Not in Safekeeping: Missing was created for Gladley Beyond, an Exhibition with Ten Obstructions at Rogue Artist Studios, Manchester in June 2023.

Gladley Beyond, the Exhibition title was taken from E.E. Cummings’ poem somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

This piece is my response to the fact that 200+ children had gone missing from Home Office Asylum Hotels in the UK and that no-one had parental responsibility or guardianship for them.

Good Law Project and Article 39 were working with the Family Court to try and get 66 children known to be missing from a hotel in Brighton made wards of court so someone has responsibility for their wellbeing.

For Not In Safekeeping: Missing I aimed to construct 200+ knitted milk cartons representing the 200+ children missing from Home Office asylum hotels. This was an enormous and seemingly endless task – representing the enormity of the situation.

It took approximately 4 hours to make each woolly milk carton. I machine knitted the yarn, felted it, cut it, stitched it, printed and stitched on the labels, assembled, stuffed and closed each carton with blanket stitch. I only made 22 cartons for the exhibition! I put all the remaining 178 hand printed labels onto a plinth with the cut out knitted components to create a sense of overwhelm.