Trading Zones

(2018 – 2026)

In 2018 I went to live in a tax haven.

This experience resulted in Trading Zones, a project examining the relationship between onshore and offshore financial systems, their co-development over nearly a thousand years, and their continued interdependence today. While often framed as binary opposites, one transparent and regulated, the other shadowy and illicit, these are, in reality, deeply integrated structures, like two sides of the same coin.

In Trading Zones, this relationship is epitomised through the connections between the City of London, a medieval vestige turned onshore financial centre at the heart of Greater London, and the Bailiwick of Jersey, a semi-autonomous Crown dependency in the English Channel, and one of the worlds most important offshore centres. Using a range of approaches, including photography, archival research, interviews, mapping, diagrams, and visualisations, I explore the entwined histories of these two jurisdictions, reveal the mutually beneficial nature of their relationship, and the systemic harms that they give rise to.

Trading Zones seeks to show how these systems have developed out of historical injustices, including the legacies of empire, while also tracing the negative effects from prioritising financial services in both places. Ultimately, the project asks viewers to consider how these entangled systems shape the world we live in. By following the flows of power, capital, and influence between them, it encourages a more critical understanding of who benefits, who bears the cost, and what it means to continue sustaining such arrangements.

Trading Zones comprises:

= 500 digital photographs and composite photographs
= 88 diagrams of financial instruments, structures, agreements and organisations
= 7 essays amounting to 80,000 words total length
= Approximately 300 A4 pages of research materials
= Various items of ephemera related to finance
= Ebb Tide, 10 minute two screen video installation
= 700 page book dummy

Hire the travelling exhibition (coming soon)

View the Trading Zones photobook