SiR Hugh Springer: A life, a legacy

This commissioned project began in 2023 when I was selected as the artist to create the monument dedicated to one of Barbados’ National Heros and one of All Soul’s first black fellows. A significance now in the spotlight due to recent reckoning of who and how we remember as significant to shaping the educational, political, and economic landscape of the past. It has been a new venture to create work with such a focused subject and I am honored that I was the selected artist, trusted with something so important and delicate. My own practice has been mostly about fantasy and the deconstructing of imagination, ideals and desires within the landscape. Therefore this is where my inspiration for this project came from, along of course with my research into Sir Hugh Springer, his life and achievements. In Peter Wohlleben’s book “The Hidden Life of Trees” he talks about “tree friendship”. A beautiful discovery that when a tree dies and leaves behind its stump, that stump is not in fact a dead empty thing. But rather it continues to be fed nutrients from its neighboring trees. The tree stump doesn’t simply decompose and become fodder for scavenger organisms. Rather, it is kept alive, in sense, by it friends and by its community for sometimes centuries after the tree fell. This struck me as an apt metaphor for the death a man whose work and legacy clearly still remains today and is fed by those who are still here and by projects like these. Therefore what I created is a garden. A site of cultivated community, relationship and friendship with Sir Hugh Springer at its center. Amongst the multitude of figurative busts and portraits at All Souls, I wanted this work to stand out as representative of more than a likeness. It is about a spirit who grew, bore fruit, served and ended not simply as a lone individual but amongst a circle of such spirits. The black tinted glass, in colour, is a rebellion against the traditional white marble busts of the aforementioned portraits. As a black man, who also faced racism throughout his time, the colour of the glass creates the lens under which his life was seen and governed. This did not diminish his value. As a son of an independent country during a period of time where post colonial identity was forming, it was most significant to embrace his race at the forefront of his generation forming this new identity. Sir Springer’s diverse career as a lawyer, administer, organizer, educator and scholar, all carried the powerful commonality of the importance of the pen and the written word: his own and that of his studies. As a modern hero of the 20th Century, his weapon was not a sword but the pen, with which he wielded his intellect, opinions and governance. It also reflects his effort to further the educational endeavors of others, in the commonwealth and beyond. Symbolically, the paper with which the work is constructed, represents the material on which the pen revealed its strength. A strength support by registrars ink, an ink traditionally used for officiated documents.

Sir Hugh Springer: A life, a legacy This monument is dedicated to Sir Hugh Worrell Springer (22 June 1913 - April 1994), a lawyer, organiser and first general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union. He was the first black Senior Visiting Fellow at All Souls College in 1962. With 15 honorary degrees, he was a champion of education in his country and community and the first Registrar of the University of West Indies, Jamaica and later became its Director. He ended his astonishing career in the highest political office in his country: Governor General of Barbados. He was posthumously named a National Hero in 1998. This artwork seeks to spotlight his life as a monumental figure in the formation of the Barbadian political landscape and his enthusiastic involvement in education for the region and the wider world.

With special thanks to Sokari Douglas, Stephen Springer, Factum Arte, Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Archive