Black Union Jack (2025), Rope on canvas, 150 x 120 cm

Mixed media study for a Black Union Jack. The work is a deconstruction of a deeply loaded national symbol reduced to its essential geometry and recontextualised in monochrome, marking a symbolic reset. Stripping the Union Jack of its hue and therefore its historical weight. What remains is not a neutral form. It becomes contested signifier: a shadow of the symbol. Referencing Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, this work marks a similar reduction, of political iconography. Where Malevich erased representation to access the sublime, Black Union Jack retains the flag’s structure as a persistent spectre of history, emptied of its overt symbolism yet still laden with meaning. In monochrome, the work signals an ideological void; a refusal of inherited signs, a critique of the grand narratives the Union Jack has upheld. By removing the signified (unity, nationalism, power) from its signifier, the work opens a reflective space in which the viewer must confront the unstable relationship between nation, identity, and myth. Here, abstraction is not an escape, but a confrontation. A void, not of form, but of trust in the institutions, identities, and histories we are asked to take as given. Thank you to 1705milita for exhibiting this work at Militia Stretford show, sponsored by Bruntwood.