Where the Bodies are Buried (2021–2026)

This series of paintings, called Where the Bodies are Buried started with 4 paintings that worked on relief sculptures made by participants of called Woodworm 2019 with Leeds Art Gallery as part of the Yorkshire Sculpture International.

I worked on top of the sculpted and gouged plywood made by participants in response to the anthropological collections of Leeds, that were gifted to me. Some of the participants kept their work. Others gave it to me. These few became the basis for the first 4 paintings exploring the idea of Where the Bodies Are Buried.

The series was inspired by 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement, which started in the USA with the unlawful police killing of George Floyd, sparking a global movement, including in Britain and Australia. In Australia, the statistics for police brutality of Aboriginal people are even more shocking.

Where The Bodies Are Buried (Meath Gardens, London – King Cole) 2025
Oil on 3 wooden reclaimed pine floorboards

This painting is the area in Meath Gardens, London, where Aboriginal Cricketer, King Cole, is buried. It is the only marked grave in the park, a deconsecrated graveyard for the poor of London. King Cole was a member of the first ever Australian XI cricket team to visit England. It was the first and only all-Aboriginal cricket team to play England.

Where the Bodies Are Buried started with references to English museums and English soils that have absorbed the bodies and things from Australia and elsewhere across the Empire. But I’m also interested in buried histories, histories of other colonial ties that people have forgotten about, like the relationship between Slovakia/Czechoslovakia and Africa. We forget that Germany had its own colonies, taken by France, Belgium, Japan and Britain as reparation for World War 1.

Oil, woodstain, varnish and pastel on reclaimed floorboard
105 x 23cm

Oil, woodstain and varnish on reclaimed floorboard
14 x 23cm