These pictures are a response to the anger and the sadness I felt seeing the long queues outside my local food bank in February 2021.  At that time, after a year of the pandemic, and over a decade of cruel and unnecessary austerity, I hoped these pictures would represent a low point.  But things have got even worse.  Between April and September this year (2022) The Trussell Trust gave out more emergency food packages than ever before.  

Walking into these huge church spaces, seeing hundreds of plastic bags lined up in the pews like a congregation and knowing each representing somebody struggling to feed themselves, was an overwhelming experience.  To convey this sense of scale and fracture I worked with disjointed triptychs, each showing a view that can’t be contained within one frame.  The triptych also references traditional church altarpieces. I found something powerful in the tension between traditional forms, the church architecture and all it represents, coming together with the material of contemporary capitalism—the distribution centre.  When people look at the work I hope they feel a confusion in this mix of symbols and realities.  Why do these sacred spaces look like this?  In the fifth richest nation in the world why are so many people  unable to afford enough food to feed themselves and their family?  And, I hope there is a feeling of anger too, at the shameful political choices which make these acts of charity necessary.  

Financial Times Magazine

London in Lockdown - published by the Museum of London and Hoxton Mini Press, text by Jilke Golbach