Day 7

Covid-19 Art Exhibition

Day 7 Artists

Simon Williams - @kormeleon

This is one of a series of haiku and Tanka written to attempt to relieve some of the mental pressure of the Covid world.

Covid Haiku #1

One of a series of haiku and tanka in an attempt to mitigate the crushing effects of Covid life.

   

                    Covid Tanka #1                       Covid Tanka #2

Kelly Wu - @mothwu/

This was a poem I wrote during lockdown, whilst sitting in my garden. I was going a little crazy from constantly repeating the same day over and over again; I felt like I was in a time loop.

A Spider Crawls Up My Leg!

Carol Wylie - carolwylie.ca     @carol.wylie.71

When the lockdown began in mid-March in Canada, there was a proliferation on social media of people making and selling homemade masks, and selfies of people wearing their masks. I am a portrait artist and several things occurred to me: Masks are a symbol of this historic time we are living through, people use masks like clothing, as a way of expressing their personality, and the effectiveness of mask-wearing is dependent upon community; people doing it together in order to protect one another. I started receiving selfies of people in their masks and took up the challenge of finding resemblance and character with only part of the face visible. They are small pieces, powerful together. I plan to continue the project as long as the pandemic lasts in parallel endurance to my community.

Sh

O. Yemi Tubi (MOYAT) - o-yemi-tubi.pixels.com

The common words on many Cenotaphs around the world is “LEST WE FORGET.” Cenotaphs are monuments often erected to commemorate the heroes of war. The outbreak of the coronavirus produced our unlikely heroes; our frontline warriors that rose up to the task of defending and saving many people from death of coronavirus. This painting was done in honour of our unlikely heroes; As we honour the living, LEST WE FORGET our falling Unlikely Heroes which is the tittle of this painting.

Lest we forget
Our unlikely heroes
As week by week by our doors’ steps
With hands, pans and pots applauded
As they answered the call of duty
Gallantly like courageous armies,
With People of commonwealth and foreign-born,
With the common purpose to serve and protect,
The Queen and the country they love so dear.

Lest we forget
Our unlikely heroes,
Once Overworked, under paid, under valued
Our only forces of defence still they were
On the evil days of pandemic.
Worn out and tired, still they battled on
With little thought of their own safety.
Separated from their loved ones
To save the lives of many.

Lest We Forget

Kate Walters - katewalters.co.uk     katewalters.co.uk/blog

Lovers Intersecting, An Initation

Lovers on a Horse

The Lovers

Hong Yane Wang

We are all confined within borders in 2020 as if we are in a box. In this coded work, the boxes are randomised, just like the chance of the getting the virus. But the size, colour and animation speed of the boxes correlate to the UK’s daily Covid case number and the rate of change. For example, the steeper the increase of cases, the faster the boxes appear. Shapes that resemble a cross loom in the center from time to time. Over time, the boxes weave into a complex ghostly pattern. The animation varies day by day based on the latest covid data.

Artist Statement

Because the film industry has been badly affected by the pandemic, I took a long unpaid leave from my job. During this time, I started teaching myself coding. I wanted to use data visualisation in an abstract style to track the pandemic.
This work can be updated on the festival website on a daily basis. I can provide a one minute video for you every evening using the latest data.
It is a very new work and pretty much still a work in progress. I welcome advice and suggestions.

The two sample videos used the data from 4 Oct and 28 Oct.

Sample A: 4 Oct
https://vimeo.com/473015036
Password: COVIDBOX

Same B: 28 Oct
https://vimeo.com/473175030
Password: COVIDBOX

The Covid Box (digital art/video/online)

Jacob Weeks - jacobweeks.com      @jacobweeksphoto

Over 150 NHS staff and care workers have lost their lives to the Coronavirus while caring for the ones we love. Key workers are risking their lives on a daily basis.

The work is a memorial to those sacrificing their lives on the front line and a reminder for future generations not to forget them. The images are records of the people who have lost their lives to keep us safe. These images speak to us, hold us accountable and force us question our own mortality. When we die we all return to nature.

During the Covid 19 pandemic, we will remember isolation, loss, grief, anxiety, fear, and the weather. The beautiful weather has made the isolation more bearable for some, however it not fit the pandemic, it confuses and conflicts the message.

The images have been made through this period of lockdown, using the ‘chlorophyll process’, a process where you need immense natural light to burn an image onto the leaves. They have been exposed for days or weeks to allow the natural process to occur. The green pigments of the plant will darken accordingly, resulting in a ghostly image on the leaves with a haunting sense of loss.

