Claudio Beorchia

For the Art Residency London is Open I'd like to describe a project which is close to my heart and central to my recent practice: Homo Infographicus. For the last two years I've been cutting out economic graphs from newspapers and financial journals. Histograms, pie-charts, pictograms – graphs of all description. I'm fascinated by the formality and rigour of the shapes and colours but also find them pleasing and harmonious.

Apart from the aesthetic aspect I started to collect these graphs for what they represent: they are about the world - the things that matter, human activity reduced to geometric forms, lines and colours, signs and numbers. For me, these cuttings are a raw material particular to our era, so focussed on the economy and finance, on data and information.

Using the cuttings as a starting point, I make collages of figures and subjects which are somehow connected to contemporary life.

To make a new series of collages in a London context would be an extraordinarily precious opportunity, especially at the moment: the UK has chosen Brexit, apparently for economic reasons. The government is dealing with the complex process of leaving Europe which will coincide with closing borders and the isolation of the United Kingdom. All this is happening in London, the very definition of a multicultural, global, open city.

In my collages I want to tell the city's story, hoping to reflect on a complicated, contradictory and unpredictable situation as it unfolds.

From the point of view of materials the residency would be new and stimulating for me. So far, most of my cuttings have come from Il Sole 24 Ore but in London I could base my collages on two of the pillars of international financial journalism,The Economist and the Financial Times.