20/20 Print Outputs

**Title / (prompt):** I wake up and find myself in an excluded world

The body of images - was used to produce a photopolymer intaglio monoprint, bringing carbon-based inks and steel plates into the mix. This blend of historical materials and modern technology bridges past and present, highlighting the recurring nature of innovation and its cultural impacts.

ENDZ OF THE WORLD reflects on the missing histories of the Black Country and its industrial past. The works delve into the intersection of industrial history, colonialism, and environmental themes. Much of the work stems from a personal journey that blends my family history of migration to the region with broader themes of empire, labor, and extraction. My artistic practice is informed by this rich historical context, drawing upon the Black Country’s foundational role in the Industrial Revolution and its UNESCO Global Geopark status, which highlights the region’s geological significance.

Evolving Perspectives: The project draws from colonialism and extraction, inspired by Kathryn Yusoff’s insights on how geology was turned into property during the Industrial Revolution. This reflects the deep connection between industrial expansion, racial history, and the land. I explore these ideas through the lens of deep time and social contexts. There’s also a deep feeling that the Black Country was the birth point for the Industrial Revolution - the innovation in that space was farmed out around the world - and it generated the conditions for planetary exploitation that we deal with today. My thought is this - the template has not changed, the frogmarch of new technology remains in the hands of a few white men and a capitalist system that was born during the industrial revolution. So in a way, working using this new technology for me takes on an extra layer of meaning.

Artistic and Research Influences During my residency, I've been deeply engaged with themes of geology, race, and colonialism. My family's migration to the Midlands, viewed through the lens of Empire, has been a personal narrative I've explored. The landscape paintings of Edward Butler Bayliss and Ecclestone have profoundly moved me, though I wish they included stories from the era when 10,000 Empire workers arrived in the region. My work aims to delve into "deep time," using selected stills to create new techniques for multiple works. Influences include the films of Phillip Donnellan, who uniquely documented migrant communities, and the miniature paintings of South Asia, particularly those showcased by Hammad Nassar. The industrial revolution's origins in the Black Country and the modern parallels with today's tech giants like Nvidia intrigue me. There’s an echo in the template of a new technological innovation. My research into geology, colonialism, and race. Kathryn Yusoff's work, particularly her book A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, has been pivotal. It discusses the codification of geology as property and its intersection with race, prompting me to explore the Black Country's unique history of extraction and its role in colonial expansion