Give & Take & Take & Take

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Acrylic and image transfer on canvas, whipping twine 90h. x 80w. x 10d. cm

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Sitting in her chintz armchair, D… would regale her grandchildren with stories about British India, apparently unaware that her upholstery was an anglicised derivative of Indian printed cotton designs, with cheap British copies manufactured from Caribbean slave-economy cotton undercutting Indian products and contributing to the destruction of India's textile industry. "We gave them the railways" she would say as justification for the British exploitation of the Indian sub-continent. This work superimposes the Indian rail network onto English chintz.