Mark Duffy is an Irish artist based in the UK. His works explores issues of power and national identity. He uses photography and multi-media installation to build recurring motifs that reveal alternative narratives about political phenomena with absurdity and humour. For the 2017 edition of Peckham24, in collaboration with artist Lewis Bush, Duffy curated It’s Gonna Be Great, a group exhibition that humorously explored Donald Trump’s self-image in the wake of his 2016 election win.

This year, Duffy returns to Peckham24 with three new works that invite viewers to participate actively in scrutinising the construction of British politics, and the politics of Britishness. A Parliament of Empty Gestures is made from appropriated photographs produced and distributed by the House of Commons over the past two years. It is a comment on the performative and confrontational nature of political debate, the repetition of prescribed political gestures, and the constantly shifting blame game that is modern politics.

On Pugin closely surveys the ephemera and dirt found on the carpets of the Houses of Parliament, inviting more detailed scrutiny of a nuanced mess. The series is named after Augustus Pugin, the architect who was driven mad by his work designing the Houses of Parliament, and whose patterns are still replicated in furnishings today. In linking Pugin with contemporary politics, Duffy suggests Parliament’s insistent commitment to preserving “fraying” political heritage is impeding democratic progress in the institution.

The British Heritage in Colour embeds phraseology from political discourse within a wider landscape of stereotypical narratives about power and hierarchy. The series of movable collage works invite the viewer to agitate an official, fixed perspective on history. As the frames are rotated, multiple conflicting images slip in and out of view. Conventional signifiers of nationhood clash with images from the banal to the absurd, showing that there are always other stories hidden behind the histories that are imposed upon us.