‘Covid Messages’ is a video in six parts, based around broadcasts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The work focusses on the British government’s attempts to eliminate the virus through the use of magic spells and rituals. While the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, the Prime Minister makes repeated errors of judgement. Exasperated by his many mistakes, the spirits of the dead rise up and intervene.
“… Under the UK’s 2020 lockdown that political conscience has welled up in his new works ‘Citadel’ and ‘Covid Messages’, surely destined to be remembered as signature artworks of this challenging moment in British history.” Ian Christie, Sight and Sound.