In the 17th, 18th, 19th century people just said Gypsies
That typically meant Romani people but not always
Where we might say GRT: Gypsy, Romani and Traveller people or
Romanies and Travellers, we have a think about who we were describing before describing them
I'm Delaine Le Bas, I'm an artist I'm Damian Le Bas and I'm a writer
My name is Lois Brookes-Jones and I'm an activist
I'mm interested in how we light on the idea that artists often fetishise certain things
about Gypsy and Traveller culture because I can't help but take a slightly wry
view of it because I feel like we often fetishise the same things ourselves when it suits us
We're drawn to the same semi-unrealistic images of ourselves as other artists and representers
of our own culture I've found that interplay within myself and within the depictions
quite interesting
Each of them are a time stamp for how society viewed the community so what
you're saying is that like there is a like almost historical footprint of where society's been at
from the perspective that we are there, we are here to like be able to critique and bring to
light and say about what that represents about the time, what they thought about the community
like what's happening, like what's actually happening and whether it's a proper depiction
whether it's a false stereotypical one but having it there shows that ability that it happened and it's
almost evidence for us throughout time to be able to say and like even in a creative sense like
this is what society thought of us at the time and here's the proof, it's there, the person who
made it is a living embodied example of how they see us through their gaze and through their eyes
How I became an artist, that is quite a interesting story, I mean there wasn't much idea of me going
on even going to school I'm the oldest of five, I'm the only one who finished secondary school
I decided quite early on that i wanted to go to art school, I was really into music actually it was
music that motivated me and I just was interested in clothes initially and that's why I went to art school
When my late husband Damian we actually met at Worthing Art School so I was about 18
So I spent most of my life making art either independently or with him and him doing his own
work as well and then we worked on a couple of major artworks together and we traveled around
Europe a lot building these installations that were about that, about precarious circumstances
and that we could all end up living like that basically irrespective of what strata of society
you come from so it wasn't particular to any one group of people in a way
This work is called Rinkani Pani which is English Romani for 'beautiful water' and it's a mixed media installation and it's about
many things even though it's called 'beautiful water' I'm in the countryside but it's like
'where's the water?' there so it's also this idea of being somewhere and you can't
necessarily access the things that are so easy to access if you live in bricks and mortar
I've always thought about this because a story that runs through my family is when my grandmother
first moved into a house my great-grandmother who never lived in a house she lived outside
her entire life, someone turned the tap on in the house and she told them to switch it off
because they were wasting the precious water and so that's something that I've always thought about
It's also about trespass in a way as well because obviously it's about
being mobile but static and also who controls the mobility of all of us in a sense
What Turner's up to in this one which I find really intriguing you can barely see the Gypsies
referred to in the title, they're in an area of land and shadows so dark that it could be
underground it could be an underworld
I've noticed that in the context of Gypsies and
Travellers in these historical representations a lot of it can sometimes feel like the
community just blends into the scenery and blends into whatever kind of rural landscape that it's in
as opposed to being individualised people
He also did portray people in other situations as well so
in one of the sketchbooks it's got a Gypsy getting into a water taxi going over to the Thames which
for me was really important because it was also this idea of us being in the city as well not just
in a rural landscape, I work outside most of the time anyway when I can so it's like in some ways
that feeds into that because that's what I do, it also happens that I haven't got a studio so
the biggest studio space i have is the garden or being outside so that's part of that but
it's also because that's how I... I did grow up being outside a lot, I really see that space as important
to me as an internal indoor space as well so for me the two spaces are... I don't really see
the difference between them they're just somewhere that I can do whatever it is I need to do in a way
An artist who often did depict Gypsy people at close quarters and I think not coincidentally
left records of who they were, so often we know the names of the people who are being depicted
This is a painting of a Mr Smith, we don't know his first name
I like this painting because he seems
to be looking for something which is beyond his depictor
I think that that is possibly
the difference with some work when it's much more about the person and
also when they have their name there's something about... I mean it still happens now people
are often doing paintings or even photographic depictions and here's never any name
and it's like someone gives you especially when you're painting a portrait or taking a
photographic portrait someone is really giving you something of themselves to allow you to do that
The dress is made of a photographic print that is images of my Great Uncle Eddie my Great
Granny Pachie, me as a child, a plant that we grew during lockdown in a small glass bottle
and also some poppies that self-seeded and were coming out of the pavement when lockdown first
happened also poppies were my Great Uncle Eddie's favourite flower so everything's got
a meaning on it, also the photograph of me as a child I'm in this little florally trouser suit
with little pink shoes on and I've got very short hair and I'm running in space
because I like to see myself as a universal adult now but also as a universal child
So Chris Killip's Seacoal photographs which have an interesting genesis because he had to
work very hard just to get into a position to take the photographs to win the trust to the people who
were harvesting but these pictures I think once seen are not easily forgotten
It's the early 1980s, when I look at some of them I see I experience this weird feeling
of a sort of collapsed timeline of Britain where people appear to be doing something that belongs
in another era entirely you know Killip I think described it himself as a place
where the middle ages and the present intertwined and of people who may or may not be Gypsies or have
seen themselves as that but harvesting something which is not associated with Gypsies which is coal
I think what's interesting about them is the intersection with the local mining community
and how working class history intertwines with that perhaps of Gypsy and Traveller history as well
Also as well this idea of really getting to know the people so when you're actually
working with them and spending time with them then that means also the sort of depictions
of whoever it is as well I think take on a completely different quality because of that
because I think there's a different way that it becomes about a different way of seeing for me
I was born in 1998, when I look at these images although it's not
a similar thing it gives me kind of a window into things that I wasn't really around to kind of
experience like for example my mother would always go on about she was fruit picking from the age of
three that's something i couldn't personally relate to because I was never involved in that
I could never see it, I never got to see images of her and the family doing that and I think seeing
these images of people collecting coal and you know a lot of like graft and work
it gives you a window into what that could have been, throughout a lot of history
we've had to rely on the depictions and narratives of other people to kind of show that we're here
and what that was like and what that looked like, I think when you have these like individual
portraitures it makes us more than just kind of like a part of a wider thing or something
to be observed almost in an animalistic way but actually to be seen as a person