Unearthing the Banker's Bones

Core to my art practice is an exploration of ‘narration strategies,’ including metaphor, reportage and polemic, to structure commentaries on social and political relationships. ‘Unearthing the Banker’s Bones’ deploys two diametrically opposed narration strategies: ‘speculative futurism’ (science fiction) and historicism (museology/history painting). Together they articulate a metaphorical exploration of capitalism, race and migration within a touring solo exhibition (Bluecoat, Liverpool; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; Beaconsfield, London) (2016-2017); and a video essay, ‘Unearthing the Banker’s Bones: Notes on Tricksters and Robots’ (Tate Modern, 2017), further expanding on the exhibition’s themes, artistic devices and references. The exhibition consists of four aesthetically disparate but thematically interlocking gallery-based installations. Each utilises a distinct visual and aesthetic strategy to deposit ‘clues’ for the viewer to assemble and derive meaning, a strategy alluded to in the use of the term ‘Unearthing’ within the project title, gesturing towards an act of excavation on the part of the viewer. The central installation and title work deploys a three-channel video projection with narrated commentary referencing a number of core science-fiction tropes. Using a voice narration that oscillates between the prosaic essayistic/research driven and the poetic speculative/mythologising, texts including Butler’s unfinished ‘Earthseed trilogy’, Shelley’s ‘Last Man’ and Nuridden’s ‘islamo-futurist’ poem ‘BeYonDer’ are revisited to evoke a ‘Trickster’ figure who, as an antagonist to the ‘Banker,’ haunts all four installations within the exhibition. In ‘The Bankers Books,’ the visual language of museology is evoked to encounter the Banker’s excavated ‘remains.’ ‘The Future History Painter’s Studio’ reimagines the process of depicting past events through ‘History Painting’ as a means of ‘retelling’ versions of the Banker/Trickster narrative from the vantage point of an imagined future. ‘Pulp Fictions’ alludes to this act of re-telling through the covers of an imagined series of publications/journals.

A multi-component output consisting of:
(1) Four gallery based installations comprising the touring exhibition 'Unearthing the Banker's Bones'
(2) Video-Essay: 'Unearthing the Banker's Books: Notes on Tricksters and Robots' premiered at the event ‘Artistic Strategies from the 1980s and Beyond: Keith Piper’. Tate Modern. 7th March 2017