Keith Piper
Born 1960, Malta
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom 

22 Yards of Earth 2026
single channel video, looped 13 mins
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Samstag Museum of Art with generous assistance from Mark and Louise Nelson, and British Council in Sydney
Courtesy of the artist 

An elderly West Indian man sits in an armchair, his space cluttered with memorabilia, as he is interrogated by an offscreen voice. What follows is a narrative deep-dive into cricket as a metaphorical space where imperial, national, and class antagonisms have unfolded, set against a history of Test matches played between Australia, the West Indies, and England from 1960 onwards. Infused with elements of magical realism, 22 Yards of Earth portrays fast bowling as a kind of ‘banter’ carried out between young men from opposite edges of the British Empire, united against a common adversary: England. 

This shared antagonism draws parallels between Australia and the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean. Each were built upon land violently stolen from Indigenous peoples and subsequently populated, in part, by descendants of the enslaved, indentured or convicted. For artist Keith Piper, the otherwise obvious differences between these two cultures are reconciled in the arena of cricket where the urge to strike back against the imperial “centre” can be played out as a fantasy realised.