Award 27: With Force

Alana Lake creates a sculptural response to the UK’s increasingly restrictive policing of protest.

With Force highlights the erosion of civil liberties and the suppression of the right to protest, with recent arrests of pro-Palestine activists showing how such measures are becoming normalised. The project seeks to raise awareness and open discussion around the current climate of fear and injustice. Alana created a truncheon and baseball bat, symbols of force sculpted in fragile materials.

Alana's was displayed in the window of Manchester Poetry Library visible 24 hours a day to a busy street alongside selected poems addressing protest, war, genocide and resistance. The work was subsequently shown at HOME Manchester's Research Jam, Asia Triennial Manchester, where it served as both a promotional presentation and a reflective discussion of the wider project. Alana is also making a zine to contextualise the work and share more information and those will be distributed around Manchester.

Alana Lake is an artist and PhD researcher working at the intersection of sculpture, psychoanalysis, and queer identity. Currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at Manchester School of Art. Alana's sculptural works draw on destruction as a methodology, embracing the liveliness of matter to reflect on compulsion, desire, and embodiment.

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