Nasus Y Ram

Commissioned by the Museum of Human Violence in 2065, these works commemorate the closing, 35 years ago, of the last handbag factory in the UK that used nonhuman skin. The installation is influenced by Heidegger’s belief that art is to ‘unconceal’. 

 The Victimless Handbag Workshop (eco and sustainable fabrics) and Time-Line (Eco vinyl). 2.2 m x 0.6 m.  Significant events leading from the Consumocene through to our Age of Concord are highlighted.  Participants, in this fiction, are encouraged to make and use bags metaphorically as ‘holders’ of trauma both pre- and during Rupture.  

Hide. 2m x 1.25 m (Steel. Mixed media drawings. Found objects). 

A steel pen was used pre-Rupture to cage nonhumans, often prior to slaughter. Visitors are invited to sit in the cage and to look inside the ‘coffee table’ book which has been deconstructed to draw attention to excesses of the era, alongside the horrors of the skin industry. 

This installation was shown for the first time, at the Handbag Factory Gallery in London and included a virtual victimless handbag making workshop. All the handbags in the installation were made from sustainable fibres, including natural raffia, flax, recycled paper drawings, Ugandan barkcloth, felted biodegradable nylon, and recycled cotton. The book is a found copy of the ‘Vogue essential Handbags’ and most pages in the book have been deconstructed with collages, drawing, and text: a selection of pages from the book is shown above.