Detours is a pair of guided audio-walks that deconstruct the colonial legacies of Osterley Park, a National Trust estate in Hounslow, London, through its former owners, the Child-Villiers family, closely associated with the English East India Company for three generations.

The project emerges from the findings of the 2020 National Trust publication titled ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’. Despite the Trust having co-produced literature on Osterley’s colonial connections in the past, the curation and historic interpretation of the house echo a resounding silence on the power, coloniality and violence that are embedded within and were influential to its form and origins.

To disrupt this silence, the author draws from peripatetic-art practices and the works of artists Janet Cardiff, Peter Cusack, Ingrid Pollard and Phil Smith, tracing the historical and maritime connections between Osterley Park in London and Fort St. George, a former British stronghold in Chennai (formerly Madras), India while guiding audiences around two sites: Osterley and the City of London.