RIP DEVON JENSEN WALLACE.
“I used the term ‘concrete roses’ in reference to the people who have led beautiful lives against all odds, yet at the same time these concrete roses may live out their lives in what migh be deemed as unsavoury, ugly, violent, or stigmatised places. Concrete roses bloom in the hoods, the banlieues, the estate and the projects of different cities. The main thing I was thinking about with the idea of the concrete rose, is situating concrete roses in my artistic practices a way of paying homage...
It’s a way of paying homage to essentially what are my dead family, friends, neighbours and comrades who I have witnessed to live out livelihoods defined by struggle. So, I used the term ‘concrete rose’ as a metaphor, conceptually, theoretically, and artistically.”
[Extract from photo-essay zine. For sale via the Peso Bodega Store]
Drawn out from an auto-ethnographic practice-based project entitled: Kings Hill, Dominica: Framing Ideas of Home, Heritage and Belonging [working title].
[KEW GARDENS, DOMINICA’S BOTANIC GARDENS AND MARTINQUE’S JARDIN DE BALATA GARDENS]
Shot in London in March 2024 as a way to practise my photography with tropical plants, these initial photographs of Kew Gardens Palm House will be complemented by a series of photographs made with Dominica’s Botanic Gardens. This collection of photographs will also draw on a developing Global Black Geographies auto-ethnographic project I am committing to with the locale of Kings Hill Dominica and Dominica’s own respective Botanic Gardens.I am interested in exploring King’s Hill due to my unexplored familial connections to the locale. King’s Hill is my mother's former home before she migrated to the U.K. It is also currently a home to extended family who remain to live on the island. The creation of a geographic practice-based body of work is the primary aim of this project, which I intend to freely share with archives/libraries in Dominica and the U.K.
Comprised by 40 acres of former sugar cane plantation fields to the east of Roseau, Dominica’s Botanic Gardens were set up by a series of British and Kew Gardens based curators who travelled to the island in the 1890s to orientate the gardens towards economical and experimental activities through the cultivation various ornamental plants, whose origins spread across the globe. My practice-related approach to this auto-ethnographic body of work will see me explore framing ideas of home, heritage and belonging through a visual attendance to Dominica’s natural and man-made landscapes.
Dominica’s original name is ‘Waitukubli’ which means ‘tall is her body’ and this name was bestowed upon the island by the indigenous Kalinago people. These photographs serve as a means of visually attending to Dominica’s natural landscapes and the locale of Kings Hill. Kings Hill Dominica is a small suburban community located beside Dominica’s capital of Roseau. Kings Hill is also the locale that my family have called home since the early 1960s and it is where I stayed for 31 days earlier during April/May in 2024. This locale was named in honour of the monarch of the day King George III and part of this hill (Morne Bruce Viewpoint) was used as the location of a British military garrison.At the foot of Kings Hill resides a catholic cemetery, a savannah and Dominica’s National Botanic Gardens, from which you can walk into Roseau, Dominica’s capital city. Prior to being a locale occupied by the botanical gardens which are usually spaces associated with green imperialism and colonialised inceptions, the 40 acres of land that makes up the gardens were previously a part of the Bath and Rose Hill sugarcane estate and former plantation.
I made this series of field recordings, which I then mixed and mastered into a soundscapes mixtape as a means of attending to the natural and manmade sounds and ambience that score everyday life on the nature isle of the Caribbean: Waitukubli/Dominica. Having visited Dominica intermittently for a practice-based, geographic project [entitled Black Geographies of Kings Hill], I’ve been building up a small archive of audio-visual materials comprised by photographs, film footage, field recordings and handwritten observations and reflections.
Press play below to listen to the mixtape. Throughout it you will hear the sounds of many mornings, afternoons and nights spent in and around Kings hill [a neighbourhood located just outside of the island’s capital Roseau], you will also be able to listen to dialogues I had with interlocutors on the island, birdsongs, conch shell calls, the ever present roosters, nyabinghi drums, bubbling sulphur lakes, the ebbs and flow of sea waves lapping meeting the shore and so much more. Please do enjoy, share with others who may appreciate the natural sounds and mad love for reading listening people.[Press play to listen].
