THE EMPTY PLINTH June 2021
Following the removal of the statue of slave owner and merchant Robert Milligan from its plinth at West India Quay, London in 2020, this project engaged with the vacant plinth as a site of charged absence.
Situated within docklands shaped by colonial extraction, the empty plinth disrupts the earlier, uncritical commemoration of wealth accumulated by enslavement. In 2021, a mural based on my collage The Disposal of Milligan was proposed for installation adjacent to the site, as a form of counter-commemoration, reconfiguring the public memory of Milligan as one of critique and refusal, rather than celebration.
The Disposal of Milligan
Colston Deposed
The Empty Plinth
