TATE exhibition The Plant That Stowed Away
A TATE Liverpool exhibition inspired by the trading history of Liverpool is curated by LJMU contemporary art expert Christine Eyene.
The Plant that Stowed Away traces the connections between port cities like Liverpool and the global movements of plants and people.
Opening at the beginning of February at Tate + RIBA, it considers the battle between nature and our post-industrial landscape, and highlights how urban and natural environments have been changed by industrialisation, colonisation, and migration.
Taking a lead from photographer Chris Shaw’s Weeds of Wallasey, the display includes collage by French modernist Henri Matisse, the Afro-futurist photography of Cristina de Middel, Turner Prize-nominated artist Delanie Le Bas’s textile work and Kader Attia’s caustic film exploring our relationship with oil and sugar.
Christine’s curation cross-fertilises thoughts and feelings from an exhibition at the ERL, John Lennon Building, LJMU, running in parallel, called What the Mountain Has Seen on the theme of ‘Botanical Histories and Colonial Legacies’.
This project investigates the central role of Liverpool as port of call for American missionaries who travelled to Cameroon in the early 20th century, and were involved in forced labour as well as vegetal, mineral, animal, and cultural extractions to the West.
The display includes unique archival material, painting a picture of the experience of the people, living beings, and the land, alongside works by Cameroonian and British artists addressing the legacies of colonisation, generational trauma, as well as the reclamation of history and traditional knowledge in the process of collective healing.
The title What The Mountain Has Seen was first articulated as a personal statement in Seeds and Souls (Sept 2023 – Feb 2024), an exhibition curated by Eyene in Copenhagen, which took the figure of Mount Mbanga as a witness to the trauma of the land and its people across time.
Dr Eyene said: “The uniqueness of this research stems from the fact that it unearths aspects of Britain’s colonial history that have, so far, been overlooked. It also goes beyond a generalising approach to the study of colonisation by focusing on a clearly identified territory and community, ancestral to (my) own lineage.”
What The Mountain Has Seen (7 February to 23 May, 2025) is the research exhibition behind The Plant That Stowed Away (6 February to 11 May, 2025).
Tate Liverpool can now be found at RIBA North, Mann Island, while its Royal Albert Dock home is temporarily closed for redevelopment.
- At LJMU Eyene teaches BA and MA Exhibition Histories and curatorial practices from an African and Diasporic perspective. She leads the modules 'Art and Representation' (BA) and Major Project (MA). She is also accepting doctoral students whose PhD projects coincide with her areas of research, including: contemporary African and Diaspora arts, arts from the Global South, feminism, photography, non-object-based art practices particularly sound art and embodied practices; art in rural environments, art and botany, socially-engaged art initiatives, and urban culture.
IMAGE: Henri Matisse, The Dancer 1949. Tate. © Succession Henri Matisse/DACS 2024.
