Courtesy of the artist and Royal Mail.
We are very proud of gallery artist, Emma Prempeh, who is one of five British artist chosen by the Royal Mail to design a special collection of stamps to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush’s arrival at Tilbury, Essex. Prempeh, a London-based, British artist with Ghanaian and Vincentian heritage, explores interior spaces together with aspects of her personal history in her practice, reconstructing environments in an attempt to physically grasp moments of familiarity, expectation and nostalgia.
The collection of eight stamps were designed by five Black British artists of Caribbean heritage. Revealed at the Black Cultural Archives, located on Windrush Square in Brixton last Thursday, the stamps celebrate the 492 of passengers who disembarked from the ship ‘Empire Windrush’ to begin new lives in the United Kingdom. Travelling to the UK in response to the British Government’s call to citizens of Commonwealth countries to come to Britain and rebuild it after WWII, the Windrush passengers ushering in a new generation of migration from the Caribbean, South Asia, Africa and beyond.
Prempeh’s first stamp, depicting working women, references an actual image of the artist’s grandma on the right. She says, “it meant a lot to use an image from my own archives. She came to the UK in the early 60’s and there was no one else I could think more appropriate than her.” The second stamp is based on the Bristol Bus Boycott.British Caribbean culture has become woven into the fabric of the UK, and we look forward to celebrating Windrush Day and our artists of Caribbean heritage this Thursday (22nd June).
The complete set of stamps can be preordered from the Royal Mail website or will be available from this Thursday from local post offices.
June 19, 2023
