Arrival

Painted Box Lid and Game Board, Printed Chance Cards, Instructions and Character Cards; Plastic Pawns and Dice, 137cm x 72cm, 2019

Exhibition Text: 

Gray’s work focuses on the French - U.K. border. Employing satire and cliche, the socially conscious board game is aimed at the British native majority and their often detached reading of the migrant situation in Calais. The images are taken from media coverage of the crisis at Calais and the attempts made by refugees to reach the U.K. mainland. 

The ease with which a person gains entry to a country depends disproportionally on one’s background and origin. Within Arrival, players begin by selecting their continent of origin and make progress towards their goal while competing with each other. The aim is to demonstrate how the odds are stacked against migrants from particular societies by having them select alternative chance cards and use different dice depending on which role they assume. As the game progresses, it is increasingly difficult for those from particular ethnic backgrounds to win and indeed even finish.

With any game, players switch off relatively unaffected and continue with their lives when the game is over but for the migrants in Calais trying to reach their destination, the situation is anything but a ‘game’ and the subtitle references the precariousness of many of the journeys made. With so many lives lost attempting to reach their destination safely, statistically migration can, at times, seem like a lottery or ‘a game of chance’.