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| Eric Huntley speaking to a group of people in the Walter Rodney Bookshop (C) Syd Jeffers |
Personal Insight: Dr Michael McMillan reflects on his role in curating the Walter Rodney Bookshop. McMillan is a writer, playwright, fine artist and curator of Caribbean heritage and his work often explores migrant narratives and identity. Previous installations such as The West Indian Front Room (2005 – 06), The Living Room of Migrants in the Netherlands (2007 – 2008) and A Living Room Surrounded by Salt (2008) consider the domestic manifestations of race, aesthetic and identity within a physical environment, reanimating the artefacts and experiences housed within them.
As a second generation Caribbean migrant descendent,
born and educated in the UK, I, like many of my peers, was searching for an
identity in the culturally and politically charged environment of British
society and the African diaspora. We were here to stay and many, including
myself, would eventually affirm being Black British, amongst other identities. Personally,
part of this journey was searching out spaces where black arts and culture (theatre,
literature, music, dance, poetry, and film) were being creatively expressed. Amongst
the places that I often visited were bookshops in London such as New Beacon,
Grassroots, Headstart, Soma, Centerprise, Sabarr and the Walter Rodney
Bookshop. It was a space where I lost myself discovering books that reflected
my experience in the diaspora and where I met others of a similar mind-set and
spirit. I also remember Jessica and Eric Huntley as committed stalwarts of the cultural
revolution taking place at that moment. Therefore, when Colin Prescod and
Margaret Andrews approached me from FHALMA to recreate the Walter Rodney
Bookshop installation, I relished the opportunity to revisit a seminal moment
in my life.
An intensive research process soon began. I immersed
myself in the Huntley Archive at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA),
meticulously collected by Jessica and Eric themselves. The experience has been
one of discovery, rediscovery and revelation. This informed the construction of
a narrative, which will be communicated through the interactive and multi-media
material culture of the Walter Rodney Bookshop. This has also affirmed the
intrinsic importance of the archive in black diasporic histories, whose cultural
and political experience has often been misrepresented.
Having curated The
West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum 2005-06), I am interested in the
aesthetics of the black diasporic domestic interior and popular culture of the
1970s. Like all good things, Bogle L’Ouverture Publications and the Bookshop
began in Jessica and Eric Huntley’s front room. Though they eventually moved
into commercial premises, the sense of home pervaded where writers, audiences,
readers and the community engaged in a creative yet informal atmosphere. This
was radical, this was revolutionary and this still has resonance today. Creativity
is about responding to limitations and it has been a pleasure for me to
consider, design, source materials and dress the installation.
Curating, like all creative practices, is collaborative
and the process has been a team effort with FHALMA as commissioners, LMA
providing source materials and the Guildhall Art Gallery housing No Colour Bar
exhibition of which the installation is key element. As a free-lance
practitioner, it is often a challenging working within different organisational
cultures and operational structures, but it is as a learning experience, collaborating
and working with practitioners from diverse specialisms.
One of my aspirations as curator is that visitors
engage with the Huntley Archive, not as a collection of inanimate things, but a
living force mediated by the spirit of Jessica and Eric Huntley. I hope that
through their experience, visitors go home and relook at their collections of
photographs, letters and documents in suitcases, boxes, lofts, and cupboards. They
should also be curious and quiz their elders and begin to value them as living
archives as part of the rich tapestry of the black British and diasporic
experience.
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| Front of Walter Rodney Bookshop London Metropolitan Archives Huntley Collection ref: LMA/4462 |
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