Caravan Gallery

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.

The Caravan Gallery (www.thecaravangallery.co.uk)

Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

From GK Chesterton’s The Secret People

Gillian Wearing

A great deal of my work is about questioning handed-down truths…

Gillian Wearing's Signs that say what you want them to say, and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say, Whitechapel Gallery, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, E1

I’m always trying to find ways of discovering new things about people, and so in the process discover more about myself.

Gillian Wearing, Whitechapel Gallery, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, E1

From Sign Language, Dazed and Confused (1996)

Under the Volcano

Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan’s footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession.

Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection, Euston, Camden, NW1

Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future.

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947)

For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn?

Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection, Euston, Camden, NW1

From Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947)