Dirty Deals

“Today belongs to those who insist upon looking beyond their lifetime, to do this we have to scrutinize.” (John Berger ) This project aims to interrupt the consensual silence which seems prevalent in our society and evoke a response to the double standards relating to democracy and human rights which prevail within our government policy. Britain freely entertains autocratic leaders who blatantly disregard human rights and democracy in an effort to further our own investment opportunities. National security and prosperity not democracy and human rights appear to be Britain’s stated priorities. The freedom we value aspires (relates) only to that of the market at the expense of our democratic values. To highlight the double standards which appear to underpin our democracy in Britain today I have focused on the recent state visit to Britain by the President of the Republic of China Mr. Xi Jinping on 23 October 2015. As a picture-making strategy to instigate a commentary relating to Britain’s duplicitous values regarding human rights, I have used the ‘tableau form’ and employed the genre of classical landscape painting which set up illusory scenes to create the quintessential English idyll. As an embodiment of that illusionary idyll, I have looked to country estates and public parks. A simple reproduction of reality rarely says anything about reality. Embedded within these images lie traces of reality that point to a truth which exists beyond the threshold of our consciousness. These images are allegorical, they deconstruct the facade of the fanciful idyll by interrupting the landscape. This strategy immediately places the image into a different context, setting up a strangeness, an ambiguity where distinguishing between reality and illusion becomes complicated.