Lexicon People. 2008. Screen prints on screened and painted canvas. 49 pieces stretched onto wooden stretchers; 250mmx250mm each, shown together as one piece. Lexicon People came out of the piece Lexicon. When I decided to make this work Lexicon had been evolving for about a year, so I had to contact all the people that had a piece of it and ask them to send me their photo. This took some time as they live all over the world. I then started to photograph all the new people who took away a piece of the first work. Eventually I had enough images to begin making the new work. I now have all but two of the Lexicon owners. I decided to work on a 2.5 meter piece of canvas and painted a world squeezed into a square, so it became rearranged and distorted. I then screen-printed a poem a friend sent me, by a contemporary Guyanese poet, Michael Gilkes. The poem describes Guyana and its recent colonial history and then the disturbances and disappointments of Independence and his decision to migrate, like so many Guyanese people have done, to Britain, Canada, North and South America and even Africa. A Diaspora. I felt the poem described so many of the owners of Lexicon, many of whom live and work away from home for a multiple of reasons. The nationalities represented in lexicon People are: the Batswana, Swedish, British, French, Mozambiquean, South African, Singaporean, Icelandic, Namibian, Danish, Pakistani, Guyanese, North American, Indian, Serbian, Dutch, and Manx.