Moving Unrest draws on the experience of zugunruhe, the migratory restlessness observed in caged birds, in order to reflect on the embodied experience of incarcerated men and the existential, universally human need for home. Each man is photographed standing within his cell, facing his geographical direction of home, whether home be a place, person or feeling of safety or peace. The gesture is quiet and restrained: a body held still, oriented toward elsewhere. The bird becomes a proxy for an instinct that cannot be acted upon, a migratory impulse suspended by enforced time. These images ask how longing, memory, and direction persist when movement is denied, and speak to that steadying centre of gravity we hold on to through periods of instability.

Photographed by Tod Jones, courtesy of IKON Gallery Birmingham