About the Exhibition (extract from the information board)

“Valda Jackson was born in Jamaica and now lives and works in Bristol. Her parents were part of the Windrush Generation and, like many other children from the Caribbean, she was “sent for” to join them after some years apart. Her lived experience, together with research into children’s neurological development, is reflected across the works in this exhibition. Each piece sensitively bears witness to the emotions of both children and parents, especially mothers and daughters, during their separation.
As a writer and artist, Jackson returns repeatedly to the complexities of the migrant experience, her own and others’ stories. “Miss Polly” is a touching yet also troubling figure. Each variation of this small child reveals a spirit of adventurous independence and the experience of painful limits. The absence of choice, but presence of hope, that Jackson has described in her own mother, is also there in the child.

Jackson’s “Miss Polly” returns us to the point at which each life story, including our own, begins to take shape: a place where possibility and legacy are held in delicate balance.”