Unpacking Trade, Migration, and the Environmental Legacies of Colonialism
‘The Plant That Stowed Away’ installation view. (Left) Chris Shaw, Weeds of Wallasey series, 2007-12; (Centre) William Daniel, Seacombe Ferry, Liverpool and Liverpool, taken from the Opposite Side of the River, 1814-25; (Right) Atkinson Grimshaw, Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, 1887. © Tate (Gareth Jones)
At Tate Liverpool, ‘The Plant that Stowed Away’ explores the entangled histories of trade, migration, and the natural world. Moving outwards from Liverpool’s maritime past, the display traces the movement of people and plants, revealing how industrialisation and colonial legacies continue to shape urban and ecological landscapes.
Curated by Dr Christine Eyene, Research Curator at Tate Liverpool and Senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, the display brings together historical and contemporary works, including photography by Chris Shaw and Simryn Gill, as well as pieces by Henri Matisse, Wangechi Mutu, and Lubaina Himid. Through these diverse perspectives, ‘The Plant that Stowed Away’ highlights the resilience of nature and its complex relationship with human history.
In this interview, Eyene discusses the display’s themes, its connection to Liverpool’s past, and the wider implications of colonial histories for our environment today.
‘The Plant That Stowed Away’ installation view. Chris Shaw, Weeds of Wallasey series, 2007-12. © Tate (Gareth Jones)
ART AFRICA: The title ‘The Plant that Stowed Away’ evokes notions of hidden histories and untold stories. Can you discuss how the title, inspired by Chris Shaw’s photographic series, reflects the broader themes of the display and its connection to Liverpool’s trading past?
Christine Eyene: While we are showing work at RIBA North, Tate Liverpool’s theme for displays is Art, Architecture, and Environment, and ‘The Plant that Stowed Away’ is embedded within that. This echoes our reflection on the relationship between our collections, buildings, and environment: our local communities and our physical environment, which is urban, maritime, and connected to local nature.
Against this background, Assistant Curator Kate Haselden and I drew from the Tate Collection to create a display that translates Liverpool’s historical and contemporary contexts. Doing so meant considering Liverpool for what it is: a long-established port city that has seen the transit, or movement, of people and goods for centuries. It is also a city whose history of trade has resulted in urbanisation that has impacted nature and our ecosystem, both locally and globally.
We know from historical documents and the botanical gardens still present in the city that plants were part of the material that travelled to Britain for botanical research. But we also know that seeds and plants can sometimes travel accidentally, without our knowing.
In his series Weeds of Wallasey (2007-12), Chris Shaw, born in Wallasey, near Liverpool, has documented the region’s urbanisation in a very poetic way through his photographs and the accompanying texts handwritten on his prints. The image and words inspired by the title, ‘I See No Ships but the Plant that Stowed Away…’ naturally spoke to Liverpool’s experience and the exhibition theme. The display seeks to convey this poetic approach.
Chris Shaw, I See No Ships But The Plant That Stowed Away, 2007-12. © Chris Shaw
The exhibition explores links between Liverpool and the Global South through the lens of botanical and colonial histories. How do you hope the display will challenge or reshape public understanding of Liverpool’s role in global trade, colonisation, and environmental transformation?
Liverpool has addressed its past and links to global trade for many years. The display was developed simultaneously with a research exhibition entitled ‘What the Mountain Has Seen’, presented at the Exhibition Research Lab (ERL) gallery based at Liverpool School of Art. This project unveils an unknown chapter of Liverpool’s role as a connecting point between matter extracted from Central Africa—specifically in the village of Lolodorf in Cameroon—and North America. This has never been shown before in Liverpool.
Both exhibitions speak to each other. The ERL includes archival material dating from the 19th century. The Tate Liverpool + RIBA North display features historical artworks by William Daniell and Atkinson Grimshaw from the same period. Daniell’s Liverpool taken from the Opposite Side of the River and Seacomb Ferry, Liverpool from his Voyage Round Great Britain (1814-25), relates the city’s thriving maritime activity. Grimshaw’s Liverpool Quay by Moonlight (1887) is a nuanced depiction of the city’s emerging urbanisation with shops advertising produce directly resulting from slavery.
