Focusing on the state of our society today and our general ignorance to other human beings as individuals, I created ‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’ in 2008 which was initially a question about what art was and does the way work is displayed play a part in it being art. The public were invited to write their complaints about the world to me anonymously. I acted as a mediator, making their writings to me into art and challenging whether or not anyone can be artists. However, as I continued working with this idea, I came to find that the people writing to me became more important than the actual letters and words that had been sent to me. This is where the project started to evolve and change and lead me to want to capture an essence of the ‘being’ who wrote to me and how much our views and opinions really are ignored.

I use a variety of mediums whilst going through this transitional stage. I have started to create audio pieces in which the complaints are read out all at once. This creates the effect of being overwhelmed by the sound of a distraught nation, and you are forced to join in the ignorance by being unable to differentiate between any specific individual. Alongside this, I am experimenting with installations of the complaints copied repetitively, screwed up (again, capturing the thought of ignorance, the ‘throw away culture’) and having the audience forced to make an encounter with these things. The viewer has to push their way through, like you would a children’s ball-pit.

Thinking about different ways to translate my thoughts into a visual format opened allot of different routes for me to go down with ‘P.E.C.D’. I have began to experiment further with the poetic side of the work which has stemmed from a video piece titled ‘P.E.C.D. :Release 2009’. The video shows 36 of the complaints I had received up until the video date transformed into paper boats and sailed down the canal. It was a strong image and held a strong meaning but it was beautiful to watch. I wanted to further portray how our complaints are thrown to one side, put into the system and forgotten and make a statement about mass society and no matter how different our views are, we are essentially all the same and it is society that stops us becoming anything else.