Samuel Fordham

Samuel Fordham‘s ‘I Just Want to Know My Daughter Better’ references ‘Skype families‘, who have been kept separate by government immigration policies. These families can only communicate via screens.

The series becomes the artist’s personal response to the effects of the government’s Immigration policy and the introduction of the Minimum Income Requirement (MIR) in 2012.

However, there is now a more universal resonance to it, with the current global lockdown and the recent pandemic. The artist also uses the work to serve as a reminder to the possible futures of many international families. Above all, he cautions us as we now transition ever further into a world where images of our online presence define us. We build relationships via images appearing on our screens.

Similarly, the theme of immigration is increasingly important in current times. Borders are shut and there is uncertainty about the future.

This work has been shown at the South London Gallery and Leeds City Art Gallery as part of ‘New Contemporaries‘ 2019/2020. It is in the Government Art Collection.

As the artist asks, ‘C-R92/BY seeks to investigate how one maintains a relationship with a family member who is physically and geographically removed from one’s life and is reduced to a two-dimensional image. What does it mean to take the irrefutably unique and transfer it into the infinitely replicable?’

This work specifically references a summer that the artist spent away from his wife and daughter. The family was kept apart by the new immigration rules. Sam was entirely reliant on these screens to communicate with his family. The concentration of white light emanating from the screens reflects the intensity of that time.