‘We are all Ghosts’ is a series of watercolours, depicting the English working class in the process of shopping, looting and rioting.
The title refers to the capacity of what is hidden to evoke fear in others when it erupts into view.
The works emphasise the shadowy and insubstantial disposition of what is disregarded, through the insubstantial medium of watercolour. This creates an allegorical representation of the working class; they are as if a society of phantoms. Seldom seen, but when they make their presence felt, as in times of civil disturbance they provoke emotions of fear and concern.
The rationale of this project is to create art that has a dynamic which is similar to rhetorical speech, invoking the viewer’s political/emotional engagement with the work and its subject through the evocation of fear and concern.
Derek Hampson 