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Shelia
Vollmer
Bounty
2007
Multiple cement fondue
casts of breadfruit skins
joined with adhesive
Addressing the themes & the tragedy of trade, (breadfruit & slaves), centered
round the Bounty story, I began by making moulds of breadfruit skins.
I bought them locally in Deptford market, now readily available due to
the demands of the diverse community. The breadfruit acts as a symbol,
having traveled full circle around the globe, reflecting the trade and
exploitation of goods and people. Working from this connection I then
joined multiple cement fondue casts of the patterned, (repeated pentagon
pattern), breadfruit skin suggesting the forms of trade: pot and slave
figure. Sculpturally I am interested in how the joining of the multiple
cast cement breadfruit shapes, patterned skins and long stems create irregularities
in the views around and inside/outside the 2 forms. A visual patterning
and natural consequence of the final composition is created by the system
of the design, construction and of the aesthetic of the material/forms
that constitute it.
And really lost it.
'A trip to Paradise, betrayal, a ship vanishes, a 3,600 mile voyage in an open launch, a King's pardon and a ship's cat saved. What more could a story need?'
(from the APT press release to the show 'Bounty - A Case of Preposterous Optimism')
As Andrew Lambert says in the catalogue to the show 'History is more than a record of what happened' so what follows is both partial (subjective) and incomplete.
Paradise had been found a number of times before the Bounty, by other seamen on earlier voyages, but the name Otaheite continued its allure.
In 1769 Captain Cook arrived with Joseph Banks, botanist, and a number of other scientists, to observe the transit of Venus across the sun by which experiment the Royal Society in London hoped to measure the size of the solar system - and of all the planets in the system no other name could have been more appropriately chosen for it seemed to them they had landed on the Island of Love.
The sailors could hardly believe their eyes, or their luck - the native women were not only beautiful but uncommonly friendly (allegedly their usual greeting involved bending forward to reveal their prettily tattooed backsides, and that was just by way of hello). Not what the lads were used to back in Deptford.
At one point a young Tahitian girl crossed Cook's quarterdeck and in his words, 'carelessly dropped the cloth which covered her'… she… 'appeared to the eyes of all beholders such as Venus showed herself to the shepherd, having indeed the celestial form of that goddess'. But if Cook remained aloof, many of the others in the expedition surrendered to their charms. Banks himself became obsessed by a girl with 'fire in her eyes'. It was as if they had arrived in paradise an' Arcadia of which we are going to be kings' (in Banks' words). 20 years later it was Banks who commissioned the Bounty to gather breadfruit plants to feed the slaves on the burgeoning British Caribbean plantations.
Lieut. W. Bligh himself observed in his 'Narrative of the Mutiny, etc' (1790):
'The Women are handsome ... and have sufficient delicacy to make them admired and beloved - The chiefs have taken such a liking to our People that they have rather encouraged their stay among them than otherwise, and even made promises of large possessions. Under these and many other attendant circumstances equally desirable it is therefore now not to be Wondered at ... that a Set of Sailors led by Officers and void of connections ... should be governed by such powerful inducement ... to fix themselves in the midst of plenty in the finest Island in the World where they need not labour, and where the alurements of disipation are more than equal to anything that can be conceived.'
So, was it was all the fault of women then? Nothing to do with Bligh, the somewhat insecure, middle-aged, authoritarian whose career depended on this voyage? And nothing to do with the demon drink to whose cupboard Bligh had the only key? Who knows. And perhaps too much time has passed for us to judge - since none of us were present we can never know the Truth. But we may hope to understand the images involved which lit the imaginations of those who were.
It's a question of motivation, and a question of navigation, not just amongst islands but amongst ideas - on a long voyage in the 18th Century what else is there to talk about? And before you object that a bunch of illiterate seamen weren't about to be touched by the Enlightenment, you should know that Christian was a well-educated social notch above Bligh and Isaac Martin (first recruit to the cause) was an ex-American Revolutionary.
In 1756 Burke's 'Enquiry' into the Sublime and Beautiful suggested (amongst other things) that Man's highest goal was to transcend the mundane
In 1762 Rousseau's 'Social Contract' outlined the basis for 'legitimate' political order. (It's opening lines are 'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains').
In 1776 Thomas Paine (a Briton) published 'Common Sense', and the American War of Independence began.
In 1783 (the year Christian joined the navy) the American War ended, and
In 1786 the first convict ships left for Botany Bay.
In 1787 the Bounty was refitted in Deptford and set sail for the Pacific; and the growing lobby against the practice of slavery formed its first institution.
Rousseau, by the way, contended that man is neither inherently good nor bad when in the state of Nature but is corrupted by society.
In 1789 Fletcher Christian spoke his only recorded words -
"I am in Hell with you!"
Huzza for Otaheite!
John Robinson
'It's about skin. About attachment'.
In Robinson's mind the Bounty mutineers were so taken with the paradise they had found on Tahiti that they couldn't bear to leave it. Despite the threat of hanging they chose to return and accept permanent exile.
