An Avoidable Loss, A Failure of State

Part memorial, part indictment of the British government’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, ‘An Avoidable Loss, A Failure of State’  (single channel video with sounds, c. 33 minutes) reflects on the painful national theatre of the coronavirus pandemic, which involved Boris Johnson’s own near-death coronavirus experience (now reported to be greatly exaggerated) and personal rule-breaking.

The work is an audio-visual expansion of A Daily Sea (2020) in which a series of seascape photographs are combined with fragments of recordings of British politicians from the daily government COVID-19 press conferences, of family members remembering loved ones, and a monologue by actor Rory Kinnear who voices the names of some of the deceased. Kinnear lost his own sister to coronavirus who was, as it later transpired, buried on the same day of one of Boris Johnson’s No.10 lockdown parties.

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