The laser pyrographic etchings are layered with financial newspaper before the image is scorched into the surfaces to create a smoky and physically burnt out area to delineate lines and tones. Laser pyrography is used to create images of destruction with destruction. The origin of the word means fire drawing only here they are created with a laser cutter. The ‘Apocalypse’ series is based on Durer’s of the same title and is a set of 15 etchings about the vision of St John from the Book of Revelations. My interest was in the use of the apocalypse as a metaphor of the 2008 Financial Crisis that was inflicted by a corrupt banking system causing a global recession.

When the 2008 financial crisis occurred there was a 2 week period in the media when ‘The End of Capitalism’ was touted as headlines due to the uncertainty of whether the global economic system could be sustained. Companies that had been in existence for over 150 years collapsed due to the systemic corruption of the deregulated finance world. 2020 was already heading into an economic recession before being exasperated by the pandemic into an even worse situation resulting in what some are already calling the next Great Depression.

The series is based on Durer’s apocalypse series and is made by using a laser cutter to burn and vaporise the surface of Financial Times newspaper as a form of pyrography; a fire drawing. The act of destruction creates the image of destruction.