Of Plastic Ducks and Cockle Pickers: African Atlantic Artists and Critiques of Bonded Labour across Chronologies

Abstract

This article examines the inter-relationship between the historical Transatlantic Slave Trade and contemporary forms of human bondage. This essay explores Kei Miller's poem, 'When Considering the Long, Long Journey of 28,000 Rubber Ducks' together with installations by the black British artist Isaac Julien, to show how each make links between past and present oppressions to create works that are both effective critiques of the excesses of contemporary capitalism and memorials to the victims of the historical trans-Atlantic slave trade. It discusses the memorialisation of the deaths of the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers in 2004 as a key moment in navigating between past and present exploitation.