Annalee Davis: A Hymn to the Banished
Research Studio, Wardlaw Museum, University of St Andrews
Wednesday 5 June – Sunday 1 September 2024
A Hymn to the Banished (2022) is a multi-part print edition by the Barbadian artist Annalee Davis. The work takes its departure from the landscape of Balmacara in the Scottish Highlands, drawing a thread from 1800 when Francis Humberston MacKenzie, landowner of Lochalsh and Kintail in northwest Scotland, became Governor of Barbados. Known as Britain’s first sugar isle, Barbados’ economic prosperity was built on the labour of enslaved African people, white indentured servants, both men and women, and the sugar trade.
A Hymn to the Banished insinuates an interlacing of imperial linkages between Barbados and Scotland, inferring centuries of social disruption caused by the plantation system and the colonial project. With the forced transplantation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved African people and numerous Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English indentured labourers, systems of knowledge and rituals crossed the world’s ocean currents, building new cultures in the Caribbean. British imperialism imposed banishment and generated suffering. Yet deep knowledge and a desire to heal profound traumas elicited practices that relied on ancient traditions connected to the land, and the remembering of sacred rites.
The nine prints that make up A Hymn to the Banished explore notions of rupture, friction, entanglements, and the need to belong through rituals of incantations, charms, and the desire to repair the ills of British Empire-era indentureship and transatlantic chattel slavery. A Hymn to the Banished is a secular prayer recognising the intuition, knowledge, customs, and tenacity needed to confront and survive cruel, brutal conditions.
A Hymn to the Banished was commissioned by the National Trust for Scotland and printed in collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Studio. An edition of the work was acquired by the University of St Andrews Collections and Museums in 2022; this is the first time the work has been on display at the University of St Andrews.
Exhibition Programming
Please join us on Wednesday 5 June 2024 from 3.45-5.30pm for an in-conversation event with Annalee Davis, Dr Jillian Sutherland and Dr Ariadne Collins. Full details and booking here.
On Thursday 5 June 2024 please join us for the related object handling session held in collaboration with the St Andrews Preservation Trust. Full details and booking here.
Exhibition Resources
For those interested in finding out more, this list of resources has been put together by Catherine Barrie and Citlalli Alcaraz-Curtis through the St Andrews Research Internship Scheme (StARIS) scheme.
Encompassing academic and scholarly texts, novels and poetry, these sources cover a wide range of topics relating to Davis’s work, including colonialism and imperialism; the enslavement and forced migration of African people by European colonisers and the triangular trade; the integral role played by Scotland in British colonialism; indentured labour from Europe and Asia; independence; emigration to Britain; the Windrush generation and scandal; contemporary art networks; ecocriticism; and ecological approaches to art practice.
A selection of these texts, together with a range of other related books and writings, are available inside the exhibition display at the Research Station. You can also read Citlalli’s blogpost about A Hymn to the Banished here and a reflective piece about the work by Annalee Davis here.
Acknowledgements
This display has been curated by Laura Brown, Sandra De Rycker and Catherine Spencer. With thanks to Annalee Davis, Ariadne Collins, Citlalli Alcaraz-Curtis, Catherine Barrie, Marion Ferguson, Annis Fitzhugh and the staff of DCA Print Studio, Patricia Noxolo and Jillian Sutherland. It is supported by the St Andrews Centre for Contemporary Art and Scotland’s Future Series. This activity is part of a wider research project that was selected by the European Research Council (ERC) and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with project reference: EP/X023036/1. It is coordinated by the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews in collaboration with the International Council of Museums (ICOM)’s International Committee of Museology (ICOFOM). For more information, please see the Transnational Island Museologies website.
Places We Love: Art and the Ukrainian East
St Andrews Botanic Garden
Saturday 16 July – Sunday 24 July 2022
Places We Love: Art and the Ukrainian East features the work of four contemporary Ukrainian artists: Viktor ‘Corwic’ Zasypkin, Masha Pronina, Oleksandr Kuchynskyi and Darya Tsymbalyuk. Ranging from photography to montage to painting, these works provide insights into industrial heritage, pre-war cityscapes, the violence of military incursions, and the multiple lives and loves of the Donbas region. Donbas (Donetsk Coal Basin) is an industrial region in the east of Ukraine, which since 2014 has been partially occupied by Russia, and where war has been ongoing for eight years.
Places featured in this exhibition are dear to the artists. Many of them are now being destroyed by the Russian military.
Artworks will be on display in The Garden Bothy and The Pergola.
The exhibition is accompanied by a weekend print sale, with all proceeds going to Ukrainian artists.
Places We Love has been organised by the Centre for Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and East European Studies and the Centre for Art and Politics at the University of St Andrews, and kindly hosted by the St Andrews Botanic Garden. The exhibition is co-organised by Catherine Spencer, Darya Tsymbalyuk, Victoria Donovan and Kate Cowcher.
Places We Love has developed from the book Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics and Donbas (Kyiv: Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung, 2022), written by Victoria Donovan and Darya Tsymbalyuk with Dmytro Chempurnyi, Viktor ‘Corwic’ Zasypkin, Oleksandr Kuchynskyi and Katerina Siryk.
Places We Love Artists
Viktor “Corwic” Zasypkin
Viktor ‘Corwic’ Zasypkin is an artist and graphic designer from Donetsk, and co-founder of the artist collective zhúzhalka group. Working in a range of media, particularly photography, his work has chronicled the changing landscape of Donbas region. His work here is from three series: Donetsk: Home, Sweet Home (2012), Postcards from Rzhavchino (2014) and The Pink Sky of Donetsk (2020).
https://cargocollective.com/corwic/Info
Oleksandr Kuchynskyi
Oleksandr Kuchynskyi is an artist who was based in Sievierodonetsk until the 2022 escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Oleksandr’s work has documented the de-industrialising landscape of eastern Ukraine, and he is the founder of the Instagram account <<Індустріяльний рай>> or Industrial Heaven, a visual archive of Donbas region. Places We Love features six works from the De?Industry series, based upon the collections of the Mariupol Local History Museum.
Instagram: @industrialheaven, @olexkuchynskyi
Masha Pronina
Masha Pronina is an artist from Donetsk. Displaced by the war, she is currently moving around Ukraine assisting children and teenagers, an extension of her art therapy work with traumatised young people. She previously worked at Platform TU, an art center in Mariupol that supported teenagers from marginalised groups. Exhibited here is work from a series entitled «Я вам покажу декоммунизацию» or I’ll show you decommunisation. Individual titles were lost as Masha moved between cities.
Instagram: @ibupron
Darya Tsymbalyuk
Darya Tsymbalyuk researchers, writes and draws. Born and raised in Mykolaiv, for the past four years she has lived in St Andrews. The visual work that she presents here engages the palaeobotanical history of Donbas region, as well as reflects on the ongoing Russia’s war on Ukraine. Darya completed her PhD at University of St Andrews in 2021, and her dissertation focused on human-plant relations in stories of displacement from Donbas.