'Huzza…' is a delicate balance and is as concerned with sculptural formalities as it is with narratives. It consists of a gilt frame surrounding a stretched skin which has been pierced by a hook. From the hook hangs a long chain which is attached to a massive iron bollard placed on the gallery floor. Despite the bollard's massive weight it is still not clear which is pulling which.
There is a disturbing, masochistic element in the work. Skin pierced, pulled taut, anchored by chain to the horns of a block of black iron - the horns of a dilemma perhaps: Love (Paradise) in one direction but at the expense of freedom and at the price of retribution; 'freedom' in the other, but in an oppressive, poverty-riven, class dominated society (which Bligh had the misfortune to represent). The picture frame is an overt reference to the much later works of Gauguin whose Primitivist aspirations closely followed those outlined by Rousseau in the years before the Bounty mutiny.
At the centre of the story there is a tension between the aspirations of the individual and the needs of the group. One end is tethered to the Enlightenment, reaching out to Paradise; the other firmly fixed to the economic and social realities of the time. On the one hand Tahiti offered the promise of personal fulfilment and a return to life as the Noble Savage, (as well as sun, sand, sea and sex); on the other hand it would mean perpetual banishment and, they soon realised, not to the Paradise they had found. Other ships would come, the story would get out.
In this context it's easy to imagine the American, Isaac Martin, quoting the already famous words of his home-state hero Benjamin Franklin - "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." And so they traded Paradise for Pitcairn where eventually it was lost.
Space for a woman
Victoria Rance
In common with many of Rance's recent works there is here a sense of both shelter and imprisonment. A wall of steel flowers forms a shield like a gauntlet. Their petals face inward allowing, no doubt, the occupant an idea of the pastoral. But if there is delicacy and decoration Space for a Woman is also rough, threatening and not a little medieval. It wraps its occupant into a corner, forces them to stand and acts like a cage. It is perhaps the embodiment of the role for most European women in the 18th century - which sadly was to be the fate of those Tahitian beauties.
Nonetheless, there is beauty. And the piece is a shelter; it's just difficult. It may be small but it is on a human scale. And the occupant can see out. 'Shelter…' works on other levels than merely as a historical reference point. It is as much about today's social contracts as it is about the Bounty, both for women and for all of us, whether they may be between loving partners, in arranged marriages or between Church and State. 'Shelter…' is perhaps a framework for an invisible contract, a fence on which to hang the tension…
Having failed to establish a settlement on a nearby island (which they terrorised), the mutineers returned to Tahiti allowing Christian just enough time to marry his sweetheart before kidnapping 11 others and, accompanied by a number of Tahitian men, setting sail to the east.
Once on board there was no way back for the women. And once the boat was burned they were as dependent on the men for survival as the colony was on them. Pitcairn, a rough, cliff-lined rock was chosen because it was literally off-the-map - the Admiralty charts were wrong so their chances of remaining undetected were higher. It was both shelter and imprisonment. And it was a Paradise Lost.
But how can you lose something that never existed? Their Arcadia proved to be as much of a myth as Gauguin's was (he died riddled with syphilis and poisoned by alcohol). By 1808 when a British ship finally landed only one of the original men was left alive along with nine women and a few children (at least two of the women had fallen from cliffs hunting for birds' eggs). According to sole surviving mutineer John Adams, a war had broken out three years after their arrival between the European and the Tahitian men, predictably enough over the women. The result was the deaths of all the Tahitians and all but two (including Christian) of the European men, the other one apparently died of asthma some time later.
Christian's son died on Tahiti in 1831 aged 39, his wife 'Maimiti' died ten years later, leaving the island to her numerous progeny. Shortly before her death the island was visited by one George Gardner who described her as ' the most perfect picture of an old hag I ever saw. She is surprisingly active, her age being estimated between 80 and 90. She remembers Captain Cook and speaks of him'.
But I struggle to finish. There are so many aspects to the story and so many threads to follow one never runs out of permutations. Causes and effects are like that. And perhaps that's it - the most engaging thing about the story, and the show at APT is its open-endedness.
So, by way of elegy I shall point you to the film in the show by Margaret Higginson entitled Launch. For this piece the artist built a half-size replica of the launch in which Bligh and 18 others rowed 3,600 miles to safety. Made from maps and sheets of copper she then filmed the boat moving down Deptford Creek, past the site of the Bounty's refit 220 years ago, past APT and out towards the Thames. On board she placed 19 breadfruits.
Victoria Rance
Space for a woman
2007
Silicone, bronze and steel
The
show runs from
October 4th - 28th
at the APT Gallery,
Creekside
Thurs-Sun, 12-5pm
There will be three talks given at APT in connection with the show
all on Thursdays at 7pm:
11th Oct
Don't shoot albatrosses
Cuillin Bantock
18th Oct
Don't let truth get in the way of a good story
Scott Plear
25th Oct
Bounty Images
Scott Cousins
For more details see www.aptstudios.org
For a full account of the mutiny
try www.lareau.org/bounty
John
Robinson
'Huzza for Otaheite!'
2007
Frame, skin, chain and bollard
Below:
Launch
2007
Margaret Higginson
DVD projection
