The Undesirables

This research addresses how a recent incident can be used to explore containerization, manufactured goods, corporate responsibility, consumer greed, media and mythologies connected with the sea; how Hogarth’s satires on greed and culpability can be used in the creation of contemporary art; and how etching can be used to render a large scale paper model theatre or diorama.

Investigating the wrecking of the HMS Napoli in Branscombe, Devon and referencing nineteenth century paintings and etchings of shipwrecks and looters, as well as more recent media renderings of looters in New Orleans and Iraq, the work explores the event and the language used both by media and local people to describe the looting of goods, representations which excite a theatrical reading of events. Exploring routes from which raw materials circulate into manufactured goods and the institutionalization of criminal behaviours in this process, the research has been undertaken in collaboration with the Branscombe Project, Devon, a local heritage initiative and the local anthropologist and historian Professor Barbara Farquharson, as well as using online search engines and newspapers. The work also showed alongside ‘The Stevedores’ at the Arnolfini and at Plymouth City Museum.

• http://www.melaniejackson.net/projects/t...