith and love alight. Women and children suffer on so many levels during such atrocities, and highlighting the injustice they suffered is important, as is the immoral, barbaric, non-virtuous actions of the colonisers.
Union Verses Dominance (2026) shows India's level of advanced cultural and spiritual sophistication through a presentation of polarities. On one side we see the art of Union through the tantric Kamasutra. Healthy intimacy was integrated as a normal part of life as it should be. The exterior prudishness of the British which hid a darker interior, flipped this and used this to feign savagery and cast uncivilised labels. The second polarity in this collection takes in to consideration how western capitalism has created a total degrading dominance of the feminine through subscription accounts to babestation, only fans, and porn hub. Whose the real savage.
For me making these works have been a form of cleansing, removing some of the historical anger stored within me, creating new spaces for new directions. Sometimes one has to do the shadow work. End Colonialism!
Watching the Gaza Genocide unfold and continue has been so cathartic for so many. The constant delay of the cessation of suffering of the Palestinian peoples, whilst observing western organisations support it. For me I was able to understand the very nature of the British Empire, and the level of savagery, that took India from one of the worlds leading cultures and economies back to agriculture. In my youth, more than 40 years visiting India was a world away from my life in the UK, there were no toilets in the villages, people had close to nothing. There was so much poverty but India began the road to recovery. I was told of a prophecy around that time by a Niner, that India would return to become a world superpower, and a leading economy, and its remarkable to see it happening. I wish the same for Palestine, that it rises to its former glory.
Each of these collections address aspects of The empire. Sheesh Mahal (2026) highlights just one of 130,000,000 + untold stories of life under the 'British Rage'. In the Punjabi town of Hoshiarpur, Creatives sculpted and carved full scale scenes of everyday and spiritual life in India. Their level of skill and craftsmanship counteracted the British narrative of the uncivilised, and they were given the option of stopping being stopped. I last saw the Museum about 25 years ago. It is a remarkable place, but it is in a state of dire disrepair and is something that really needs preserving. This work is also a head-nod to Dr C. S. Chan a renown collector of Sikh artefacts who shared many antiquities with me. I wanted to engage with Sikh history, and much of this work references Punjabi and Mughal minature painting that the doc introduced me too.
Angels & Demons At Play In The Garden Of Delights (2026) engages with how the British attempted to relegate thousands of years of spiritual belief and replace it with their own ideologies through the use of gunpowder. It is old adage of replace their God with our God, then replace our God with me. This still plays out across the world, where the use of force is destroying West Asia for extraction.
Subservience or Gunpowder (2026) is a homage to the mother, sisters, daughters, aunties, grandmas who suffered under the British, and despite the degradation they encountered they managed to keep their faith and love alight. Women and children suffer on so many levels during such atrocities, and highlighting the injustice they suffered is important, as is the immoral, barbaric, non-virtuous actions of the colonisers.
Union Verses Dominance (2026) shows India's level of advanced cultural and spiritual sophistication through a presentation of polarities. On one side we see the art of Union through the tantric Kamasutra. Healthy intimacy was integrated as a normal part of life as it should be. The exterior prudishness of the British which hid a darker interior, flipped this and used this to feign savagery and cast uncivilised labels. The second polarity in this collection takes in to consideration how western capitalism has created a total degrading dominance of the feminine through subscription accounts to babestation, only fans, and porn hub. Whose the real savage.
For me making these works have been a form of cleansing, removing some of the historical anger stored within me, creating new spaces for new directions. Sometimes one has to do the shadow work. End Colonialism!
