In Bad Day Lewis reaches for diverse reference points to convey a spirit of malaise, disaffection and disappointment: William Blake’s Albion, Bernini’s St Sebastian – ‘the original gay icon,’ he says – Matisse’s cut-out colours, Sigmar Polke. Its central figure is sparely rendered, his head thrown back in despair; transposed from Bernini’s sculpture but vertically flipped, he appears to be toppling – or perhaps to have toppled already? – towards the jagged sprayed outlines of bottles at the bottom of the painting. Surrounding him like heraldic flags are four colour fields, which Lewis has stated ‘represent blood, tears, vomit and piss.’

Lewis’ work has always been concerned with the dark underbelly of modern Britain, and its failings to make good on promises of improvement. In Bad Day, Blake’s Albion, the primordial man and personification of Britain whose symbolism is associated with rising suns and the dawn of new, better times, is inverted. ‘The sun going down metaphorically…The reality of the misery and hardship in the U.K - everything nosediving,’ says Lewis. ‘And how uninspired and hopeless and uncertain people who I speak to feel right now.’