Category Archives: work

Enslaved House

The price assessment of a human being was deemed necessary to establish the amount to be paid to plantation owners as reparation to facilitate the abolishment of slavery. The planters calculated the economic worth of their plantations and were then renumerated by the British Government to grant their slaves’ freedom. The funds to secure payback were provided by the Rothschild family in the form of a £20 million pound loan highlighting the gross monetary imbalance during the 1800s cemented through colonialism, notwithstanding the grotesque contrast of a human’s fate contingent on aristocracy, lineage and birthplace. The Enslaved House Series merges ghostly images of an abandoned, dilapidated slave house in Exuma, The Bahamas with a lavish Rothschild Country Manor House, in Buckinghamshire, England. Built to entertain the elite and host royalty like Queen Victoria, Waddesdon Manor houses a renowned art collection epitomised by extreme wealth whilst the slave house does not. Painted Masterpieces by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Francois Boucher and Antoine Watteau accompany exquisite furnishings by Jean Henri Reisener, Beauvais Tapestries and Sèvres Porcelain embodied with the history of opulence and privilege.

The Enslaved House Series adopts the concept of the pentaprism through the intentional inversion of where the two houses overlap and where their contents and external spaces either fuse or become disparate and disintegrate. Each print is composed of fragmented images of the two houses which seem to float into the picture plane and blend with details of art or landscape to reflect the past back at us, redefined and through multiple gazes. Like the extravagant Reisener chest of drawers, and Francois Boucher painting which form the room built especially for Queen Victoria which has been superimposed over the unkempt backyard with honeycombed rocks and bush surrounding the decomposing slave house . Overwhelming disconnect exists between what has been taught and the truths currently being unveiled through re-examination of the documentation of this period. Is the viewer seduced by the architectural grandeur of the manor house and divine Proserpina Fountain or horrified by the termites nest, rotted walls and goats grazing on the parched remains of the small cotton plantation?

The bafflement of the coexistence of these events in time reflects the pentaprism. Through the exploitation of the enslaved a small few were able to thrive and prosper re-shaping our world, both physically and economically whilst others suffered. Through the pentaprism light is distorted and reflected back as is the past in these prints. This past is further bounced through to the present in some of the images when a capsized Haitian migrant vessel is introduced recalling that the current crisis in Haiti is too a direct result of historical enslavement and environmental eradication.

Image of a painting by Lynn Parotti

Green Fuse

Drawing upon the Dylan Thomas poem from which the exhibition borrows its name, Parotti’s oil paintings comment on the flow of energy which drives not only life, but simultaneously destruction. Her colour-saturated views of river cityscapes at night are described by rushes of electric light abstracted in oils. “I have always used water to describe concepts,” she says. “Water is a metaphor for the moral energy of people, time and place.” For her, the Thames is a powerful way of exploring ongoing themes of the temporality of life and her new works allude to the energy crisis and the fragility of our surroundings. These concerns bring Dylan Thomas’s poem to life in a new way, and highlight the contemporary relevance of his “green fuse”: that which fuels and delights us will also be our fall.

Image of installation by Lynn Parotti

Tar Baby

‘Tar Baby’ is derived from “The Wonderful Tar Baby Story”, the second of the Uncle Remus Plantation stories where Br’er Fox uses Tar-Baby (a doll made of tar and turpentine) to cunningly entrap Br’er Rabbit through trickery for his personal gain.

Thermal Expansion, Melting Glaciers and Polar Ice Caps, including Ice Loss from Greenland and West Antarctica are causing sea level rise.

Previously in 2010, the Mean Prediction of water level rise as 4.9 feet (1.5 metres) and was taken from reports & articles by; the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Dr. Orrin Pilkey (Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines (PSDS) at Duke University), the Department of Water Engineering, UNESCO-IHE Delft, The Netherlands, The United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009, Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. At this time skepticism about global warming and the subsequent sea level rise was rife and fuelled by personal economic interests.

According to National Geographic in 2016, “most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London”. Nearly a quarter of the world’s 7+billion population live with 100 km of the shoreline and within 100 m of sea level elevation.

Image of a painting by Lynn Parotti

The space between want

City States was a series of international exhibitions exploring the cultural dynamics between cities and states as a part of the Liverpool Biennial 2010 exhibited in the Contemporary Urban Centre. The Caribbean Pavilion featured: Three Moments and was derived from Stuart Hall’s essay ‘Modernity and Its Others: Three “Moments”. Symbolized by three Caribbean islands; The Bahamas, Martinique and Barbados – ten artists were selected on their ability to make work that responds to contemporary and historical global themes. Three Moments was selected and curated by Dominique Brebion (Martinique), Alissandra Cummins (Barbados), David A. Bailey (London), and Allison Thompson (Barbados) in collaboration with the ICF (International Curators’ Forum).

Parotti’s The Space Between Want was an installation signifying layers or interpretations of history from differing perspectives with an inconsistency of representation. Three aspects of perceived Bahamian attitude towards life were painted in oils on canvas: Caribbean sweet sex (Roadside Valentine), worship (Abandoned Anglican Church) and the desire for wealth (Haitian Migrant). Upside-down reflections of dock quays of colonial industry, shipping and finance were painted on glass and suspended in the centre of the space using shackles and chain (Seaforth Docks, Tate & Lyle, West India Docks, Canary Wharf).

Image of a commission by Lynn Parotti

Commissions

Ten large scale canvases for ESPA at Baha Mar Nassau, Bahamas focusing on light, water currents, historical links to sea, and underwater caves (The Luces Series).

Yellow Elder commissioned by private collector of Ocean Club Residences, Paradise Island, The Bahamas. Tacoma stans being the national flower of the Bahamas.