Jack Rushton

‘Bankrupt Britain: 340 people go bust every day’
– TimesOnline 5th April 2009

‘Record six pubs closing every day due to economic downturn’ – Telegraph.co.uk 18th January 2009

‘Richmond council is to invest nearly £250,000 to try and help residents through the recession, which has seen the number or people claiming unemployment benefits reach more than 2150. According to a cabinet report job opportunities fell from 929 to 328’
– Richmond and Twickenham Times 10th May 2009

‘One in five Britons claim they are suffering from ‘recession depression’ as the economic downturn takes its toll on their mood. The recession is making 21% of people depressed, 17% worried about their finances and 36% spend more time at home…’
– SkyNews.co.uk 26th March 2009

Headlines such as these are increasingly more common during the recent recession and society is bombarded with ‘facts’, figures and statistics which are supposedly affecting us all in some shape or form. It is only when we are confronted with the real issues that are dealt to us in the headlines that any sort of statistic can gather momentum in our minds and we start to understand the subject in a broader context.

The high number of statistical reportage representing a society often has its intentions scrutinised and its integrity questioned, leading to a public ignorance toward any fact or figure because in most cases they are presented to warn us of negative immanent change. It was when financial difficulty struck me and my family that I began to notice such data, which I began to take more seriously as my father’s business, a public house began to face its own bankruptcy.

‘33 of 2009’ is a piece of work that maps a financial decline leading to eventual insolvency, intentionally mixing a personal database with a graphic representation of painted pie charts informed by the businesses transactions. The painted pie charts running parallel to the spreadsheets are emphasising the significant importance of the re-represented information, because of the personal nature of the data, time and care was invested in the production of the canvases, frames and imagery rather than producing charts from computer aided techniques, although this would have been faster and more accurate.

Whilst I wanted to share my first hand experience of bankruptcy I also wanted to make sure that I extracted any specific details which would have indicated the financial information shown was mine but instead rely on recognisable aspects of common transactions that my audience can relate to and associate with, in this instance to understand debt as a mass concept as well as an individual struggle and personal worry.