Quarantine Archipelago (2019)

I was interested in the way in which the expansion in photography coincided with the advent of the third global bubonic plague which spread from south-west China to Hong Kong in 1894, which went on to kill 12 million people. This was the first time a global epidemic had been communicated to the public through photographs. I was struck by the way in which islands have been used at different times as sites of quarantine, but also for keeping immigrants at bay, and as penal colonies. I created an archipelago of eight historical quarantine islands, each surrounded by a 'sea' of close-up images and illustrations of the diseases from which they sought sanctuary and protection, preserved in sea salt.