Chapter Six – Racism (2001)

(extract from the original text for the exhibition catalogue: ’AfterShock: Conflict, Violence and Resolution in Contemporary Art, 2007)

As I write this it has been almost 14 years since the murder of Stephen Lawrence and eight years since the publication by the Home Office in 1999 of the McPherson Report or, as I prefer to call it, quoting The Right Reverend Dr. John Sentamu, now Archbishop Sentamu, the Stephen Lawrence Report. The stark reality is the Home Office version of the case (a report that demands authority) will be entombed in official literature for future generations long after newspaper reports, related documents, oral accounts, and indeed books have become supporting material and footnotes filed in future archival systems. I want to be clear about my position on this: in my mind, justice has not been done. The report has left a legacy of bitterness and a smoldering feeling of resentment that I suspect will be passed down through the blood to many future generations of black men and women as a defining moment of being black in Britain at the end of the 20th century. In my mind, it stands as a marker of race relations along with the riots in Brixton (and nationwide) and the still ‘unsolved’ teenage deaths in the Deptford fire in 1981. The residue of conflict seeps through bodies and minds. This, I think, is the After Shock that the inclusion of my work attends to.