To remember, recollect, think of, bear in mind

Nikki Yun

On the Front Line Saving Lives

Nikki Yun and Melissa Walton

Nikki Yun and Karin Falloon

Nikki Yun and Adriano Massari

Ally Zlatar - ally.pb.studio/

In these difficult times, I found that the isolation and beling left alone with my thoughts has proven difficult. It is hard to be alone with one's self. You realize who you are and deeply how much we struggle when alone. This work seeks to find safety and security during the pandemic and reverting to the things we hold dear, like our memories of a more peaceful time.

Sometimes Memories Never Leave Your Bones

Day 6

Covid-19 Art Exhibition

Day 6 Artists

Misty Athena Stokes - facebook.com/mistyathenastokes/     @ mistystokesartist

Influenced by lockdown I wanted to capture how Covid-19 separates generations, making us feel secluded from our friends and family, giving us a sense of loneliness. The bright colours represent a new world with hope for the future.

Seclusion

"Stay In" draws influence from the rich pattern of cultures from across the world, united in the message for us to all stay in and protect ourselves during this pandemic. I have used psychedelic bright colours to represent an almost dreamlike feeling of this surreal situation we currently find ourselves in.

Stay In

"Greed" is a response to the savage way in which members of the public have reacted by stockpiling food and other commodities during the pandemic. It reminds us to look out for and care for each other as a community.

Greed

latifah A Stranack - latifah3rayoflight.com

I made this work during lockdown whilst I was at home with my family. I was fortunate to have a space to make work from the safety of my home, and over the long months of lockdown creating and affection/hugs from my family made all the difference. We would clap together like all the nation on Thursday evenings, and suddenly we would feel all together with the community.

Having You Close was Keeping Me Sane...

Hannah Sullivan - hannahsullivan.myportfolio.com/

This painting was made during the peak of lockdown. At the time, my resources were very limited which encouraged the use of more experimental materials and methods. With these restrictions came the need to reuse surfaces, when I felt I had lost interest in a work I’d take the fabric off the frame and re-stretch it backwards, giving me an entirely new surface to work with whilst not wasting the original fabric. My surroundings at the time were very natural, which I think is reflected in the painting’s pallet and textures.

Untitled

Nerissa Cargill Thompson - nerissact.co.uk     @nerissact

Glove Story: A Tale of Covid 19

During lockdown, on my government mandated health walks around Chorlton, I noticed a change in the litter I was seeing. Fewer plastic bottles and take away cartons but a growing collection of disposable gloves, wipes and masks. The gloves felt particularly poignant.

Being hand shapes, they suggest human presence no longer there. Some looked as though they were still inhabited with a hand, others had fallen to form gestures (not always polite) maybe suggesting a feeling or reaction to the pandemic, some formed shapes like someone practicing shadow puppets and then there were combinations as though they were communicating at a time when touch and communication were so restricted and some combined with other litter to suggest a situation. So I started a collection of photographs as a way of documenting the pandemic.

I started by developing pieces combining manipulated textiles and cement cast in plastic packaging with suitable texture to reflect the way the gloves were abandoned on pavements or caught in gutters and drains. As my collection of photographs grew, so did my series of cast panels forming this Memorial. Entombed in the cement, it reinforced the permanence of loss and the long-lasting effect of this pandemic. The gloves symbolise fleeting human interaction and loss. The waste of time and resources during covid-19 leading to lost lives, particularly the disregard for the protection of keyworkers. It felt important to also respond to the tragic death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests through this this series.

  

Glove Story: Memorial (2020)

Stella Tripp - stellatripp.co.uk     @stella.tripp

Together Apart: At the start of lockdown I felt very lucky to have my studio in my house, so I could carry on working “as normal”. However I soon found myself struggling to work freely in a locked down world, and settled in to making small watercolours on paper, sometimes adding lines drawn with pen and ink, or coloured pencils.

Although not a conscious attempt to “illustrate” the restrictions, isolation and anxiety associated with the pandemic, that is what they have come to represent to me.

They’re very compelling to do. Something about the way the black line transforms the painted colours maybe? Defining the chaos? Not sure what it is, but while it continues to feel like they’re keeping me going, I guess I’ll keep them coming!

For this exhibition I made one work, intended to be divided in three – to emphasise separation and making connections.

When I first went to America, years ago, the novelty and freedom of the situation allowed my work to expand in all directions – size, materials, ideas... In the strange situation we find ourselves in now, more restrictive size and media intuitively feel more fitting.

