Cotton Slave Adam and Eve

Framed pair of textile works - 'Cotton Slave Adam' and 'Cotton Slave Eve'. It explores British connection with the slave trade, through the examination of cotton as a metaphor for today's global trade in 'sweat-shop' merchandise and garments. Kettle maintains there is a thread connecting enslaved people on the plantations, through the establishment of manufacturing and the industrial revolution, to the contemporary economy of the UK. The major difference today is that manufacturing is now carried out in other parts of the world. The western appetite for cheap clothing is fuelled by prosperity and the exploitation of cheap labour elsewhere.

Cotton Slave Adam shows the historical reference to the plantation worker, as producer of cotton. He is made of old cotton tablecloth and the cutwork is almost like tattoos, branding iron marks and symbols of circular trade of enslaved people and cotton across continents. He has a square across his stomach symbolising a packing box, where the cotton is traded and exported. The silver threads on his stomach are his guts and they symbolise raw material produced by him for Cottonopolis (metropolis of the 19th century textile production in Lancashire). The figures stitched onto the background with symbols and patterned pieces are references to the textiles that will be made from the cotton he has produced and their exchange for the new workforce in Africa.

Cotton Slave Eve shows the contemporary worker, manufacturing garments for the western market. She is made of new tablecloth and represents modern enslavement in India and Bangladesh that supplies cheap clothing for the western market. The background has text reproduced from the newspaper cuttings, which refers to the poor conditions of sweat shop working and names British high street shops selling clothing at low prices which keep the factory workers in poverty and slavery. Eve is holding her baby as she has to support her child through the factory work and the red cotton thread can symbolise her blood and an item of red clothing she is producing.