Life Jackets, Newspaper, varnish & wadding, 2016-2022.

'Life Jackets', consists of 3 life jackets made from newspapers, stuffed with wadding and varnished. This piece was made as an attempt to comprehend the global crisis, of migration. As well as the number of lives lost in the sea I was struck by the number of life jackets discarded on the shore. I also discovered that many of the life jackets being sold to the migrant were in fact fake, meaning they wouldn't have kept the migrants afloat in the water! As the refugees are reduced to a number we become tired of reading of their stories and soon the stories fall off the newspaper headlines. The newspapers are stained in varnish as a way to preserve them and the stories they tell.