Together Apart 1     Together Apart 2     Together Apart 3

Shahar Tuchner - shahartuchner.com

Digital 2D work which shows the coronavirus in the background. The coronavirus form looks fuzzy and ruined which expresses the hopes of the people to erase and destroy it.Above the image of the coronavirus, write the official name of the virus that given by the World Health Organization and in addition to him, in a humane and honest way, a word of disgust is written which comes as a primary human instinct that expresses the disgust and the repulsionof all the people from this terrible disease.

                            Covid-19 Ugh                             Covid-19 Yuck

Peter Veen - peterveen.nl/english

Living in the country side there is not much to be noticed on Covid-19 in daily life. A walk is a walk as usual. And my dog doesn't seem to behave differently. Only humans do. And maybe the crows.

Sneeze

Mónica Vilá - behance.net/mnivil

After seven months locked down, I finally go out to walk alone, without talking to anyone, with my headphones on and the same streets as always, streets that seems to stay almost the same, but we sure changed. I won’t be able to see and much less to touch anyone in a long time. God, I miss so much to touch people. I know not everybody has to do this; this is what happens when you have a chronic illness. 

Anyway, sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll only live in the virtual world, a world that can’t be touched or kissed.

Touch

Harvey Wells

Lockdown Dog

Philip Westcott

A range of paintings showing the reality of peoples lives during the pandemic in my local town

Art during the Pandemic

David W Westwood - mallardip.com

I am a artist who suffers with complex mental health problem. It is these problems that are the inspiration to the submitted art work.

Psychosis and me, in lockdown

Jennifer Weston - facebook.com/jenniferwestonUK     @jenniferwestonuk                                                                                          @jennife12588223

I was working in the city of York when the first visitor from China tested COVID19 positive. Word spread and soon there was a sense of rising fear and panic. No one wanted to touch the shared computers, we tried to wipe of years of engrained dirt on keyboards in one sweep. I was deeply relieved when I was furloughed and clung to the safety of indoors. The print studio I use was closed and is still closed. During lockdown I increasingly clung to my computer and made a diary of abstracted emotional expressions.

Wombwell

Day 5

Covid-19 Art Exhibition

Day 5 Artists

Jenny Meehan - jennymeehan.wordpress.com     @jennymeehanart

This digital collage is based on one of over 50 communication prompt facemasks I designed as a deaf awareness pandemic project, highlighting the need to actively  accommodate others in a time of mass masking. 

More of a Barrier than Intended 

Butterfly Net

Charudatt Pande 

In india, we face a huge migration from one state to another in india. People from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are working in various other states for their living. After lockdown people wants to go to their hometown but the transport is closed in all over India. They have to walk thousands of miles to reach there home. I want to show their pain through my artworks .

Migrated people in lockdown

Stephen Pinnell - pinnellart.com

 

        I Told You I Was Ill           Easter Day               Last Day on Earth

Sophie Riley  

I am a 4^th year medical student based at the University of Manchester, currently intercalating at Barts and the London, in Pre-Hospital Medicine. Over lockdown, I worked as Clinical Support Worker at the NHS Nightingale North West (NNW). This involved caring for patients with COVID-19. This pandemic has massively impacted so many aspects of medicine, from the way we are taught to how we communicate with patients. In this self-portrait, I have explored these ideas, specifically focusing on the effect of working whilst wearing PPE. 

Masked

Kate Rolison - @poesiegrenadine 

At a loss at the beginning of lockdown, I decided to embroider a short diary entry for each day of lockdown in tiny cross-stitch, working through the colour spectrum, a range of experiences and emotions, and various fonts as I went.

Cross Stitch Lockdown Diary

Mary Rouncefield - maryrouncefield.co.uk

         

Donning the Mask    Woman in a Mask   War by Another Name

Jordan Sallis - msblackink.co.uk

105 paintings, 105 natural subjects, 105 days in lockdown.

Prior to lockdown I had been struggling with severe anxiety which has had a profound effect on my life. Simple activities such as short walks and everyday tasks were always difficult and rarely completed.

During lockdown I have been able to embrace the quietness and solitude of the outdoors and able to carry out everyday tasks. This has given me the opportunity to relax and appreciate everything that we have already in the natural world. I decided to illustrate a subject every day that I saw on my daily walk relating to nature. I have been painting with handmade charcoal ink on mulberry paper.

I started painting on the 23.03.20 when lockdown was announced whilst living in wales up until 07.07.20 when restrictions were lifted.

Freedom

Marketa Senkyrik - marketas.net

How natural is breathing?

What about touching your friends?

Do you remember the smell of other people?

