Born To Rule (Portraits of the Big Society)

Commissioned by Standpoint Gallery, London (2011) and supported by the Arts Council of England, this performance entitled Born To Rule: Portraits of the Big Society, saw Aaron Williamson and myself retraining as traditional portrait painters. Over a two week period, we invited members of the public into our boudoir to have their portraits painted in front of a country house.

Corridor

Corridor 2017
594X841 prints C-Type prints
Edition of 6 plus 1 AP

No one is ever going to give you the education you need to overthrow them

Humorously nodding to Dutch interior painting but also referencing the checker board Lino that Mckenzie found in his flat when he first moved into the estate where this exhibition is presented, No One Is Ever Going To Give You The Education You Need To Overthrow Them is a chaotic jumble of works that fight for space and attention. Drawings plastered to the wall, cardboard, hastily made paintings and found materials. The clichés of estate living are all here, discarded mattresses, gas bottles, a throw away BBQ set but also the claustrophobia of close quarter living, spaces that are managed and bound in the red tape of bureaucracy. The whole exhibition feels temporary and that it could all be swept away at any moment. to become yet more detritus. The laughing men in suits with their big grabbing hands are never far away from the borders of the estate with their cost-effective planning suggestions and ever more pernicious strategies of privatisation. But there is also deep joy to be found in these instrumentalized spaces, small resistances that force their way through like a flower growing through concrete...ahh...more clichés....

Rich People

Rich People (2018-2021) was a four year series of street interventions that attempted to reverse dominant narratives about 'the poor' that were prevalent in the media by stigmatising 'the rich'. Presented as faux graffiti art and sprayed onto discarded mattresses (the archetypal and cliched signifier of inner city grit) these interventions were seen all over inner London.

You Always Fucking Leave Me in the End

You Always Fucking Leave Me In The End 2017
594x841 C-Type prints
Edition of 6 plus 1 AP

Out of gallery