The Raft of the Brightonian, After Géricault, Brighton, UK, 6m x 1.5m, 2011-24

A vast digital montage set against Brighton’s East Pier, drawing direct influence from Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa (1818–19). Spanning over a decade of image collection, it assembles hundreds of photographs of refugees alongside computer screenshots, news articles, protest signs, ephemera, and fragments of historical and contemporary artworks. The pier functions as a scaffold, surrounded by a teeming mass of displaced bodies, vessels, and digital noise. Layered imagery captures both the scale of human struggle and the chaotic media landscape that frames it. Crowds march, boats flounder, and headlines scream across a surface that’s as overwhelming as it is meticulously composed.

This 6m x 1.5m work speaks to the epic journey toward sanctuary, while simultaneously reflecting what the artist describes as “a deep sense of placelessness—an emotional and mental dislocation echoed in the fragmented visual language.” In reimagining Géricault’s Romantic catastrophe, the work reflects what Ariella Azoulay describes as “an archive of potential history... assembled not as a completed past but as a claim for a different future” (Azoulay, 2019).

Reference:
Azoulay, A. (2019). Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso.