You have Rights!

Multi media installation. Video 4 min 41 sec 2017.

The video and installation piece includes hung white school shirts, screen printed with inspirational book covers that discuss social justice. The idea was inspired by a documentary about Syrians, that had been kidnapped and persecuted for questioning the injustice of their national leader. The only means of communication they had to try and inform the outside world of their wherabouts was to rip the shirt off their backs into little pieces and write their messages in blood.

It got me thinking of the symbolism of the shirt. My son's school shirt - as a school leaver, so much a part of the ritual of preparing for school. The blue collar workers in our industrialised world and how forgotten they have been and what the potential backlash of that could mean.

This led me to think of how our rights are being eroded in clear sight as those who seek to gain in power, mercilessly pit ordinary people against each other.

In the advent of losing our rights, I wondered how it would be to subvert the UN Declaration of human rights, and how sombreing that is.

The installation of screen printed shirts with book covers illustrated quotes from social justice campaigners or books that I felt should be on every school curriculum, such as The Ragged Trouser Phianthropist.