Killing Time

'Killing Time' I made this installation of boxes painted in acrylic on cardboard in response to the death of 58 Chinese refuges in a container truck during a channel crossing where the corpses were found behind a cargo of tomato boxes. This installation included the previously exhibited 'La Radeau', based on Gericault’s 'Wreck of the Medusa', as a backdrop.

My involvement in 'Sanctuary' (dedicated to issues of human rights and supported by Amnesty International and Scottish Arts Council) related directly to my consistent concern to explore political themes within the context of aesthetic practice. 'Killing Time', (see catalogue p64) and a series of paintings under the umbrella title of 'International Waters' all address issues around freedom of movement, globalisation, international borders and global politics, the itinerant refugee and economic migrant. In contrast to utopian visions of a connected and borderless world we find individual movement distinguished by ultra-surveillance and intensive policing. Here geography and landscape emerge as a site of conflict. My installation continues an earlier artistic enquiry opened by Golub and Spero (co-exhibitors) but develops a shift in significance from the collective to the singular. The work challenges the overwhelming predominance of lens media in relation to political subjects, moving away from identity politics based on picturing ‘the other’, towards an interrogation of subjectivity. 'Killing Time' creates an ambiguous space that sidesteps a tendency within the media to default to a dialectical framing.
This installation and the 'International Waters' series make formal and spatial references to history painting and the romantic sublime (genres which pre-figured cinematic vision). The work creates another form of immersive experience for the audience who, in viewing the humble painted cardboard crates encounter an empathy with the victims and an intimation of their abjection.

Co-exhibitors Louise Bourgeois, Hans Haake, Bill Viola