Edinburgh exhibition of massive Covid artwork 5 years on from first registered UK death in pandemic

Artist Andrew J Brooks' work, entitled TOLL, consists of 45,652 individual 4cm-tall marks—one for each registered death in the UK in the first year of the pandemic.

It spans six rolls of paper, each 10 meters long and 1.5 meters wide and it used over a litre of black ink.

The massive artwork is fully unrolled for the first time in this weekend's exhibition | Chris Scott

It is displayed - fully unrolled for the first time - as an independent exhibition at the Paper Factory, a large industrial site to be transformed for the Hidden Door Festival later this year.

Originally created to mark the first anniversary of the pandemic, TOLL also includes performance film. 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 is on display in the Crane Shed, the largest clear space in the factory, stretching the full 60-meter length of the room in a single column, and accompanied by the performance films. Also featured is a documentary short by award-winning filmmaker Dave MacFarlane, filmed at the midpoint of the work’s creation in 2021.

Artist Andrew J Brooks at work on TOLL. Picture: DMtwo media | DMtwo media

Brooks says TOLL - first exhibited in 2021 - was "an act of anger, protest, recognition, and remembrance", his protest against Westminster’s handling of the pandemic.

Five years on, he says this presentation offers a moment to consider how the meaning of the work has evolved. "Displayed within the vast, defunct Paper Factory, the exhibition places TOLL in a new context, allowing audiences to fully engage with its scale and significance, with every single mark visible for the first time."

The exhibition is at The Paper Factory, 1 Turnhouse Road, Edinburgh, EH12 8NP, on Saturday and Sunday, April 5 and 6, from 10am until 5pm.

The artist will give a talk on Saturday at 1pm - tickets available on eventbrite.