|
Artists Main Programme Parallel Programme Workshop Performance Festival A-Ζ |
| biennale mission biennale shop |
| Hellenic Ministry of Culture
State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art Visual Arts in Greece Art Editions |
|
|
|
| Boyce Sonia Born in 1962 in London. Lives and works in the UK. Sonia Boyce was born in London in 1962 and emerged in the early 1980s as a figurative painter, quickly gaining critical attention as an emerging figure in the black British arts movement, for works that spoke about racial identity and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, Boyce has worked increasingly with other people in what she likes to call “improvised collaborations”, bringing participants and the audience into sharper focus as an integral part of the artwork, thus demonstrating how cultural differences might be articulated, mediated and enjoyed. One such “collaboration” has resulted in a double-screen video installation. Crop Over’s development began with Boyce's interest in the Crop Over festival in Barbados. The Crop Over carnival is a harvest festival that originates out of the conditions of plantation life and sugar production in the Caribbean. Crop Over also responds directly to the history of Harewood House in the UK, and its relationship to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The relationship between the Lascelles family -the owners of the Harewood stately home- and Barbados began in the 17th century when Edward Lascelles and his son Daniel were based in Bridgetown. The film opens with stillness and the sound of running water as the camera pans across the formal garden and grounds of Harewood House. Stilt Walker wanders through the majestic gardens, confidently negotiating the grounds of this beautiful English country house, his fantastic costume is both admiral-like and carnivalesque. We are then transported to the broody skies that hang over the sugar cane fields in Barbados and to the splendor of a plantation house. The plantation house echoes the grandeur of Harewood but is surrounded by an avenue of exotic palm trees, a pool of water lilies and lotus flowers. Here we are asked to consider the cultivated landscape of both Barbados and Britain, and we are reminded of who owned, worked on and now enjoys these different landscapes. The Crop Over festival comes out of the convergence of these different histories and spaces. As the film unfolds, cultural historians comment on the folk characters of the Crop Over festival, giving us an insight into their history and contemporary meaning. The contemplative nature of the film then changes as we are taken directly to the pinnacle of the Crop Over festival, Grand Kadooment Day. Surrounded by Mas bands, dancers and street revellers, we are submerged into the heady world of masquerade and the carnivalesque. Crop Over was commissioned by Harewood House Trust and the National Art Gallery Committee, Barbados, with financial support from the Arts Council of England and the Prime Minister’s Office, Barbados.  Download CV |  CROP OVER, 2007 |
Sponsors - Media Sponsors
