Vince Laws
DWP Deaths Make Me Sick (2018 – present)
Vince Laws is a poet, artist, performer, and campaigner. He is interested in taking poetry off the page and into paintings, text-art, posters, films, concepts, installations, and performance. Since 2014, Vince has been engaged in an ongoing campaign to highlight the deaths of disabled people dealing with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). He is a member of Disabled People Against Cuts, an organisation for disabled people and their allies that campaigns against the injustices that disabled people disproportionately face as a result of government spending cuts.
The ‘DWP Deaths Make Me Sick’ shrouds were first created as a backdrop to a live performance organised by Vince and 13 other disability rights activists at Norwich Arts Centre in 2018. The performance ‘A Very Queer Nazi Faust’ was commissioned by Unlimited. Since then, Vince has continued to create new shrouds and they have been exhibited all around the UK. To date, the artist has made twenty-five shrouds, each of which commemorates the life of a named person who has died as a result of the ´hostile environment´ for disabled people created by the DWP. The details of each individual person’s death are shocking and tragic, but presented together a second story begins to emerge, of a system that knowingly continues to fail the very people that it exists to support.
“I want to get them seen. I feel the need to carry on screaming about the human rights abuses of this current Tory government. The shrouds are actually quite painful to make. I take breaks. They are very sad. But also very powerful because they are the truth.”
Very moving, painful and provocative. Should be seen on mass media but some hope…
These are so very powerful.