This exhibition concerns the United Kingdom’s Freedom of Information Act 2000, its mechanisms and provisos, and articulation of control. It is composed of seven wall-mounted vitrines of varying sizes. Contained in each one are Freedom of Information (FOI) request response letters sent by 17 British ministries and governmental departments to real, anonymised persons between 1st October 2023 and 29th October 2024. Every response declines to fulfil the cited request and specifies the reason/s for the refusal according to one or more of 16 exemptions. The vitrines instil a mirage of transparency which is not coincidental.
To obtain the letters, Ceidra Moon Murphy submitted her own FOI requests to the respective state bodies. On display are the complete materials disclosed to her in those cases where the request was successful. Unseen here are the puckered replies to her inquiries, the faceless demands for clarification or qualification, and the routine tactics of delay and/or restriction. Occupying this void instead, the muffled ministerial voice that addresses the redacted subjects dismissed herein is set against their varying tonal registers, from the unrehearsed appeals of civilians to the proleptic phrasings of journalists looking for a scoop.
Murphy has organised the correspondence according to each exemption applied, as it is enumerated in the Act (for instance, Section 43 Commercial interests). Where more than one exemption is invoked, the letter is duplicated. In every resulting stack, papers are further sorted alphabetically by department, and then by date. The requests encompass issues ranging from the provision of vegan diets to vegan prisoners and statistics on nitazenes deaths and modern slavery offences to Myra Hindley’s police interview transcript, takeaway orders placed by the Home Office, US-UK transfers of radioactive materials, and correspondence on ADHD medication shortages between the British government and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
Silhouetted behind each work is the Public Interest Test (PIT). As the UK Information Commissioner’s Office stipulates, “The public interest here means the public good.”
at a. SQUIRE, London
until February 22, 2025