"I'd like to teach the world to sing"
- Enamel paint, Cola can found in London 2011
- In 1971 a congregation of multicultural teenagers sang from a hilltop. Their song, a unified call for perfect harmony, equality, housing and Coca-cola.
In August 2011, on the back of the uprisings in the Middle East (Arab spring) a call to arms was made by a mass congregation of culturally diverse teenagers in the U.K. Using Social Media, rioting spread across London and other cities, including Birmingham and Manchester.
The can was a discovery, a treasure I found on visiting Greenwich the day after the first night of rioting. Laying in the road it was perhaps a relic of the evening’s events. I was interested in its memory, the energy it captured. How many people had walked on it? Rioters or the Riot police? The symbolic values of equality, harmony and cultural diversity crushed under foot. It left me questioning if these values are protected or suppressed?
In my practise I try to create a dialectic between the work and the viewer. I am interested in creating a pause. A brief moment in time, when a double-take allows for an internal question, a need to assess or understand. I use symbolism and familiarities of the everyday to question what is dictated to us.