I find it alarming that an illness not only attacks us by disabling such a primary bodily function as breathing deprives us all of our basic freedom.

This is the true call to a change.

Or to become extinct.

The series of paintings I did during the lockdown due to the Covid 19 pandemic reflect my feelings about these strange times.

I am playing with transparency, notion of movement (breathing)…

Breathe In - Breathe out, watercolour on Hayle Mill Hot Press 145gsm 770x570mm

An autobiographical painting, a meditation about the simple movement generated by breathing

Breathe In - Breathe Out

Sandra G. Soriano  - @puntadasdeotono

We have come to Autumn; and our confinement by Covid19 continues. Life has been truncated with limitations, we have physically distanced ourselves from friends and family, and projects have been left hanging by a thread; But hope is what keeps us on our feet, what feeds us every morning to continue looking forward. Autumn Stitches is my tribute to Life.

Autumn Stitches

Anne Stansfield - conceptualartist.wixsite.com/annestansfield      @stansfield

During lockdown I experimented with paint, I wanted to see whether a paint bubble would maintain its bubble state when dry (a true 3D painting). I tried different types of paints and varied additives - they all popped! Each failed experiment created a hermetically sealed unit, like every household in Britain, and my own sense of suffocation was represented by them. I began to draw squashed and distorted parts of my body into the airless and isolated pockets. 'Bubble Black' is one of these drawings.

Bubble Black

Kate Steenhauer and Maria Sappho - katesteenhauer.com/the-making-of-a-feminist

During lockdown I read ’Invisible Women’, a book by Caroline Perez exposing data bias in a world designed for men. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and media, it reveals how half of the population is ignored, often with disastrous consequences.

These data biases are heightened in times of conflict, natural disasters, and pandemics, when women’s lives are disproportionality affected by higher risk of infection, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. COVID-19 demonstrates society’s inequality ‘beautifully’, not just for women but any minority.

'The making of a feminist' captures a figure struggle towards embracing feminism within the global catastrophe. In quarantine I used for the first-time myself as life-model. The work consists of 100 drawings (selfies) and a 3-minute audio-visual clip, where these drawings evolve with sound composition enhancing the lockdown domesticity commenting on the associations of so-called women’s chores, interwoven with text:

In the current situation a logical way to improve gender inequality is to implement preferential condition for women. I find it humiliating to be given a special treatment although I do want a level playing field.

I am aware of how privileged I am, and therefore worried about predominantly white middle-class western flavour of feminism.

On the other hand, thinking about major self-imposed dangers facing humanity a more balanced or even women-only leadership would prove much better suited for choosing and promoting collective, rather than competitive effort.

The way female-led governments have tackled COVID-19 is a good demonstration of how that would work.

The Making of a Feminist

Anthony Stevens - candidastevens.com/artists/154-anthony-stevens/works/      coag.dk/artists#/anthony-stevens

Made in 2020 as part of Isolated Observations, an exhibition of work made in response to the Covid 19 lockdown.

Threshold came into being after hearing and reading the phrase ‘Everything hinges on what we do next’, on various news sites during the height of the U.K lockdown.

It is true, it does. We are currently in a liminal space, a place of suspension that will pass, just as the virus eventually will and all the rainbows in windows with it; rainbows which I feel are representative of a specific set of circumstances and factors, just as the rainbows we see in the sky are.

At some point, we will all have to open our doors again and step across our thresholds and out into the world. Will the time in isolation have affected us, changed us and our world view in any significant way? Will we view our lives and the very act of living differently after being so vividly confronted with it’s finite nature on such a mass scale?

The first act of opening our doors after lockdown, the hinges moving, being set into action by our intent to step back into the world will be a profoundly significant one. That intent and it’s motivations will dictate what happens next for us as individuals and the world as a whole.

Threshold

Vanessa Stewart

A motif fragment from an original unexhibited  watercolour from a series "Renaissance 2" concerning mutated human forms inhabiting a far future world...trapped in my bubble...

New Worlds 2 -Secure Bubble

Developments of background images created by Medical School undergraduates in past years at University of Leeds Medical school, where I have run a "Creative Doctor" short course, over each of the past 11 Years.  [Students sign permissions for their work to be documented and used.] 

 "Stigma" was on the theme of isolation in relation to HIV Aids in Russia where the student had done some research; 

"Mental Health" was a large scale group mark making  response to word stimulii on the theme of mental health.  

Superimposed on each of these backgrounds are a number of different motifs resonant of the current Covid-19 pandemic making entirely new original artwork.

                              LSUni- Stigma            LSUni-MentalHealth-Covid