Colonial Imaginary

Limited Edition Prints in collaboration with Glasgow Print Studio  

"Rememory as in reassembling the members of the body, the family, the population of the past.” —Toni Morrison

"The postcolonial space is the site where experimental cultures emerge to articulate new systems of meaning and memory."                     —Okwui Enwezor

Colonial Imaginary is a limited-edition print series that excavates the spectral traces of colonialism across shared histories between Scotland, Grenada, and England. Drawing from contested archival fragments, this work reimagines the colonial record—not as static history, but as a living terrain of erasure, resistance, and remembrance. The 'contested' nature of these fragments lies in their political charge (their origins in systems of control and domination) and in the new meanings they take on when placed in dialogue with contemporary diasporic memory, embodiment, and lived experience. My work mines these fragments to question historical narratives, generate counter-histories, and open up spaces for relational meaning and repair. 

Several images in Colonial Imaginary are drawn from archival records of Paxton House—a stately home in the Scottish Borders, with historical ties to the transatlantic slave trade, and the Waltham Estate in Grenada. Ninian, nephew of Patrick Home, who built Paxton House, was sent to Virginia in 1749 to join his uncle George Home, a former Jacobite exile turned land surveyor and plantation factor. There, Ninian became embedded in networks of landowners and slave traders, and later worked in St. Kitts and Grenada, shipping cargo and enslaved people throughout the Caribbean. After Britain seized Grenada from the French in 1763, he acquired the 400-acre Waltham plantation, followed by a third share in the Paraclete estate. At the peak of his business, Ninian owned around 200 enslaved people at Waltham, and a further 56 at his small share of Alexander Campbell’s plantation on Mustique.

Embedded within the prints are fragments of paintings, maps, legal texts, and diagrams—now repurposed as a visual framework that carries the visual grammar of empire to interrogate the economic structures underpinning England and Scotland’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade; quantified bodies; territorial lines; ornamental flourishes that once symbolized colonial power and social hierarchies, vis-à-vis systems of control and representation. 

Colonial Imaginary is anchored in the entangled legacies of empire, slavery, and economic exploitation. It reconfigures visual and textual artifacts drawn from abolitionist debates and plantation records, most notably Thomas Clarkson’s infamous slave ship diagram, originally created as empirical evidence of slavery’s brutality. Rather than simply reproducing these materials, the series dismantles and reassembles them through a lens of critical play and counter-narrative, challenging the very apparatus of power they once claimed to uphold.

The prints also draw from a visual lexicon of imperial power, including Bank of England seals, Queen Elizabeth’s royal portraiture, and the Royal African Company seal. The usage of color is both symbolic and referential: drawn from the decorative schemes of Paxton House, with its refined hues of blue and pink inspired by the Chippendale collections (the second largest collection in the UK), and once symbols of British dominance and colonial opulence. Through this aesthetic strategy, the work interrogates how cultural symbols and seals, weighted with traumatic history, can be made to speak anew.  

These prints do not merely document; they reconstruct. They propose a rememory: a reassembling of displaced lives and fragmented legacies. This work challenges viewers to engage with the afterlives of empire, not as distant history, but as present memory in need of reckoning.

THE EDITION IS PRESENTLY ON EXHIBITION

GLASGOW PRINT STUDIO

JULY 4th — AUGUST 2nd

PAXTON HOUSE

MAY3rd — OCTOBER 31st

Colonial Imaginary No.1 Colonial Imaginary No.1
Colonial Imaginary No.1
$1,800.00

21.05 x 29 Ins -54.61 x 73.66 Cm

UNFRAMED

Edition 20+2 AP

Colonial Imaginary No.1 centers on a portrait of Robert Melvill—the first British Governor of Grenada following the island’s transfer from French to British control in 1763—painted by Scottish artist Henry Raeburn. Melvill’s likeness, on loan to Paxton House from the National Galleries of Scotland, is overlaid with a French colonial map of Grenada, creating a visual tension between competing imperial claims. Beneath it, Adam Callander’s rendering of the Paraclete plantation—partially owned by Ninian Home between 1764 and 1776—grounds the image in the brutal economic realities of Caribbean plantation life. Together, these layers expose the aesthetic and administrative apparatus of colonial authority.

Colonial Imaginary NO.2 Colonial Imaginary NO.2
Colonial Imaginary NO.2
$1,800.00

21.05 x 29 Ins -54.61 x 73.66 Cm

Unframed

Edition 20+2 AP

Colonial Imaginary No.2 overlays the frontispiece of Ottobah Cugoano’s groundbreaking Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species onto an engraving showing Cugoano alongside artists Maria and Richard Cosway, for whom he worked at Pall Mall, London. Above this scene, portraits of Richard Cosway, the Prince Regent (later George IV) by John Hoppner, and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano stand side by side—contrasting imperial power, artistic patronage, and radical resistance in the fight against slavery. 

Colonial Imaginary NO.3 Colonial Imaginary NO.3
Colonial Imaginary NO.3
$1,800.00

21.05 x 29 Ins -54.61 x 73.66 Cm

Unframed

Edition 20+2 AP

Colonial Imaginary No.3 weaves together potent symbols of transatlantic slavery: the Bank of England logo and Thomas Clarkson’s slave ship diagram, presented as scientific specimens. Etchings of sugar plantations appear as markers of history—exposing the economic engines that sustained and shaped the brutal system of slavery. 

Colonial Imaginary No.4 Colonial Imaginary No.4
Colonial Imaginary No.4
$1,800.00

21.05 x 29 Ins -54.61 x 73.66 Cm

Unframed

Edition 20+2 AP

Colonial Imaginary No.4 juxtaposes a Blackamoor marble sculpture with a stately portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), who financed early slave-trading ventures led by John Hawkins, receiving both royal ships and a share of the profits. The emblem of the Royal African Company—founded in 1660 and granted a crown-sanctioned monopoly over English trade along the West African coast—features prominently, exposing the deep entanglements of monarchy, commerce, and colonial violence.

Layered into the composition is a textual fragment drawn from Thomas Clarkson’s appeal for “a candid and impartial consideration of the sugar trade.” This phrase becomes a rhetorical pivot, highlighting tensions within the abolitionist movement: between reformers advocating gradual change and more radical voices (like Ottobah Cugoano, and Equiano), and fellow members of the Sons of Africa, who demanded the immediate and total abolition of slavery in all its forms. 

Glasgow Print Studio (GPS) was founded in 1972 as an artist-led initiative providing accessible workshop facilities and later a gallery space for artists making original prints. Now, as an internationally acclaimed centre of excellence in fine art printmaking, GPS promotes contemporary and innovative printmaking, supporting the development and expression of artists’ practices. Its state-of-the-art workshop lies at the centre of its activities, which encompass publishing and exhibition programmes, learning events, printmaking courses, print sales, and an archive.

GPS has a high-flying international reputation as a major contributor to contemporary printmaking. It offers facilities among the most sophisticated in Europe, attracts artists from all over the world, runs an ambitious exhibition programme, and provides a unique environment where famous names work alongside students or members under the watchful eye of master printers in etching, lithography, and screen printing. And alongside admiration for its professionalism lies affection, for the Print Studio holds a place in the hearts of many Glaswegians.

GPS is a non-profit-distributing company with charitable status registered in Scotland, funded by Creative Scotland and supported by Glasgow City Council.