Quaker Arts Network are currently supporting a touring exhibition of Woolford & Woolford: No Relation - an ongoing creative project which uses wet plate photography to explore the artists' connections through historic Transatlantic Chattel Slavery.
"Filmmaker and photographer Mal Woolford, and actor educator, Charlotte Wilford are two collaborators connected by history, but not by family.
Their project, No Relation, is a powerful exploration of identity, ancestry, and the enduring legacy of transatlantic child slavery. Two neighbours who share the same surname and nothing else seemingly in common. A deeper investigation revealed that Mal's ancestors were settlers and slave holders in Barbados and British Guyana, while Charlotte may descend from those once enslaved in the Wilfred household.
The shared name became the starting point for an artistic partnership shaped by research, reckoning and radical empathy using a 19th century photographic technique known as wet plate collodion, incorporating materials like demarera sugar and focusing on image making as co-creation rather than control.
The work evokes absence and presence. The invisible threads that tie us to the past. How portraiture can challenge power, how art can bridge uncomfortable truths, and how two artists with no relation redefined connection through creative inquiry." *
Charlotte and Mal use the early photographic technique wet-plate collodion to make closely observed portraits not as photographer and model but as co photographers. They trouble the historic use of photography by exploring equal control and representation.
In 2024 Charlotte and Mal travelled to Guyana and made analogue photographs on the street and property in Georgetown where the enslavers and the enslaved Woolfords lived.
This exhibition of their work has been displayed at Greenbelt Festival, at Westminster, Southampton and Winchester Meeting Houses, and is programmed to be shown at Friends House London during Yearly Meeting 2026.
We welcome enquiries from Meeting Houses and other suitable venues who would be interested in hosting the exhibition in 2026.
photos credit and copyright Mal Woolford & Charlotte Woolford
* taken from this audio interview with Mal and Charlotte in an episode of the Artist's Tales podcast by Heather Martin