Hero.In, 2020, Oil on canvas, 180 x 200cm
The central figure is Hercules a metaphor for the opiate heroin. He’s beating the crap out of some Catholics. There’s been smack on the estate for fifty years. I went to a convent school run by the Sisters of Mercy in a place (Dockhead, Bermondsey) where Dickens based Oliver Twist. They took me to the Vatican when I was ten years old to meet the Pope. The flagellants are dancing round in the void, a space that doesn’t exist, a liminal state at the foot of the towers. There’s no bottom, you just keep falling.