​

 

Flints are the solidified burrows and boddies of England's earliest aquatic inhabitants. These were the original inhabitants of England.

​​

​

​

​

​

Flint extraction, cutting flint, is England's oldest and first industry. It started in prehistoric times. (this is an aerial view of a prehistoric mine)

​​

​

​

​

​

​

Piling flints on top of each other, how the earliest common land in England was taken into private ownership, creating a landless class and swelling the landed gentry.

 

 

 

Many municipal buildings are made of flint.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knapping (cutting flint) was so poorly paid and dangerous that the flint knappers' song is the song of an imprisoned citizen saying conditions under state supervision in a "lunatic" asylum are better than in this employment.

​

 

 

 

 

 

Dust raised by cutting flints caused the world's first industrial deaths.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The flints were cut and loaded in barrels to be sent all over the Empire to fire guns.  Each flint creates a thousand sparks,  potentially up to a thousand deaths. 

​

 

These stones were dropped all over the colonies when they stopped sparking to fire guns. They were used in rifles and even the first automatic machine guns.

​

 

 

 

I have hand coloured these stones in groups with inks that mirror the colours of the ancestors lost.  This is a group action that first took place at the international curators forum Brixton.

​

I have also co-led a hand colouring at Yale University Black Women's Coalition.

​

The stones are suspended in a scaffolding that serves as a model of Empire which was built of us. 

​

The model points to ways in which we can undermine empire. A clear visualisation of the problem is in part the solution.

​

 

 

​

​

​