This work takes its title from Stuart Hall’s 1978 edited collection of essays entitled Policing The Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. Compositionally divided into two angled halves, halftone line translations of broadcast news documentation are painted across the varied materials depicting three specific events in London and Los Angeles. The image on the left is a distant view of Mid-City Los Angeles ablaze, as seen from a news anchorman on-location in South L.A. in 1992. On the right section of the painting, a group of demonstrators in the streets of London confront riot-gear-clad police in the wake of the murder of unarmed Mark Duggan at the hands of London police in 2011. The single strip of vinyl is printed with an image of an LAPD officer wearing protective headgear during an unprovoked night raid at an open-mic gathering at KAOS Network Art Centre in Leimert Park Village in 1996. The video still from 1996 interacts with stills from 2011 and 1992, creating a crosshatched effect where they meet along the surface of the painting.

Constructed from white canvas, brown corduroy, and raw canvas, the painting is sewn together with a zigzag of denim and black paper bags. Laminated paper handles and brass grommets are used to stretch the painting’s surface tightly onto an awning style frame, constructed from locally sourced London wood. The artist’s expressive hand can be felt in the textured application of grey slate and brown soil, and the scraping away of black paper that mimics the active gesture of drawing.