Wendy Morris: This, of course, is a work of the imagination

The LGC is proud to announce the exhibition of our member and artist, Wendy Morris.

In 1917 the SS Mendi sails across the English Channel towards France, laden with black South African soldiers. After a collision the ship sinks. Over 600 men drown and no one comes to their help. The disaster fades in the turmoil of the Great War that is raging.

In the exhibition the story of the SS Mendi is used as a pars pro toto. It stands for a much bigger story that leads the public towards the complex history of South African segregation, a story that does not fail to touch on the colonial Western attitude towards the African continent during the First World War. A hundred years later, Wendy Morris looks back in an exhibition in which animated film, video and poetry explore the boundaries of past and present, myth and reality. The century-old shipping drama is no longer part of the landscape. Imagination offers solace. This, of course, is a work of the imagination.