Inspired by examples of hostile architecture, like spikes on windowsills or benches designed to deter rough sleepers, Alaric created a tongue-in-cheek piece that pushes back against these tactics.

Two examples In Bristol: one where a local business installed sprinklers outside to drive rough sleepers away; another where cycle routes with bollards disguise where caravan dwellers once lived.

His work acts as a sharp commentary. The piece essentially says what these measures already imply: _go fuck yourself_ — as if people experiencing homelessness don’t have enough to deal with already. It’s a pointed reflection on anti-loitering measures and the quiet cruelty embedded in the design of public space.

Fuck Hostile Architecture

Following on from his ‘Pseudo Public Place’ piece from Turbo Island in 2023, Alaric wanted to further this idea with a wider expanse of the urban area.

Give Up exposes the commanding voice of the urban environment, a landscape where signs and structures quietly shape our behaviour. Drawing from ‘no loitering’ signs, this work transforms familiar instructions into blunt, authoritative language revealing how public space disciplines and excludes.

The phrase Give Up cuts through the polite surface of urban design to expose its true message: Keep moving, stay invisible, surrender your presence. By confronting these unspoken rules: Give Up asks us to reflect on the loss of agency in our cities and to consider how we might reclaim them.

GIVE UP

Inspired by conversations with disabled friends, this piece confronts the politics of public toilets: spaces where issues of access, safety, and dignity intersect for disabled and trans communities.

Disabled pull cords; designed to save lives, are often tied up or moved out of reach, treated as inconveniences rather than lifelines. Whether shifted by cleaners or passersby to keep things "tidy," this act reflects a wider truth: that convenience for the non-disabled is too often prioritised over the safety of those most at risk.

The piece also speaks to the broader scarcity of public toilets in urban areas, a lack that disproportionately affects disabled, trans, and homeless individuals. When basic needs are overlooked, access becomes exclusion. The noose challenges viewers to consider how everyday neglect, from poor design to inadequate infrastructure, can have deadly consequences and what it truly means to create public spaces for everyone.

Toil-et

In urban planning, a solitaire refers to a building that stands apart from the fabric of the city; visibly disconnected. This sculpture draws on Alaric’s own experience of being homeless combined with the loneliness he has felt in Bristol and Berlin, and the need to seek company, no matter how detrimental that is to one's wellbeing.

Recent data indicates that approximately one in five GP appointments in the UK are taken by individuals who are lonely or seeking advice for non-medical issues.

_Solitaire_ speaks to the loneliness many feel in cities—surrounded by people, yet profoundly alone. It asks: In places built for millions, how can so many remain unseen?

Solitaire

Having learnt about the “lifejacket graveyard” on Lesvos: a beach littered with the remains of refugee journeys, Alaric was moved to respond.

This piece combines a discarded lifejacket from that beach, sourced through Lesvos Solidarity, with a second-hand police stab-proof vest. The organisation supports refugees and upcycles materials left behind on their journeys.

The work speaks to the dual vulnerability of refugees and immigrants: unprotected at sea and unsafe on land, especially in the UK, where Black and Brown lives are met with suspicion and violence.

Alaric wore the stab-proof vest during the counter-protest riots in Bristol, summer 2024.

Di(e)vest

Alaric reflected on the sayings “to burn bridges” and “to build bridges,” especially in the context of relationships, and began connecting this to his own mental health and personal experiences. 

  
He was drawn to the image of padlocks on bridges: tokens of love placed by couples, friends, and families, and began to think about his own relationship with the outdoors. For Alaric, cycling and walking have been deeply meaningful, but they are also shaped by his experiences with PTSD and anxiety. 

  
Inspired by the symbolism of love bridges, he envisioned creating his own kind of draw bridge using bike locks. Draw bridges can be opened and closed, much like us humans hiding or shutting ourselves away from the outside world. A reflection of his complex relationship with the outdoors: the freedom and ease he sometimes feels, alongside moments of intense struggle.

Burn/Build

After being physically assaulted during Xmas 2024 and reflecting on his treatment by the police both during that incident and in the past, Alaric felt deeply angry and frustrated with the judicial system. Despite being the victim of three different forms of abuse, the police treated him as the perpetrator in each case.

Hearing about his partner’s experiences of microaggressions as a Black British person, Alaric began researching the experiences of other Black residents in Bristol. His analysis revealed that between 2017 and 2023, Avon & Somerset Police were ten times more likely to carry out a full strip search on a Black child than on a white child.

No Ball Games

Alaric was curious about whether Wells, his home city, had any connections to the transatlantic slave trade. He learnt that the adjoining street to his first childhood address (aptly named Fairways) was named after the Tudway family: owners of a sugar plantation in Antigua, worked by enslaved people.

Several grand buildings in Wells were built with the wealth generated by that plantation, yet nowhere in the city is this history acknowledged. There is no public recognition of the generations who profited from slavery, nor of those who suffered under it.

He felt ‘Unfairways’ would be a fitting alternative name for the road, highlighting the grotesque reality that when slavery was abolished, it was the enslavers who were compensated, not the enslaved. The debts from the Slave Compensation Act of 1837 were only paid off as recently as 2015\. That such a system ever existed—let alone endured for so long—is beyond shameful.

Unfairways

British pride often hinges on two things: a sharp sense of humour and a legacy of colonialism. From the playful act of placing traffic cones on statues to the outdated humiliation of children with dunce caps, this contradiction runs deep.

This statue in Lyme Regis depicts George Somers, celebrated as the “founder” of Bermuda. In 1610, he died there after delivering food to starving colonists, only six years later, the island received its first enslaved people.

Alaric used www.toppletheracists.org to locate statues, plaques, and street names that still honour figures tied to slavery and colonialism. This work confronts the absurdity of racism and calls out the UK education system’s failure to teach beyond white, colonial narratives.

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