RCA2024

Royal College of Art, London

19 - 23rd June 2024

Exhibiting as part of Contemporary Art Practice.

Rigging (2024) Various metals, recycled acrylic, jesmonite, glass, LEDs

Pay to Play (one) (2024) UV Print, recycled acrylic, steel fixings 

Pay to Play (two) (2024) UV Print, recycled acrylic, steel fixings 

“Lying in bed the morning after install, this all kind of came out of me, like I needed to contextualise the last week for myself. 

There’s a nostalgic charm to it, both for me (for my childhood) and for the seaside and it’s former leisure glory. Some things feel like they haven’t changed in 100 years, which is funny because they most definitely have. 

Burned down piers, boarded up rock shops, peeling wallpaper and toilets that reek of piss.

What is British pop culture? What are our cultural touchstones and how do they vary from place to place? What are we actually nostalgic for? 

Were the good old days really any good?

I’m playing with game culture (which I love), using candy colours and bold graphics to create an arcade-like space. I’m also touching on some of the economic structures that tie into this world, the power structures that exist within it. A place of forgotten abundance. If we know the game is rigged, why do we play? I think it’s a reflection of my own confusion and existence within late stage capitalist structure, thinking about the carrot and the stick, if you dangle the treasure in front of someone will they always reach for it? How is my existence within this economy hypocritical? How do I benefit,  how do I suffer and how does that extrapolate beyond me? 

The origins of ‘Rigging’ actually come from my exploration of archetypes through the tarot, picking apart a different kind of structure. I was thinking about the similarities between the Hanged Man and the arcade claw machine or crane game. That moment of suspension. Thinking about choice and agency. Free will. The toy doesn’t choose to be won, but does the Hanged Man suspend himself like Odin from the World Tree? The colours and the lights are reminiscent of the arcade, but also they represent the red and blue of the Hanged Man’s clothes, reflecting human passion and the physical body. In reality, there is nothing being suspended but the claws themselves, they are captured in pause, surrendering to their place in this structure. They strive for the coins, but can never reach them.

The two works either side of the sculpture come from photographic sketches I made of British seaside towns, using layering and photomontage to explore the palimpsest of identities and existences within these worlds. The laser etched graffiti is actually taken from photographs of bathroom walls, another cosmos of culture. It matches a layer in the photo, emulating the scratched Perspex of the arcade machines themselves and creating a barrier between you and this fantasy world.”