Lewisham: About Face

The Migration Museum is exhibiting a new installation by multidisciplinary visual artist EVEWRIGHT as part of this year’s Windrush 75th anniversary commemoration and celebrations, exploring the artist’s own perspectives on growing up in Lewisham as the child of parents from the Windrush generation.

Lewisham in south-east London has always been a place where migrants from all over the world have gravitated to, especially from the Caribbean since the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948. The area remains a hub for Caribbean communities: in the 2021 census, 10.8% of Lewisham residents identified as ‘Black, Black British: Caribbean’, the highest proportion of any local authority in England and Wales, while a further 2.9% identified as ‘Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: White and Black Caribbean’.

Lewisham: About Face, EVEWRIGHT’s new site-specific multimedia installation, reflects on the places and the forgotten heroes of Lewisham’s past and present that have shaped the artist’s life. It pays homage to his mother, Clarice Reid, and the influences of his father, Lindon Wright. His brothers and sisters and other key local individuals also feature as part of a discourse of what it means to be Black and British today.

The Art installation along with audio and video is on display now till July in the windows of the Migration Museum in the heart of Lewisham Shopping Centre, a focal point for youth culture when the artist was growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s, which remains a popular community destination today.

EVEWRIGHT says:

“With Lewisham: About Face, I want to share my living story, my memories growing up in Lewisham and being influenced by all the people and places that make up the tapestry of my life. A lot of people from the Caribbean moved to Lewisham, including my family. Lewisham market fed us, the cheap housing held our large families, and for us young people it was a destination to go and party.

“I want to move the conversation about Windrush on. It’s not about that one white boat, it’s about the people who got off that boat and others following it, and what happened to them – and to their children, and their children’s children. And for many of us, Lewisham is at the heart of this story.”