"When the artist Charmaine Watkiss was a child, she frequently visited G Baldwin's, a herbalist who sold natural remedies and essential oils in London's Elephant and Castle, to pick up medicinal herbs and sarsaparilla for her mother. They've had an apothecary for over 100 years, she says. It's a place Black women used as a resource in the 1970s and 80s. You'd say: I've got this ailment' and they'd recommend something."
"While in my studio, I thought: all this knowledge must have travelled with the enslaved. Thus began Watkiss's large-scale illustrated portraits depicting women of African descent alongside medicinal plants. Evoking historical botanical illustrations, the artist traces how the enslaved relied on herbal knowledge for survival. All this knowledge must have travelled with the enslaved' The Warrior mediates all the forces of nature by Charmaine Watkiss."
"Watkiss is talking ahead of an exhibition of newly commissioned works at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, where she was invited to create new work that engages directly with the institution's holdings. She immediately noticed an absence. I needed to respond to the West Africa display as the story of the diaspora was missing, she says. I needed to speak to the people who were taken away from the continent my ancestors and speak about the diaspora through material."
Charmaine Watkiss grew up visiting G Baldwin's herbalist in Elephant and Castle to collect medicinal herbs and sarsaparilla for her Windrush-generation mother. Memories of that apothecary prompted research into botanical links between the Caribbean, the UK and Africa and the transatlantic slave trade. Research led to The Seed Keepers (2021), featuring illustrated portraits of women of African descent paired with medicinal plants, evoking historical botanical illustration and tracing herbal knowledge that travelled with the enslaved. A commission at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum prompted Watkiss to address the West Africa display's absence of diaspora narratives through sculpture inspired by mukenga helmet masks.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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