The Exiles

I grew up in West Bromwich in the 80s and 90s within a close-knit, working class, Punjabi community, absorbing the stories from my parents' generation who experienced the epic upheaval of emigrating here from India in the 1960s. Their memories of back home, the journey, and the life that followed — some first-hand and some second-hand accounts — coupled with general community gossip and my own observations, formed a complex history and mythology about a people and a place which is little documented. I don't consider myself a politically minded artist, but I'm aware the most political thing you can do is tell a story. I'm fascinated by the history and also the landscape of the Black Country — one which couldn't have contrasted more with the rural landscapes my parents' generation left behind in India. As the global birthplace of the industrial revolution, the Black Country was once the epicentre of the world, yet through the deindustrialisation of the 70s and 80s, my hometown of Smethwick has long been one of the most economically deprived parts of the UK. The canals, terraced housing, and decommissioned factory buildings that remain continue to speak of this history. These settings form an important aspect of my films and photographs — not so much as backdrops, but as actual characters in the work.

It's taken from a poem by the 19th century Spanish master, Antonio Machado. His work is introspective and stark and I find it powerful in capturing the themes of the great move, to which I'm drawn to explore in my work. I think I'm drawn to journeys, transitioning and moments of change in life's story arc — epiphanies, in particular. A threshold is an interesting concept — where you're neither in nor out, when there is no return from that point, but the journey still remains incomplete.

The title was inspired by the 1961 film by Kent MacKenzie, The Exiles, which chronicled a group of young Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in Los Angeles. The film captures the confusion and complexity of adapting to cultures and environments so different to your own. This scenario, and the way in which the characters struggle with a process of self-reckoning, was so familiar to me. Like MacKenzie's protagonists, each of my characters in Exiles are trying to make sense of their lives. Additionally, each find themselves exiled from where they came from — economically there is probably no way back, and if they could return, would they even fit in? At the same time, they are exiled from the place they now find themselves in, be that through a lack of acceptance by the indigenous population, or maybe through a personal struggle to connect with such a foreign land.

If you're to tell a story about the life of a person or a community, you need to consider the various contexts and spaces they exist within — the domestic space, the work space, the personal space, the social space. The first image made in the series was Dayshift (2019). In the foundry courtyard, the migrant workers take a break, away from the indigenous workers inside. They listen to their foreman who is asking them to cast their union vote. Due to language challenges, they are lost and confused. Some of these workers would go on to suffer from tuberculosis. The woman reading a letter in Day Shift returns again in the sewing factory. I remember that many of the women in my community worked there and these factories were unscrupulous places in terms of fair payment and health and safety. After work, the men would gather at the pub and drink pints of Mickey Mouse — half bitter and half lager. Due to their newly arrived status, bank accounts and loans were not available, so instead the men replicated the "cooth" banking system from India, where everyone would donate from their weekly wages, and at the end of the month, whoever had the greatest need would benefit. This system enabled families to buy their first homes in the UK.