4 pigment prints with ash silkscreen and vinyl wall text
42cm x 42cm; 42cm x 59.4cm
shot 2012, produced 2025/6

During her DCA Print Studio residency, Longhurst worked with the ashes of court documents she chose to burn. Silent Fury is based on iPhone photographs taken in 2012, documenting the burning of documents generated by a lengthy and ableist court case that concluded under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Unable to speak about the case or its contents, the act of destroying the papers was intended as a way to move beyond a prolonged and traumatic experience. Years later, following the death of her father, a complete duplicate archive of the same documents was discovered in his garage. Confronted again with material that could not be spoken about or directly worked with, she chose to burn the files once more and use the resulting ash as pigment to make silkscreen prints that incorporate bindweed forms drawn from an 18th-century volume of botanical engravings of so-called ‘perfect’ plants. The bonfire origin print is hung above text drawn from medical descriptions of the structure of DNA. In transforming this material, Longhurst reclaims an experience that was both traumatic and constraining, turning it into a series of powerful and resonant prints.

Silent Fury marks the beginning of an attempt to process an experience that remains constrained by silence, while also questioning the ongoing and often unjust use of NDAs.

Exhibited in We Contain Multitudes, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2026