I am critically engaging with sculpture and performance, exploring the relationship between art and protest and their intended contexts. This project will focus on two key elements: firstly, the location of Parliament Square as a historically poignant yet misunderstood site for political voice and demonstration with discussion of the site’s role in transforming legislative and political influence within wider protest; this is the site for the activation of the contraption. The site was used to examine the degradation of rights imposed on protestors and activists such as Brian Haw in areas around parliamentary governance and operation through understanding how the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 helped vilify peaceful protest. The contraption pays testament to the harsh conditions which have been forced upon protestors as a result of exercising ‘freedom of speech’ and basic peaceful protest rights. Secondly, through the lens of critical appropriation, the role of Mark Wallinger’s ‘State Britain’, a replica curation of Brian Haw’s Parliament Square protest housed as a temporary exhibition in the Tate Britain Museum. The reference of this installation forms the narrative for conversation around the indifference between ‘protest’ or ‘art’, and what dictates a change in enforcement from ‘policing’ to ‘protection and expression’.

The project involves re-appropriation of Wallinger’s ‘State Britain’ exhibition at the Tate; a historically significant venue built on the exploitation of colonial labour that denotes authority and prominence over the work it houses. Now, widely symbolised as a progressive institution, yet currently struggling to pay its employees a living wage raises questions to the importance of location and context and what gives immunity to controversial content, especially one that contravenes legislation. This leads to debate as to whether the location and venue of protest material is conditional on political impact, in this case masqueraded by the Tate’s geographical prominence and societal significance. Reconstituting this act of appropriation which originally appropriated Brian Haws encampment on Parliament Square gardens will enable a direct re-application of contextual parameters and psychological barriers, posing an opportunity to reconstruct protest in a way that responds to existing conditions and opportunities enacted deliberately around Parliament Square.