To Desir, Mo Lamor

'To Desir, Mo Lamor' marks Shiraz Bayjoo's  second solo exhibition with Copperfield.There are no native people to some of the islands in the Indian Ocean. The only natives to a place like Mauritius were the animals and plant life that came before the first humans. When they came they brought with them enslaved and indentured workers but they also brought change.

Stepping beyond a purely human centred point of view Bayjoo draws our attention to the other victims of the plantations, with an exhibition that forms a multi-part memorial to the many lost species, some of which exist now only in drawings, while others are maintained on ‘life support’ in the green houses of botanical gardens around the world.

While Bayjoo’s work is critical of human intervention — and predominantly European interference in the name of profit — it also carries with it a nod to the other side of humanity. Somewhere right now there is a person nurturing and tending to a plant that otherwise would not exist. With a little consideration humanity could have avoided the need, but nonetheless someone cares and has continued to care from the point these preserved species no longer existed in the wild. It is with this same kind of care that Bajyoo carefully immortalises each plant in installation, on canvas, in ceramic and in sculpture.

During a residency in Thailand he was invited to work with a foundry that works otherwise only to make statues for temples, and it is with this particular reverence that he has cast many of the plants included in the exhibition and following these local Thai traditions. Another material loaded with significance is French Lace. Draped over his canvases, this white crochet made from cotton is synonymous both with plantation slavery and with the lavish tables it graced in the name of civility. Metaphorically and literally, the table was set and much of the world devoured.