Following on from the previous blog, which focused on a woman from our historical collections to coincide with International Women’s History Month, we’re taking a look at contemporary artworks by women artists in the Bradford District Museums and Galleries collection.
Themes of identity, in its many different forms, run through the works collected here. Film, photography, ceramic, drawing, and sculpting are all used to reflect on the experiences of the artists themselves, and of the women they have worked with and observed. The lives of refugees in different parts of the world, the complex histories that have created diaspora communities, and concerns around language and family identity are present alongside reflections on community, motherhood, and the unsung importance of everyday tasks.
Read on to find out about the work of four women artists from the Bradford collections, all of which have been newly added to the collection since 2020.
Sarah Maple
During 2024 Sarah Maple worked as artist in residence at Bradford District Museums and Galleries. She created new artworks based on Bradford’s collection, her mixed cultural upbringing, and the experiences of Bradford residents.
Her video work ‘Mother Tongue’ reflects on the importance of language, heritage, and cultural ties. Maple herself grew up with her mother’s Punjabi-speaking family, but never learnt the language herself.
‘My Grandmother spoke no English… and we were incredibly close, even though we never had a full conversation… I felt like this distanced me from my cultural identity as an Asian person. I thought this work would resonate with many people who never learnt their Mother Tongues.’
The setting of the film echoes photos from Belle Vue Studio . Many newcomers to Bradford had their portraits taken there from 1926 until it closed in 1975. The Belle Vue collection is held at BDMG’s Photo Archive and can be seen online .
In her second work, ‘Plait Performance’, Maple created a body of 7 photographs in which she is portrayed standing within Bradford Museum and Galleries’ buildings. She is wearing a contemporary Punjabi outfit with a 10-metre-long plait – a reference to her grandmother who always wore a long, traditional plait. She is alone in these grand spaces that store, as well as present, artworks and objects in the Bradford Museum and Galleries’ collections. In all photos except one, Maple is seen from behind, passively viewing the collection items and the building as her plait trails to the floor and snakes away from her body, as if escaping. This represents the feelings of first-generation migrants on their arrival to Britain from countries with different climates, architecture and cultures.
These artworks were acquired thanks to Bradford District Museums and Galleries being part of the 20/20 project a 3-year programme led by the University of the Arts Decolonising Arts Institute with funding from Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England and UAL.
Esna Su
Esna Su’s work explored ideas of identity and memory, and how these are shaken when people experience political instability. Coming from Antakya in Turkey, near the Syrian border, she embeds her family’s heritage into her work through using traditional Turkish weaving techniques to create wearable sculptures.
In 2021 Esna created an extra artwork as part of her ‘Burden’ series especially for Bradford District Museums and Galleries. Called ‘The Burden’, it was created in response to the experience of displacement suffered by people in Syria. Millions of Syrians have been forced to abandon their homes and flee the conflict of the Syrian civil war since it started in 2011. Over 3.7 million Syrians are now refugees in Turkey, and many of these ended up in Esna’s hometown of Antakya. Observing them, she reflected on how their lives had become isolated from their homes yet filled with the hope of returning.
The sculpture was made using tanned vegetable leather – it closely resembles skin, linking the artwork to the body. Esna moulded the knitted leather cords around a collection of cherished objects, so that the leather held the unique shape of each item. The artwork reflects the shapes of the precious objects people would carry on their backs as they left home, and the bag that would contain them. The shapes of the objects are a reminder of a life left behind. They are an invisible but burdensome reminder of the past that also contains a hope for return and the hope of finding a place of safety.
‘The Burden’ was presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 2021/22. CAS membership funded by the Friends of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.
Charmaine Watkiss
Living in London, Charmaine Watkiss’ work draws on her Jamaican heritage and on research relating to the African Caribbean diaspora. She draws herself as a way of relaying stories and speaking about collective experience, creating what she calls ‘memory stories’ that look at themes of ritual, tradition, ancestry, mythology and cosmology.
In 2021 Bradford District Museums and Galleries were able to add two of Charmaine’s drawings to the collections with the support of the Contemporary Art Society – ‘Knowledge Keeper’ and ‘We Are Here’.
In ‘We Are Here’ a woman – based on Charmaine but not meant to represent her – wearing a black dress holds a cat’s cradle. If you look closely, you can see that the dress is covered in stars, and that the shape of the strings in the cat’s cradle create a star shape. Charmaine says of the work that it is ‘[an] exploration of time, both in the making and in the enquiry. The time spent making the drawing and the questions around our notions of what time and space in relation to our universe is.’
‘Knowledge Keeper’ links to ideas of divination and the African cosmos. Charmaine described the work as ‘exploring the legacy of the creation of the African Diaspora through the act of colonialism combining motifs around voyage and space’. Her use of the colour blue in the work links to her research into the long history of indigo. In West Africa, indigo dyeing dates back to the 11th century. Among the Yoruba women of Nigeria a distinct technique developed called Adire, which has become a symbol of heritage and women’s entrepreneurship. The production of dye from indigo plants was commercialised and exploited via the transatlantic slave trade. It was produced on plantations worked by enslaved people throughout the Caribbean until the end of the 18th century, for the financial benefit of Europeans. Watkiss’ work also makes connections with the sacred use of indigo in multiple ancient African cultures, her choice of colour reflecting the overlapping and contradictory histories of this one natural resource.
‘Knowledge Keeper’ and ‘We Are Here’ were presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 2020/21. CAS membership funded by the Friends of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.
Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 2024/25. CAS membership funded by the Friends of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.
Emilie Taylor
Emilie Taylor is a potter based in Sheffield. Much of her work involved projects with vulnerable communities, with a lot of her ceramics reflecting on the experiences of women.
The large pots, Savage Ground I and Savage Ground II, were created specially for Bradford District Museums and Galleries. Emilie worked with people at the Refugee and the Women’s allotments, part of Scotchman Road Allotments in Manningham, and developed the imagery on the pots. They show scenes of women working the land in the modern urban landscape and of women caring for their children, alongside everyday objects such as a washing backet and a plastic garden chair, set against a view of buildings from Bradford.
Emilie was inspired by objects in Bradford District Museums and Galleries’ collection, including paintings of buildings, and those showing women and children working in the landscape – she was particularly drawn to On the Dykes by William Lee Hankey, painted in 1910.
She was also influenced by examples of slipware pottery that were made in the villages to the west of Bradford. Some of this pottery celebrates important men from the past, showing records of their achievements in painted decoration and sgraffito (a technique where lines are scratched into ceramic). To contrast with this, Emilie wanted her new pots to show the important but overlooked work that is done by women and mothers.
‘Savage Ground I’ and ‘Savage Ground II’ were presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 2024/25. CAS membership funded by the Friends of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.