Atkinson Grimshaw, Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, 1887.
Both shows include artists whose heritage is situated in the Global South, whether they are based at home, in the West, or in Britain. Each of their work expands on maritime narratives, the movement and symbolism of plants, nature resilience, and extraction from their cultural perspectives. Both projects take visitors from Liverpool to faraway places affected by significant cities that have had, and sometimes continue to have, an ecological impact elsewhere in the world.
Simryn Gill’s Channel series in Malaysia is presented in dialogue with Chris Shaw’s work in Wallasey. What motivated the inclusion of these parallel landscapes, and how do you envision the contrasting geographies enhancing the narrative of globalisation and its environmental consequences?
The dialogue between Chris Shaw’s Weeds of Wallasey and Simryn Gill’s Channel series (2014) does exactly what was mentioned just now: it takes the visitor from the local context to faraway places, from here to elsewhere. 
‘The Plant That Stowed Away’ installation view. Simryn Gill, Channel series, 2014. © Tate (Gareth Jones)
Several images in Shaw’s series feature truncated views of ships and docks. While we do not see factories, one considers an industrialised area. We know that goods transported on ships end up in other parts of the world. This long journey and geographical distance are translated in how both series are displayed, on opposing sides of the exhibition space but facing each other.
Both series are mirrored in their grid layout. They are both set in port regions. The scenes are predominantly unpeopled, emphasising the plants and mangroves growing respectively in Shaw’s hybrid urban and maritime landscapes and Gill’s maritime landscapes.
Another interesting aspect is that both series are analogue photography, which is a statement on creative practice and the hand of the artist. Chris Shaw’s are black-and-white gelatine silver prints. Gill’s are both black-and-white silver prints and colour prints on Ilfochrome. These were, in fact, her last stocks of this paper, which is no longer manufactured.
Colour is essential here as it creates a visual contrast between both series. The images are very pleasing to the eye. But as one gets closer, one realises that the colourful elements, which from a distance looked like flowers, are, in fact, textile and plastic waste entangled in branches.
Gill’s series clearly shows pollution invading nature in a mangrove forest on the coast of Port Dickson in Malaysia. As in Shaw’s images, the presence of a ship in one of the prints conveys the global nature of this environmental impact. 
Henri Matisse, The Dancer (La Danseuse), 1949. © Henri Matisse © Succession Henri Matisse/DACS 2014
Several works in the exhibition, including those by Henri Matisse and Wangechi Mutu, explore the hybridisation of plant and human forms. What is the significance of this blending in the context of The Plant that Stowed Away, and how do these pieces speak to questions of identity, migration, and environmental change?
The works you refer to are The Dancer (1949) by Henri Matisse, and You were always on my mind (2007) by Wangechi Mutu. At the centre of Matisse’s piece is a semi-abstract form that suggests the shape of a leaf. The French title, La Danseuse, indicates that it is a female dancer.
From his vast work, we know that Matisse was interested in dance. This artwork, therefore, must be understood in relation to his other pieces dealing with this theme. For instance, in 1950, he created a cut-paper collage entitled Danseuse Créole (Creole Dancer). Sources cite French writer Louis Aragon, who claimed that the piece was inspired by African American dancer Katherine Dunham, whom the artist had seen perform.
There is an interesting dialogue between Matisse and Mutu’s creative processes. Notably concerning collage as a practice. Hybrid figures have been a distinctive feature in Wangechi Mutu’s work for a long time. This piece comprises found images including a man dressed in Middle Eastern clothing, an animal skeleton, a fish, coral, and flowers, all making two heads on top of the other. They are set against a background that is very textural in its making and, in parts, resemble moss. One also recognises women’s features through the eyelashes, lips, and hands.
