As Above So Below

Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a multidisciplinary artist and fourth generation Australian South Sea Islander, whose practice delves into the cultural memory and shared histories of the Great Ocean (Pacific) slave trade. Her practice is heavily grounded in extensive archival research to examine the historical practice of ‘blackbirding’, a romanticised term for the stealing and forced coercion of Great Ocean people to Australia for indentured labour on sugar and cotton plantations. She is particularly interested in investigating the complex relationships of power, cultural identity and political systems, to address the complexities of contemporary South Sea Islander culture in and outside of Australia.

As 'Above So Below' 2022-2023 is an installation that appropriates the global image of the underbelly of a slave ship, and the pressed-tin and elaborate ceiling panels for which the Sydney-based Wunderlich family were renowned. These Wunderlich architectural accoutrements are now considered heritage listed features in civic buildings across Sydney, and more broadly, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Behind their ornate façade lies a fraught history that has resonance for the artist: Togo-Brisby’s ni-Vanuatu great-great grandparents were ‘blackbirded’ from Vanuatu and taken to Sydney, where they were ‘acquired’ by the Wunderlich family for domestic work.

As 'Above So Below' reference to well-known illustrations of the lower decks of slave ships is Togo-Brisby’s efforts to align herself with artists who are descendants of the transatlantic slave trade, to explore similarities between coerced labour, the plantation experience, and the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This image traces back to the eighteenth-century British abolitionist 1789 engraving 'Description of a slave ship', a schematic representation of the crowded lower deck human cargo hold of the slave ship Brooks that could transport as many as 609 enslaved Africans to the Americas during any one journey.

The ship takes form from the assemblage of 366 plaster cast Vanuatu Tam-Tam drums. Amongst the largest musical instruments in the world, these carved drums usually stand over three meters tall and are buried into the dancing grounds of villages, vertically. These drums are played ceremonially for major social and religious events, such as initiations and funerals. Togo-Brisby has used this form as a comment on the drum as objects of cultural souvenirs both collected by international tourists and Australian South Sea Islanders on their journey to their islands of inheritance, but also as a nod to the metaphorical journey that articulates the perseverance of enslaved peoples who survived the Great Ocean slave trade.