In addition to the physical banners around the UK, each of the four new works commissioned for The Many Costs of Living is available online as an animated campaign banner and in an audio described animation of all four works. You can find out more about the artwork below or by reading our exhibition catalogue.

Explore the rest of the show Find out more about the artist

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📢 Listen to an audio description of this animation:

About Down The Drain

"The government is selling off our health service, already suggesting that we begin paying for appointments. The impacts of this are disproportionately felt by those most reliant on the NHS: older populations, those living in poverty, and disabled people. The foundational vision of a free at the point of use, taxpayer-funded welfare system has been eroded by profit-seekers determined to line their pockets at any cost. Free healthcare is a human right and until recently underpinned many Briton’s sense of civic pride and community, but the NHS is unlikely to make its 100th birthday. 

Down The Drain represents my fears for the future of our NHS, especially as a disabled person with chronic pain. I worry for my community and the wider public. Everyone deserves fair pay and decent working conditions and yet we’ve deprived our most critical workers of such things and left them no option but to strike. With medication supplies running out, avoidable excess deaths constantly rising, ambulance wait-times exceeding 24 hours, healthcare professionals quitting in ever-increasing numbers, and the vulnerable abandoned with the disregarding of Covid precautions, the NHS is going down the drain before our very eyes." - Hanecdote

📢 Listen to a description of the artwork:

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Banner image description: Digitally-rendered still capturing a virtual gallery-like environment where a textile banner appears to be hanging on a white wall. The banner, a landscape photograph of an A2 sized patchwork quilt, is arranged on a patchwork black and white patterned background, small embroidered objects including a face mask, an ambulance, a calendar, a coffin, medication and medical scrubs are warped and angled to appear going down the drain cover central to the work. In blue letters around the drain it reads: NHS. Along the top and bottom in a fading red-yellow it reads: Going …. going …. going ….. There is shadow behind the banner creating a three-dimensional effect within the still.