Wangechi Mutu, You were always on my mind, 2007. © Wangechi Mutu
Both works are also to be viewed in relation to Lubaina Himid’s painting Underwater Plant Life (1995-2008) and Delaine Le Bas’s textile work Talay O Puv, O Zeisko Tan Part II (2021), which, in Romani, means “Underground is where the heart is”. Himid’s contain various sea life elements such as sand, seashells, flowers, and also portraits of Black men who could convey the idea of the anonymous bodies and souls lost at sea in the past and present. At the same time, the main feature in Le Bas’s work is a green female figure, the artist’s, surrounded by various motifs typical of her iconography referring to Mother Earth, space, creatures and forms from her mythology.
If we take the perspective of how Romani communities interact with land beyond borders, all that connects to the human experience in terms of personal identity and the movement of people, for instance.
Cristina de Middel’s Afronauts series addresses themes of land exploitation, climate change, and space exploration. How do these futuristic and speculative narratives contribute to the exhibition’s conversation about colonial histories and environmental futures?
Cristina de Middel’s Afronauts (2012) is based on historical documents of the unsuccessful space programme initiated by a science teacher named Edward Makuka Nkoloso in Zambia in 1964. The series fictionalises this project. The selected images suggest an imaginary extraterrestrial world in a desert-like environment where animal, human, and plant life are scarce. They bring us back to contemporary issues around land and the extractive nature of space exploration. 
‘The Plant That Stowed Away’ installation view. Cristina de Middel, The Afronauts series, 2012. © Tate (Gareth Jones)
We are faced with a project that emerged after the country’s independence but somehow sought to replicate similar forms of colonial occupation, albeit in space.
Here, it is not so much about seeking out space as a potential safe place, a solution to African or Black survival, as one would find in the ideology of Afrofuturism. It is more about situating Zambia and Africa in the global race for space exploration.
However, the series still uses ‘Afrofuturist’ visual elements. Ultimately, it translates the ambiguous relationship between photography and truth.
What strategies are you using to ensure that ‘The Plant that Stowed Away’ engages local audiences in Liverpool and those interested in global environmental and post-colonial discourses? What role does this display play in fostering a deeper public reflection on the interconnectedness of nature, trade, and human histories?
As I mentioned, ‘The Plant that Stowed Away’ coincides with the exhibition ‘What the Mountain Has Seen’, which emerged from research into my family history in a forest region in Cameroon. What unfolded was entirely unexpected: the land coveted by the Germans, Americans, French and British colonisers; accounts of migration and forced labour; Liverpool as a connecting point for the movement of extracted vegetal produces and minerals; and how this place and other evergreen forests in the world have the potential to teach us about nature and the importance of caring for it and preserving it. These resonate with current environmental debates.
Both projects are also about how personal history speaks to the collective experience and how the local connect with the global. Shaw and Gill present landscapes from places to which they have personal ties. Likewise, British-Mauritian artist Shiraz Bayjoo’s film Ile de France (2015), presented at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North, and his installation Pu Travers Sa Dilo (2023) at the ERL, are grounded in Mauritian history. They both address European maritime expeditions, the vegetal legacy of slavery through overgrown plantations, maroon resistance, and the island’s independence. 
‘The Plant That Stowed Away’ installation view. Delaine Le Bas,Talay O Puv, O Zeisko Part I, 2021. © Tate (Gareth Jones)
Through our talks and other public programme events, there are many opportunities for local audiences and those far afield interested in the environment and post-colonial discourses to engage with both displays.
For instance, Chris Shaw and I will be in conversation at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North on 26 March, and on the following day, I will give a lecture on my research in Cameroon at the ERL. Various workshops are also planned with diverse groups of participants. It is also fair to say that ecology and decolonial practices are topics of interest shared with other colleagues at Tate.
The displays and their public programmes are ways to connect with people who want to engage in these conversations. Both projects seek to foster a space for dialogue and sharing knowledge.
It is about how, one way or the other, we are all affected by the past and present exploitation of land and the social, economic, and political ramifications of trade. As Chris Shaw writes in one of his prints: ‘We are all connected’.
The exhibition is on view until the 11th of May 2025. For more information, please visit Tate Liverpool.
