Accompanying the bunting installation is Revelations, a sculptural work named after a popular British suitcase brand of the 1950s. The work consists of nine limestone casts of suitcase interiors, created from a material quarried in Smethwick. Grouped together, the sculptures evoke an imagined gathering of people on the move, suggesting stories of passage, departure, and arrival.

 

Lines drawn from What Lies Beneath Us are inscribed onto limestone tablets that lean against the cast suitcase interiors. These fragments of text connect the physical act of migration with themes of belonging, memory, and connection, offering insight into the emotional journeys that these imagined travellers might have undertaken.
 

Displayed collectively, the sculptures reference ancestral journeys to the region and evoke the presence of those who arrived with few possessions. Yet the suitcases remain ownerless, suggesting the absence of the generation who made these journeys during the 1950s and beyond. While many of those travellers are no longer living, their descendants form an integral part of Smethwick's community today. The works therefore speak simultaneously to presence and absence, memory and inheritance, connecting past migrations to the contemporary lives of the town's residents.

 

Through material, text, and form, Revelations explores migration, displacement, connection, and inherited histories, reflecting on the ways personal and collective narratives continue to shape communities today.

 

Special thanks to the technicians at the Birmingham School of Art, Charlie Bently Beard, Lee Cadden, and Justin Sanders.
 

An especially wholehearted thanks to Gay Place, whose time, expertise, and incredible specialist knowledge were instrumental in making this project possible.