Exhibition Dates: 10am – 5pm, 5th & 6th April 2025 - FREE ENTRY

Venue: The Paper Factory, 1 Turnhouse Road, Edinburgh, EH12 8NP

Artist Talk: 1pm, Saturday 5th April 2025 - FREE ENTRY

Five years after the first registered death in the UK from Covid-19, TOLL will be exhibited fully unrolled for the first time, offering an opportunity to reflect on the pandemic and its lasting impact.

Originally created to mark the first anniversary of Covid-19 deaths, TOLL is an artwork and performance film by Scottish artist Andrew J Brooks. It consists of 145,652 individual 4cm-tall marks—one for each registered death in the UK in the first year of the pandemic. The physical piece spans six rolls of paper, each 10 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, using over a litre of black ink. Brooks created the work in solitude over 52 performances, one for each week's statistics, broadcast daily on YouTube from Edinburgh’s Concrete Block Gallery. In total, the performances amount to over 37 hours of film.

TOLL will be displayed as an independent exhibition at the Paper Factory a large industrial site to be transformed for the Hidden Door Festival later this year in June. It will be shown in the Crane Shed, largest clear space in the factory, stretching the full 60-meter length of the room in a single column, accompanied by the performance films. Also featured will be a documentary short by award-winning filmmaker Dave MacFarlane, filmed at the midpoint of the work’s creation in 2021.

“This is an act of remembrance, recognition, anger and protest”.

It was made at Concrete Block Gallery in their inaugural residency and exhibition on the 15th and 16th May 2021.

It has been additionally installed fully laid out in the Edinburgh College of Art Sculpture Court and exhibited at The Dispensary Gallery in Wrexham from 14th March to 1st April 2022, marking the two year anniversary of the first registered deaths from COVID19 by the Office for National Statistics, reported as the 13th March 2020. At this show the physical work was on show along with the entirety of the 37 hour performance film through the Dispensary Gallery window via back projection screen.

The total reported deaths involving Covid19 for the first year in the UK was 145,652 and this is the number of marks made over 52 performances by Andrew in the space, each performance representing a single week’s statistics. The began project online on March 13th 2021, publishing the first performance video on the one-year anniversary of the first reported deaths in the UK, and completed publishing the work on May 13th 2021.

There are two elements to the artwork: the physical piece with the marks made on the paper and also the performance in the space making the work. It was made in solitary silence. All of the performances are available below.

Each mark is made with a single brush dab and is 4cm high and made on rolls of paper 1.5m wide and 10m long. The marks fill 53 metres of paper and have used over a litre of black ink. Each week’s statistics is filmed separately, and the longest film is 3 hours 6 minutes, representing the 6th week of Covid related deaths in the UK which was the highest toll for the year at 9,510.

Renowned documentary film maker, Dave MacFarlane of DMtwo Media, approached Andrew to document the process of making the work (film above). He commented:

“This recent filming project is one of those that come along and you can't help but take notice. The subject matter, the artistic concept and the wider social impact were all key factors in wanting to produce this short documentary”.

Quote from film:

“When you think about the statistics it easily gets abstracted away but I’m doing this to make it physical and make it so that it can’t be avoided. It’s a visualization that really makes you understand what’s happened, over a hundred and forty-five thousand deaths, you have to realise that this is something to get angry about. The impetus for this was anger and that’s what’s fed it. It’s anger at Westminster and at central government. I’ve felt that they haven’t been decisive, they haven’t made strong decisions, there has been a lot of waste, that has resulted in over a hundred thousand deaths. This is a protest piece, this is my version of holding up a placard and standing out in the street - this is my concerted silent protest.”