Moral Compass

So many developments over the last few years have led to inequality, mass migration, poverty, and surveillance and suggest we may have lost our moral compass.

This installation is based on the visual idea of the compass, calendar or clock which looks as if it could help direct us – but the writing and symbols have no meaning.

We can track large numbers of people and identify them with face recognition and data yet it can be hard to see each person as an individual human being.

It is very difficult to appreciate scale if it is too abstract. I’m interested in how to visualise concepts such as how a billion pounds might look in comparison to the individual benefit allowance under Universal Credit. Or the fact that an applicant for Universal Credit will have to navigate  through 17 dense pages of text and jargon – all online – when they may have no access to a computer, the internet, or a bus to take them to a library which may have been closed.

I printed these instructions in Welsh and English on fabric and they became strips which were 17 feet long.  The fabric made a contrast between something fluid and soft and a harsh reality. The strips were draped along with a sound piece which considered how the experience of claiming Universal Credit might feel. 

There is wisdom in ancient texts –

 “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. (New Testament)

And a recent statement from Ai Weiwei –  The world is a sphere there is no east or west

I showed some of this work at an exhibition at Oriel Ynys Mon, and a recent Open Studio and workshop.