Spotlight Series: The Keeper of All The Secrets: Ceramic Art, Botanicals and the Caribbean Market Woman

The Keeper of All The Secrets: Ceramic Art, Botanicals and the Caribbean Market Woman centres around a new work in ceramic by contemporary artist and writer Jacqueline Bishop. Featuring original essays, poetry by Bishop and an extensive interview with the artist, the book considers the role and significance of the market woman, who enabled others living under colonialism to take control of their reproductive agency. With The Keeper of All The Secrets, the artist subverts the traditions of commemoration associated with the medium, using it instead to probe the legacies of colonial plantation systems and the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans, and to celebrate the knowledge and resistance of a female figure who has, until now, been critically overlooked.

Victoria Lane is Senior Curator, Art and Identity at
Royal Museums Greenwich. She has developed her
socially engaged practice through working with a
range of contemporary artists.

Errol Francis is Artistic Director of Culture&, an arts
charity working to open up who gets to make and
enjoy arts and heritage. He is also Honorary Visiting
Fellow at the Research Centre for Museums and
Galleries, University of Leicester.

Angela Billings is studying for a PhD at the
University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies.
Her research considers the fragmented afterlives
of Jamaican and British heritage sites from the
perspective of those who identify as Jamaican.
She was formerly Development Director at Culture&.

Jacqueline Bishop is a New York-based artist and
writer born and raised in Jamaica. Her work has
been exhibited in Europe, the USA, North Africa and
Jamaica. She is the author of a novel and a number
of poetry and short story collections.

• Authors: Victoria Lane, Errol Francis, Angela Billings and Jacquline Bishop
• Publisher: Royal Museums Greenwich
• Publication Date: 13 March 2025
• ISBN: 9781739154264
• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• Pages: 96