Artist Charmaine Watkiss in conversation

London-based artist Charmaine Watkiss and Exeter-based writer Fiona Williams will be in conversation to celebrate Watkiss’s new commission for RAMM. Expect to hear about medicinal plants from Jamaica as they share their thoughts about creativity, identity and storytelling.

Charmaine Watkiss is a British artist known for her works exploring the botanical legacy of the Caribbean and tracing the lineage to Africa. Informed by detailed archive research, she imagines the women through whom such knowledge of plants and their properties have been handed down, inserting her own likeness to tell these collectively experienced ‘memory stories’. Watkiss was commissioned by RAMM to create new work inspired by objects in the World Cultures galleries. They are on display until 16 August 2026.

Fiona Williams is a writer of literary fiction focusing on the relationships between identity, belonging, nature and landscape. Her debut novel The House of Broken Bricks was published by Faber in 2024. She is currently the Ambassador of the Exeter Novel Awardand a National Centre for Writing’s ILX 10: Rising Stars of UK Writing. Born and raised in south-east London, she now lives in Exeter and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter.

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