A global reception: the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

Joy Labinjo’s large portrait of Ignatius Sancho pays homage to the first British African to vote in 1774. It also acknowledges the significant connections between Sancho and the site of the FCDO building. Born into slavery and brought to England, Sancho became an acclaimed writer and composer, significantly influencing the abolition movement. He started his own business as a shopkeeper on Charles Street in London, close to where the FCDO building is today (click to see the plaque on the building commemorates his shop).

Labinjo draws from the only known portrait of Sancho – a small painting made in 1768 by Thomas Gainsborough (now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). The process of repainting and reimagining Sancho’s portrait has involved a complex dialogue between the artist and her subject. Her brushstrokes bring warmth, movement and vitality to his image. Experimenting with shade, colour and solidity, she discovers new possibilities in a face that had been fixed into a single portrait.

Matthew Darbyshire’s puzzling sculpture calls into question a globalised, single understanding of taste and cultures. It recreates ‘the retail experience’ that any consumer might have in any high street in the UK.

Three IKEA shelves hold neon-coloured objects of high and low value: two plastic beakers from Marks & Spencer, a multicoloured plastic slotted puzzle from the V&A in London, a plastic Orange mobile phone tree motif, a blue glass figurine of Jesus.

Other items include original objects that have been recast in plastic: an antique blue goblet, a blue Buddha head and a lime green hookah. The shelves mirror a shop display, collapsing cultural identities into a sanitised commercial presentation.

Visitors come face to face with two striking photographs by Sutapa Biswas. These are from Lumen, a semi-fictional film which tells the story of Biswas’ family sea voyage to England. The artist’s personal history of migration overlaps with other maritime histories, from the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, to post-emancipation British colonial trade and post-colonial migration.

Biswas’ stills show the rich interiors of the Red Lodge Museum (part of Bristol Museums) that housed prominent Bristolians associated with the slave trade and the abolition movement. In the film, the protagonist delivers her monologue framed within a mirror, a symbol of cross-generational experiences.

Isaac Julien’s Fantôme Créole Series (Papillon No.1) engages with the past to uncover stories of migration, mapping people and cultural traditions across the world. Dating from the sixteenth century, the hand-painted buildings illustrate an aspect of striking historical architecture in Africa. The activity of painting buildings continues today during annual festivals organised by women of the village. The work is part of a photographic series that is related to a film installation (Fantôme Afrique) that Julien made in 2005. While travelling in Africa, Julien visited Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, primarily to attend its internationally renowned African film festival. It was during this trip that he visited Tiebele and was inspired by the rich cultural heritage of the area. Julien chose French to describe the sewing machine’s name, recalling the country’s former existence under French colonial rule.

Tacita Dean’s Foreign Policy urges us to reflect on global relations: the cloud, whose symbolism gives us both dark warnings and silver linings, is universal, and yet defined by its environment.

Yinka Shonibare’s print Hibiscus and the Rose invokes a cultural exchange in a vivid encounter between two red flowers: the hibiscus as a symbol of the Commonwealth and the rose as a symbol of England. British Nigerian Shonibare is best known for his use of bright, highly patterned Dutch wax fabric. Seen here through cutouts in the print, this fabric was popularised in West African societies and mass produced in the Netherlands.