Untitled, Sandbags

Sandbags is a body of work that refuses to be finished. Like sand, it is mobile and always on the move. It was developed in the context of global conflict, vulnerability, and displacement. The combination of sandbags against structures and architecture suggest bodies impacted by events. Yet sandbags are also objects used to protect or sustain people and structures. They thanklessly prop up road signs and stage sets, and form barricades against flood water, or bullets. They are functional and hard working, but also have a useless, disregarded quality. 

The sandbags are sewn from aged, second-hand velvet, collected over time and selected for the way it suggests domestic interiors, evoking the comfort of home, in soft tones that we feel comfortable with because they match the colour palette of our own bodies. When filling the bags with sand I was struck by how it felt animated, yet at the same time, lifeless. 

The bags are heavy, all filled with the same 15kg weight of sand; it’s a labour to move them. They offer a range of possible configurations and interventions: stacked on a chair, piled, dumped, propped on metal structures, strung from a rope, blocking doorways. They’re fluid, yet immobile; beautiful, yet pitiful. They speak of obstacles, being impacted, being forced against hostile structures and having to survive  – or being defeated. Yet despite this desperate brokenness, despite things being done to the body that are beyond its control, people keep surviving.