Proof

Proof is a short series of works about self-criticality, responding to artist insecurities of activity and worth and a more general lack of ecological responsibility. Proof was included in Worm’s first online edition refuse: (v)(n)(–) ✕.

Proof is made of debris collected from the Hackney canal, and depicts the consequences of thoughtlessness as a series of archival tiles – scientific samples of human condition and material lifespan.

Contained by conventional box-frames, local debris is concretised in both its preservation in jesmonite and the rhetoric of its arrangement.

Upon making this series we concluded that reflecting the communal destruction of our most precious urban spaces through planned sculpture is pissing into the wind. If, in the Anthropocene, depolluting the walkway is a form of activism, then canonising the fragments as artists seems limp. Artwork like this should further attempt to incite guilt and distribute accountability.

 

Initiated with Sean Roy Parker during Common Room at Guest projects in 2017. Also shown in London and Liverpool with The School of the Damned.