Ruskin Gallery,
Anglia Ruskin University, July 2025

Two years of developing my artistic practice culminates in the Masters Project and its accompanying Degree Show. My title for this work; 'It Is Easy To Break One Stick',  brings together a series of installations and works using sticks, steel, resin casts of coal, a lightbox and screenprints on metal. They are a site response to the last remaining gasworks in England, in Fakenham, Norfolk.

The wider history of gasworks in England is deeply connected with the history of the Trade Union movement. In 1889, Will Thorne helped to set up the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers. In a speech to gasworkers he said "It is easy to break one stick, but when fifty are together in a bundle it is a much more difficult job".

This work honours both our industrial heritage and also the struggles and achievements of the Union movement.

[click an image to enlarge]