While employed as a schoolteacher in the South Bronx in 1980 Tim Rollins worked with children who had been described as ‘learning disabled’ and ’emotionally handicapped’. Rollins took a different view. Refusing to accept that these disabilities were true, he placed an unwavering faith in the students, expecting and demanding excellence from them.

The students became known as ‘kids of survival’, or ‘K.O.S.’, and Rollins’ expectations were easily exceeded. Tim Rollins and K.O.S. have gone on to achieve a degree of success that few would have expected. The works are a combined effort by them and the groups that they work with. Taking books as a starting point Rollins reads aloud, while the group draws and paints in response. The resulting images are then manipulated – in this case, cut out and collaged onto a canvas, which the group have covered with the pages of the book. This work was made during a community-based project at the Orchard Gallery Derry, Northern Ireland in 1988, when Rollins and K.O.S conducted workshops with 12 teenagers from the Creggan neighbourhood.