SORRY USAD goes to London! Part 1
SORRY USAD next to the Ronald Reagan statue, Grosvenor Square, London, November 21st, 2025
Background:
After the success of SORRY as staged in Edinburgh and two days in Aberdeen, Scotland this past summer, (the latter events occurring to strategically coincide with Trump’s visit to his golf properties in the North of Scotland) – I wished to expand the project to other locations. My first thoughts were towards taking the project to London in September to be there when Donald Trump was to be hosted by King Charles for a formal dinner. I began researching for locations that might resonate. I was quite excited to discover there is a monument to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Grosvenor Square, only to learn that the square is currently closed as it is being renovated to reopen next summer of 2026. As things went, September became rather hectic with other matters, in particular prepping work for shipping to the states for a mini-retrospective show of my work at Stanford University in California opening in October. I was unfortunately thwarted in my hopes to get everything together in time to be there for Trump’s visit. The timing was further complicated by events back home, the week prior to Trump’s visit Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah –things were quite tense and fraught in the immediate aftermath of this shooting so likely it was just as well. When performing the timing and circumstances are key, you know it when you feel it.
I did however visit London later that September to see my mother-in-law, which afforded me some brief time to explore the city with the thought of where to stage the work in the future if the opportunity were to arise. I visited Grosvenor Square, this is where the former site of the US Embassy is located (it is now a very posh hotel). In visiting I could see the Roosevelt statue under scaffolding (quite bummed as this would have been such an ideal location), but also notice a Ronald Reagan statue which is part of the park but remains publicly accessible at the South East corner of the square, just across from the former Embassy building/hotel. This visit was to prove fortuitous.
It was just before departing for the US for the opening of my Stanford show that I came across a call for projects, artists, and organizations for an event entitled “Fall of Freedom”. This event was open to any creatives across the country to join together in a nationwide two days of creative responses to the rise of authoritarianism, threats to the freedom of expression – a collective response by artists in the USA. I was familiar with some of the organizers, including the amazing Dread Scott. There were no restrictions as to location stated in the CFP - this could be a perfect opportunity to finally realise my goal of staging SORRY in London. I registered on the website upon returning to the UK in late October.
The Fall of Freedom website and the larger project are quite amazing. The site includes an interactive map showing what is now over 700 events, exhibitions, performances, screenings, readings, interventions and other actions, most of which were taking place in the USA. As far as I know, SORRY was the only project registered in the UK.
Planning:
The two weeks of so prior to the event I worked through the complicated logistics of staging the work in London, which did pose some specific challenges. The custom table and the chairs needed to be transported on the train to London (the table, flag and chairs are all essential to the installation/action). I removed the non-foldable legs from the custom-made table built from IKEA spare parts and wood. I replaced these with bespoke legs made from wood poles that could be easily attached and removed for ease of transport and setting up on site. Taking all on the train in a quite bulky makeshift bag of sorts, using a grey packing blanket and some gaffers tape with a wood fashioned handle. In London I bought a foldable hand cart to transport all via the tube to the locations for the performance. All worked flawlessly to transport all to and from the performance.
The Where?
My first thoughts toward performing the work in London as part of the larger “Fall of Freedom” was to go bold, suggesting to perform the work in front of the new US Embassy and Consulate that was formally opened in 2018 on the South Bank of the Thames. I visited the building many times via Google street view prior to traveling to London, (I’d never been there before). It looked as though there were some publicly accessible plaza/park like spaces with concrete benches just adjacent to the facility. On Tuesday, the 18th, I made a pilgrimage to scout out the site. On visiting the US Embassy, it was clear that this would not be a hospitable site to conduct my action. Firstly, it was a bit of a ghost town, very few people wandering about. While the architecture of the embassy building is quite stunning, the surrounding area was quite simply soul-destroying – the kind of planned, mixed use space with very slick and over designed plazas, fountains, ground floor restaurants and looming glass towers. I am assuming this was all private property to boot. As well, the level of security was intense with bunker like guard posts on all corners of the property – I could feel their scrutiny even just walking around the building. It would have been cheeky for sure to set up my un-official, personal diplomatic mission in this space, but in thinking it through – the point of this work is to connect with people, non-Americans preferably, to have discussions, and to express my deep regret at the state of my country and it’s effects upon the rest of the world. I am not doing this to talk to Americans or deal with embassy security, etc. I re-thought my approach to being in London and chose to move the work to a more central and lively area.
Sometimes one’s first thoughts are the best. While Grosvernor Square and the Roosevelt statue was out of bounds, the Ronald Reagan statue intrigued me. The morning prior to visiting the new US Embassy I did an artist’s talk at Goldsmiths University in the Art and Politics MA program. I shared with the students a new talk I had presented while visiting Stanford University in October when I had been invited to talk to the Digital_______ Group. In this talk I showed for the first time some work I did as an undergraduate student just down the road from Stanford at SJSU. In 1984 I was quite active in exploring non-traditional processes in photography. I created my first ever series of works, entitled “Gott Mitt Uns (God With Us)”, which were made by double exposing black and white film shooting from 1980’s era contemporary news magazines and advertising then carefully rolling back the film to randomly shoot images from historical photographs from Nazi Germany. The resulting images are montages made in camera. This being the early days of the Ronald Reagan presidency, and the press breathlessly informing us that “America was back!”, combined with my newfound politicization (thank you San Francisco hard punk scene, the Dead Kennedy’s etc., and my new Norwegian anarchist punk roommate) – the notion to bring together imagery from our contemporary political and consumer realities with that of historical fascism just made sense. The resulting photos are deeply critical of Ronald Reagan and the emerging “American Exceptionalism”. Looking back on this work, at what is happening today, these seemingly radical expressions are scarily prescient.
In sharing these works with the students I had hoped to provide some background to how I came to regard myself as an artist/activist, while also noting how formative this period was for me as an artist and citizen. Having talked about this work early that day, undoubtedly informed my decision to refocus the location for the work to commence at the foot of the Reagan statue (sitting of course to his LEFT).
As such, staging “SORRY USAD” to Ronald Reagan’s left, with a back drop of the former US embassy just made sense. The US Embassy on Grosvenor Square is an iconic building, designed by American architect Eero Saarinen and completed in 1960, which became the site for numerous protests from Vietnam through the Iraq war. Furthermore, it was the Reagan era that largely cemented neo-liberal politics and policies in the US (and the UK through Thatcher). This was the time that laid the foundations for the authoritarian direction the USA has currently embraced (whist being led by yet another famous entertainer).