Doing nothing is not an option

This is an installation-based exhibition that used The Battle Bus, a sculpture made by Sokari Douglas Camp in memory of Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995.

2015 marked twenty years since Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed, alongside eight Ogoni colleagues, who campaigned against Shell’s exploitation and destruction of the Ogoni people’s land in the Niger Delta, Nigeria by drilling for oil.  

Action Saro-Wiwa was a global tour organised by Platform London, who commissioned British-Nigerian artist, Sokari Douglas Camp, in 2005 to create The Battle Bus, a large-scale mobile interactive steel sculpture topped by oil drums and etched on the outside with the words of Saro-Wiwa’s final ‘I Accuse’ the oil companies speech.

Peckham Platform - Photos courtesy of Rehan Jamil 2005.

After ten years touring the UK, The Battle Bus arrived in Peckham Square where the award winning designed Peckham Library is located and Peckham Platform gallery on 25th June. Peckham Platform commissioned me to create a site specific (responsive) piece that would explore experiences of belonging, displacement and the racial implications of gentrification in Peckham, with a large Nigerian community, which is known as ‘Little Lagos’. 

This included large scale photographs of The Battle Bus’s exterior and interior taken by photographer Sam Roberts, and displayed as wallpaper on different walls of the gallery. This was complemented by two mobile kiosks made from reclaimed wooden pallets placed on either side of a wall. One housed an interactive energy experiment work-station, and the other, a homage to Nollywood with a display of shop bought DVD covers as well as a monitor showing clips of ‘Basi & Co’, a 1970s television drama series written by Ken Saro-Wiwa. 

I worked with group intensively at Theatre Peckham, which was then based in Peckham Library, to create a devised series of poetic vignettes, dramatic sketches and choreographed dance and song sequences that explored their experiences of living in Peckham. This culminated with their presentation on Saturday 27th June that used the exterior and interior of the Bus as sites of performance. Film of the performance and young Black passers-by reciting passages from Saro-Wiwa’s speech inside the Bus was projected onto a wall in the gallery.   

A few days later, The Battle Bus moved onto Nigeria, and the Niger Delta as an act of solidarity with the Ogoni people.