Queenstown. The Last 7.

Queenstown became a personal poem about the last seven people housed in what was soon to be a demolished high rise flats in Blackpool. This area had the highest male suicide rate in the country. The flats are now gone and replaced with new housing and it feels important to have an accurate testimony to how the community lived in this notorious area for the benefit of future generations. This will preserve memories and archive how residents endured in their own environment. Good times and bad, happy times, and the sad. The images show the primitive, confined and prison-like buildings these colourful characters lived inside throughout a hard and challenging, fast changing technological era. The work revealed the culturally significant mostly ignored, less visible problems in our life. I used Queenstown as an introduction a backdrop and starting point for my own personal narrative. When looking hard enough the unseen becomes visible. Common patterns that speak a truth and a pain most people are blind to hiding in plain sight. A personally endured message. Open secrets in society. I collect audio on the go binding this unique tangible alongside the visible as an extra layer of evidence of the sitters time spent on Queenstown. All the quotes in this book are made by Queenstown residents and are archived truth. A personal and targeted reflection from the outsider. I am always keen to create a relaxed and honest relationship with each of my subjects. Sometimes even becoming friends. This helps reveal the deeper and more personal stories that we all have which can often be taken out of context by the same outsider, these are always the best stories. In collecting this audio and documenting the people it helps me gain more insight an in-depth understanding of the Queenstown people. It also gives the audience a deeper taste of their lives providing a truthful visual audio statement that shows how different social classes live telling a story of ordinary people striving to live alongside social problems. Working class people surviving together in a dystopic society that installs rules and downloads ideas to influence and control them.