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This artwork was made ten years ago, around the time that the ‘Bedroom Tax’ was introduced. This welfare policy meant that tenants living in social housing with rooms deemed ‘spare’ faced a reduction in Housing Benefits, resulting in many people having less money to survive, needing to move house, or face rent arrears and potential evictions. It features three wreaths, constructed from electioneering material from the major parties in England, except for the Liberal Democrats, who for the artist were seemingly uncontactable…

They are in memorial to those who died following the imposition of Bedroom Tax or as a result of having benefits revoked. Their names and circumstances are listed on the wreaths, from a Freedom of Information request, along with manifold statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions, including the disingenuous phrase ‘any causal effect between benefits and mortality cannot be assumed from these statistics’.

For the artist, the fact that all of this is even more relevant ten years on - and seems, in fact, perennially relevant - is somewhat depressing.

BSL

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