Heavy Things
(2026)
Installation
Duo exhibition with Campbell Mcconnell
Exhibited at Shallow Gallery, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Heavy Things examines how memory, labour, and cultural rituals shape constructions of identity and belonging. Working across installation, moving image, and sculpture, the artists draw on overlooked histories andanecdotal fragments that reveal broader social and political conditions.
The exhibition is situated within a shopfront window, where anaccumulation of objects—boxed belongings, fragments of domesticinteriors, decorative plates, curtains, and dismantled walls—suggestsa site of transition. These elements appear temporarily held: stored, displaced, or awaiting movement. The space evokes both containment andcirculation, positioning the domestic as something unstable and continually reconfigured.
Three films unfold across the window, tracing themes of transport, railways,unions, and protest. Shaped by the political and economic shifts of the latetwentieth century—particularly union suppression and the privatisation ofthe British railway system—these works reflect on structures once centralto industrial production and national identity, now present in altered andfragmented forms. Within these works, an opera performance by NealCooper draws on Peter Grimes, staging the figure of the outsider througha live vocal address to model trains, producing a convergence of theatricalfiction and social reality. Another film, Punk Rob’s Song, examines 1990’s policing, referencing the death of Ibrahima Sey at Ilford Police Station in1996, while situating this alongside Punk Rob’s engagement with trade union politics, particularly the RMT, and the tension between anarchistrhetoric and organised labour.
The exhibition also considers how these histories are mediated throughpopular culture, including television and mass-produced imagery, which construct an idealised vision of Britain that obscures social conflict. This isfurther explored through interventions into representations of the English landscape. By inserting the angry face of Thomas the Tank Engine intoworks associated with John Constable and George Stubbs, the worksdisrupt idealised depictions of the countryside, revealing how such imagesconstruct and reproduce ideas of Englishness, class, and national identity.
(2026)
Installation
Duo exhibition with Campbell Mcconnell
Exhibited at Shallow Gallery, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Heavy Things examines how memory, labour, and cultural rituals shape constructions of identity and belonging. Working across installation, moving image, and sculpture, the artists draw on overlooked histories andanecdotal fragments that reveal broader social and political conditions.
The exhibition is situated within a shopfront window, where anaccumulation of objects—boxed belongings, fragments of domesticinteriors, decorative plates, curtains, and dismantled walls—suggestsa site of transition. These elements appear temporarily held: stored, displaced, or awaiting movement. The space evokes both containment andcirculation, positioning the domestic as something unstable and continually reconfigured.
Three films unfold across the window, tracing themes of transport, railways,unions, and protest. Shaped by the political and economic shifts of the latetwentieth century—particularly union suppression and the privatisation ofthe British railway system—these works reflect on structures once centralto industrial production and national identity, now present in altered andfragmented forms. Within these works, an opera performance by NealCooper draws on Peter Grimes, staging the figure of the outsider througha live vocal address to model trains, producing a convergence of theatricalfiction and social reality. Another film, Punk Rob’s Song, examines 1990’s policing, referencing the death of Ibrahima Sey at Ilford Police Station in1996, while situating this alongside Punk Rob’s engagement with trade union politics, particularly the RMT, and the tension between anarchistrhetoric and organised labour.
The exhibition also considers how these histories are mediated throughpopular culture, including television and mass-produced imagery, which construct an idealised vision of Britain that obscures social conflict. This isfurther explored through interventions into representations of the English landscape. By inserting the angry face of Thomas the Tank Engine intoworks associated with John Constable and George Stubbs, the worksdisrupt idealised depictions of the countryside, revealing how such imagesconstruct and reproduce ideas of Englishness, class, and national identity.
