CLARE CHUN-YU LIU // Archival materials of John Anthony

ARCHIVAL MATERIALS OF JOHN ANTHONY

CLARE CHUN-YU LIU

This talk centers on my art project John Anthony (c. 1766-1805), a sound-based work of historical fiction constructed on the basis of archival materials in London and pertinent literature. I will discuss having archives as a source for revisiting history and reconstructing lived experience – as well as its limitations in artistic practice.

It is little-known that the English East India Company’s Chinese employees migrated to east London as early as in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Among them, John Anthony (c. 1766-1805) was the first Chinese person to become a British citizen. Arriving in Britain in 1799, Anthony was one of the earliest Chinese residents in the then British Empire. Wealthy and widely respected by both EIC and the Chinese community in London, he managed to be naturalised through an Act of Parliament in 1805. His job required him to look after Chinese sailors at a time when the EIC employed seamen from various countries including the then Chinese Empire.

Some of Anthony’s legacy has left a footprint in British archives: a written account of court hearing in which he was involved as an interpreter for a fellow Chinese worker and visual material of his will hand-written in 1805, the same year he died. As there was no photography in early 1800s and there is no record of Anthony in Chinese/Chinese language archives, my project seeks to compile a cross-cultural historiography around Anthony’s life and legacy with reflexivity.

—

Clare Chun-yu Liu is a Taiwanese artist filmmaker and researcher. Clare is Postdoctoral Researcher at Brno University of Technology in Czech Republic and Research Fellow at Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in Germany. She has presented her research at Oxford University, Central Saint Martins and University College London, as well as her films at the ICA London, EXiS, Image Forum Festival and Kasseler Dokfest. Her article on the Brighton Pavilion has been published by the British Art Network.