‘The Past Devours the Future’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line graph in stainless steel. The source material for the work is drawn from data presented in economist Thomas Piketty’s book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and its discussion of rising wealth inequality in western democracies. Piketty’s research compiled historical evidence into a stark picture of the growth of such inequality and the resultant social inequality it engenders; that in essence, “the past devours the future”. As a work of creative practice, this artwork takes the familiar formal device of the line graph and removes the labelled axes, rendering the lines technically meaningless, but in their essential form still ‘readable’. Abstracted from their original context, the lines themselves become symbolic narrative drawings, telling a series of stories of change over time. At the same time, the work’s title, choice of material, and its austere presentation act as prompts to the underlying details of these narratives. In this distilled form, the work explores the potential of appropriation, abstraction, and de-contextualisation to act as critical drawing and sculptural strategies. It uses these approaches and the basic formal conventions of the line graph to suggest ambiguous narratives and in turn creatively respond to broader social and economic concerns.