Displaced
This body of work spans the period in which the UK referendum took place, the refugee crisis hit the news and Grenfell Tower caught fire. In April 2016 I went to work in the Calais jungle. Having been brought up in Belgium and France, and travelled regularly through the city to come back for holidays in the UK, I felt strongly connected to and implicated in the problem. In general I was disturbed by the immigration debate and by how negative language wasn’t being challenged. As a result I became involved in refugee housing and resettlement in this country and the stories of the refugees living seemed to have an effect on the work. The period is defined by Brexit and the challenge to my identity, having grown up in Europe, and by the terrible Grenfell tower fire next to our studios, and the effect on the community where I work. During the start of this period, I felt I had no option but to be working in black and white. Themes such as entrapment, borders and fleeing emerged. I wrapped my studio entirely in plastic, making new forms that changed completely how objects are read. The black palette wrap formed an oily surface over the shapes and removed the value of each item. I was interested in how, when people flee, they trust so much documentation and memories to phones and computers, with their storage servers so far away. I scanned the entire, wrapped studio then played around with the 3D printer to make small, strangely shaped prints. This storage of the intangible led me to considerations of what we value. The plastic of the wrapping and the 3D prints contrasted with the bronze, considered so valuable yet hopelessly heavy to carry. Instead of using a lost wax process I cast the 3D prints directly into bronze. At the Venice Biennale, I packed a sculptural kit of aluminium, copper and palette wrap into my bag and made a series of plastic forms which shadowed the actions and spaces of those having to flee with only a bag of belongings.
