October 2007

It is one of the Western world’s oldest festivals, dating back to the 1780s when plantation workers proclaimed the end of the sugar crop with feasting and dancing in the plantation yards.

In 2007, Harewood House Trust commissioned artist Sonia Boyce to create a multi-screen video work interrogating the histories of the festival and Harewood House.

The film consists of a sequence of performances by symbolic figures central to the festival. The split-screen film includes a series of interviews with historians and cultural critics, archival material relating to plantation life, footage of festival revellers, Barbadian folk characters and intangible cultural heritage including Mother Sally, Donkey Man, Shaggy Bear, Tuk Band, Tilt / Stilt man and the Landship, alongside footage shot at Harewood.

Sonia Boyce’s interest in Crop Over carnival lies in the fact that it is a public festival directly originating from the conditions of plantation life in the Caribbean, unlike other carnivals that have been co-opted from the religious festivals of Lent.

The film, complemented by drawings, was displayed in the former Terrace Gallery in October 2007 to celebrate Black History Month. Alongside the performance Carnival Messiah (14-30 September 2007), this exhibition marked the Bicentenary of the British Abolition of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved People.