Wish You Were Here was an installation and associated media.
The installation comprised a carousel stand holding a set of two dozen or so postcards featuring images of disaster and extreme weather, arguably caused, directly or indirectly, by global capitalism. The reverse of the cards was decorated with cuttings from a’ brochure, which had been mailed to me at my home address by a British travel company following an international rail booking.
The idea for the installation arose following publication of Postcard from Absent Mothers and Fathers and the discovery of a good number of images of disaster scenes in the books used to create The Earth System and How It Works. The brochure cuttings were initially a means of obscuring identifying details on the reverse of the donor postcards bought new for the purpose, but the marketing content, whether intact and coherent or not, seemed quite appropriate.
The cards were displayed for a short while in a carousel outside a longstanding newsagent in the centre of Bath. I photographed the installation before removing the cards, publishing the image online. A number of cards was damaged beyond repair and disposed of in 2023.
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