Hwangyeong in Corean means environment, a recurrent theme in Jimmie Durham’s practice.

The work is a development from his assemblage Spring Fever at Tatton Park, as part of the Tatton Park Biennial 2010 and the Universal Miniature Golf exhibition at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios, held as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010.

An assemblage of displaced and seemingly leaky oil drums refer to Durham’s personal history as a Cherokee, highlighting the struggle of the Native Americans to keep their traditional grounds in America. While oil drums have a universal relevance, with the petroleum they contain infiltrating almost all human activity - from the manufacture of clothes to birthday candles, and its place in all forms of communication – for Durham they are also linked to the enforced movement of the Cherokee people by the US government.

Durham: “I have a more personal connection to petroleum in that when the US drove my people from our old home in the Carolinas they allowed us land in Oklahoma. In little more than fifty years that land was also taken away and soon became the first large oilfield. Today the Cherokees are the second largest Native American group, but with no reservation, no land base at all.”