Table Flag

2025

Digital image on canvas, painted wooden frame

100cm X 70cm

Originally conceived in reference to the Danish tradition of having a small version of their national flag somewhere in the house; often on the dining room table, Table Flag is an investigation into a form of materiality and a deconstruction of language’s relation to history. Presented as both image and object, Table Flag looks to impersonalise the concept of the flag and it’s connection to concepts such as national identity while accessing the relationships between symbolism, images, event and perception. Working with materials such as fabric, concrete and aluminium represents the reality that events, in particular violent events, exist in as real happenings, while concepts like flags and images alter perception and memory, shrouding and distancing us from such events.

Each of the nine images represents George Mosse’s nine mobilising passions that he identifies as integral to the formation of fascism. What is interesting about Mosse’s identification of Fascism is that he does not accept Fascism is a purely political doctrine, but, how it arises is due to a much more amorphous phenomenon, a mood. Each of the images is representative of one of these moods.

A mood is beyond language, it cannot be recalled nor recreated, it is inaccessible and unique. There is no measure or medium for it. Table Flag looks to direct the viewer to finding meaning in a visual language built on a system of references reliant on our individual perceptions of symbolism, all the while the work pertains to establish no concrete ideas, bar the materiality of the object itself.