For Emily Hobhouse

Easiflow 100, dye, talc, slate powder, MDF & grout, 96 x 46 cm, Artist’s Collection

This work was based on a Winchester Rifle from a museum archive of historical objects. The rifle belonged to a Boer soldier called Eloff, who in 1900 was sent to put down the siege of Mafeking during the Boer War between the British and the Boer’s (South Africans of Dutch heritage). The British ran 45 concentration camps in South Africa that were responsible for the deaths of 28,000 Boer women and children and 20,000 indigenous South Africans. Over 326,000 horses died. Emily Hobhouse bravely reported the appalling conditions to the British government, which tried to deny responsibility. The rifle and related metaphorical objects representing those who lost their lives in the camps are transformed into trinkets within an ironic decorative pattern in Dutch Delftware tiles. These tiles report Emily’s ugly truths. The patterns transform into a series of cartwheels, reflecting the Boer’s farming heritage; the Delftware tiles are emblematic of their Dutch ancestry.

The Human Rights Series offers a voice for those treated as less than human, and reflects resurfaced experiences of my earlier career as a young medic working at the Khao-i-Dang refugee camp in Cambodia following Pol Pot’s brutal regime.