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Andrea Davis

Principle Doubt

“We need to wake up to why organisations devoted to public service, which attract upstanding people, incubate so many scandals with the recurring themes of obfuscation and moral self-entitlement”. (Matthew Syed)

Prompted by personal experiences, Principle Doubt focusses on understanding the behaviour of certain public organisations, alongside an exploration into the practice of redaction, and the consequential effect.

Redacted: reflects the frustrating, disturbing, disempowering and at times downright absurd system of getting information in the public interest or about yourself.  Despite the disproportionate effort involved, the resulting response is often protracted, incomplete and ludicrously redacted.

Installation: Using actual redacted emails received in response to a data request as a basis, I have represented those redactions in laser cut MDF panels.  A rotating light shines through the panels to create a shadow of the redaction on the walls of a white cube space, to represent the frustrating and disturbing practice.