Changing Figures
Drawing data isn’t unappealing per se, but I find it hard to imagine how to communicate numbers in a non-scientific context. This made me think of how, and to what end we use number and statistics. Data can become numbers and statistics, heavy with urgency but bereft of emotional weight. So what do numbers and measurements represent, and how accurate are they? I want to explore this in a series of work called changing figures. Figures being both numbers and bodies, and changing, representing the difficulties of accurate measurement.
Brain Fog: Pitt pastels on baking paper (2026), A series of sketches made with Pitt pastels, drawn from long COVID patients, news clippings, GoFundMe pages, and scientific papers, on baking paper. These were photographed laid over text about the problems posed by patent protection and vaccine accessibility during the pandemic. I then used Procreate to create some frame-by-frame animations.
Paper cuts: Top: Individual Origami knives from bureaucratic forms and documents, Bottom: Origami knives with Play-dough forms on MDF board (2026). Paper cuts deals with bureaucratic violence: specifically the aftermath of 2014 immigration act in England, which lead to 164 (reported) Caribbean commonwealth nationals born before 1973 being detained and/or removed. The Immigration act wanted to create a ‘really hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants (in the words of then home minister Teresa May although she has walked back from the term and much more since) The explanatory notes of the act are comically harrowing. The thing I found most unnerving was how the act encourages citizens to become an arm of surveillance, reporting on people they live and work with-even schools and healthcare institutions were instructed to do so. The data I specifically consulted was in Annex G of the review by Wendy Williams. Other refrences used are here and here. The choice of materials was administrative forms that I had filled in for various bureaucratic purposes, folded in such a way that only the blank side is visible; copy of my passport; and one paper knife covered in text from the explanatory notes of the Immigration Act, containing bureaucratic language gems such as excuses for landlords, Removal and other powers, sham marriages and civil partnerships. I used play-dough to represent bodies (164 in all). It was also the only material on hand I could make three-dimensional and get a paper knife to cut through. I also wanted to communicate that the violence was everywhere, even on playgrounds. I photographed the individual knives in a frame on a William Morris placemat.