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Sunday 15 November 2020

Day 2

 Covid-19 Art Exhibition

Day 2 Artists

Marinela Caldaruswww.artclassesgroup.com   @artclassesgroup

March 2020, is the time when Coronavirus took over the world. We are all equally terrified and only one thing is certain – no money can guarantee one’s safety. By studies, I am an artist, and I dedicated my life to painting and teaching but this time I felt that doing a painting would not be enough to evidence the reality I was living so I decided that every day I will document my experience while in lockdown, through writing, sketching, keeping a journal, or by taking pictures.


 

My daily philosophy                           In isolation we will learn


Fiona Campbellhttp://fionacampbellart.co.uk

In isolation, I experienced various forms of grief and joy. I began taking life at a slower pace, sowing veggie seeds, and mending things. Appreciating, observing and attending to nature seemed vital. My garden, until then somewhat neglected, became my world and route to wellbeing, providing a sense of peace and purpose. My lockdown project Life in the Undergrowth was inspired by small hidden worlds in the garden that often get overlooked. It became a circular process - garden feeding art and art feeding garden.

While resurrecting my veggie patch, a fascination with the entanglement of roots, worms and shoots in upturned turf led to experimental responses using to-hand materials and found objects. I drew the knotted clumps obsessively and worked through different processes. Dried duckweed from my pond, bleached by the sun, became paper; handmade tools from plant debris generated drawings and sculptural works evolved.

While digging the earth to make space for an outdoor studio bay, I found a glut of old rusty nails to use in my work. I sold my soil locally - creating a circular economy. Encounters between myself, garden as site and nature helped me form a stronger bond with all that comes and goes. 
Witnessing transformation, life and death, it was emotional at times. Communing with small creatures, incidents happened, some wonderful, others very sad.

During this time I embraced digital technology and made a film Life in the Undergrowth, from which this image is taken (see Instagram: @life_intheundergrowth).

I owe thanks to Arts Council England/National Lottery Emergency Response Fund, Richard Tomlinson and Jack Robson for their support.



                          Life in the Undergrowth, Snail               Blackbird (film still: Life in the Undergrowth)                               


Life in the Undergrowth, Death of a Blackbird (wrapped in rhubarb leaf)


Northern Cave - www.instagram.com/Northern.cave

At the start of lockdown in the UK I had to immediately minimise the size of work I produce.

Once taking this on the chin and continuing onwards with my practice I came across some social issues which I have been lucky enough not to go though.

Loved ones are being separated for long periods of time. Thinking about people in romantic relationships I thoughts around how intimacy has been reworked in these last months for many people in relationships. My focal point of this work was the sexual side of this social construct we currently have. People aren't able to physically be with one another and therefore unable to have any form of skin on skin contact which is one of the most intimate ways of being with someone. During this time I've seen a lot of relationships break down. Maybe the thought of being apart hurt too much so trying to be without them hurt less?

I thought about my friends and all the people I haven't met yet who are separated from their partner(s). They've probably not had sex not over the Internet in a while. Or even at all.

I thought about how skin on skin contact and feeling someone else on you is quite magical when you feel fantastic about them and being with them gives you the butterflies even after years of waking up in the same 
bed.

A body print. A visual representation of how my skin would touch yours. Every fold, crease and line all there to see. How my body kissed the paper. I present visual touch. My response to corona.


Visual touch

Winnie Chanhttp://chanwinnie.com   @winnieinner

I have seen many of the people did not use facemask correct in exeter during second wave when we have 300+ cases in the past week. Some did not wear it properly, some remove it immediate after come out from a shop ( just put the ear loops on their wrist and walk around) it makes me worry. Hope this piece of work can help to spread the important of using a facemask correctly.


Correct use of facemasks



This piece is a visual representation and expression of my experience of waiting for my (previously ruptured and coiled) cerebral aneurysm to be re-treated amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The operation was due to be scheduled just as the pandemic hit. I am hopeful that the amazing medical team that saved my life before, and have monitored to keep me safe ever since, will be able to do so again. 

These are unsettling times for the majority of people all around the world, with everyone affected in their own way, yet also united by sharing the same hopes, fears and challenges of the reality of our respective ‘new worlds’. 



Waiting II


Mike Clementswww.mikeclementsartist.com

"Jiggery-Pokery" - another artist's book in my series on well-know words and phrases whose origin we don't immediately appreciate. Twist fold structure with an image from a notorious incident during the UK's Covid 19 lockdown in Spring 2020 (Dominic Cumming's arguably lockdown-busting journey from London to Durham and outrageously then on to Barnard Castle)."

Pheidias writes on Covid 19 - an instalment in an ongoing imaginary conversation by postcard and across two and a half millennia between the artist and Pheidias, the sculptor of the greatest works of ancient Greece, notably the gold statues of Athena in the Parthenon in Athens and Zeus at Olympia, one of the seven wonders of the ancient word. Yes, the text is in Greek characters, but not in Greek. Work hard at it and you can read Pheidias’s message in English. Pheidias gives his perspective on the Coronavirus pandemic, reflecting on classical Greece's experience of pandemics.

"Lockdown Times" - an artist's book with an unusual sculptural form. Its contents focus on the creative cookery many of us tried in the early weeks of lockdown.


Jiggery-Pokery                                Pheidias writes on Covid 19


Lockdown Times

Alexander Courtwww.amazon.co.uk/What-Steal-Wholly-Empty-Impossibly/dp/1718617232

This work was something that I wrote while waiting for the bus a few weeks ago, I'd had time to kill and decided to visit an old ruined church and the remains of the Abbey of the Holy Cross as I knew it would be empty. I took a stroll round to the O'Connell tomb where Daniel O'Connell's parents are buried and found that the grass nearby was growing rough and wild, stone had broken off or had been pulled off and left on the ground in front of the tomb and small piles of stone were heaped either side and were being reclaimed by the dark green of the Ivy. It was surrounded by litter as well, bottles, packets, smashed glass and, more notably, disused face masks. I did my best to tidy the area up and kick away some of the more dangerous rubbish, and thought a lot about our mortality. I will be putting it into my next collection which I am working on at the moment.


Parents


"Peel' was a very painful poem to write, mostly because I was missing several layers of skin on my fingertips and tiny cuts also stretched along my fingers as well. During the summer I returned to work as a kitchen porter which meant a lot of washing and sanitising of both the work and myself. The skin of my fingers is very sensitive, as it turns out, and the repeated application of hand sanitiser basically destroyed the surfaces of my hands which made literally anything requiring my hands incredibly painful (Gloves were still in short supply). Thankfully most of the skin has now grown back, though unfortunately I am now temporarily laid off, again. This poem will also feature in my next collection which I am currently in the process of writing.


Peel


Aurelie Crisetigwww.acrisetig.com    @aureliecrisetig

‘This belongs to everyone, so enjoy the view’ depicts the alteration of landscapes through digital topography. The fragment of areas assembled together compose an ensemble of imaginary panoramas. Every pattern of land represents a variation of time and space in both the digital and physical world. Merged together, each landscape becomes an abstract vision of mending views, recreating a conceptual, unknown environment. These patchworks of sceneries taken from Google Earth express how diverse a location on our planet can appear through a visual dispositive. These transfigurations were both digitally manmade by the apparatus used to capture the landscape, but also physically transformed by the global warming produced by human beings. Both changes depict the unpredictable development of landscape during this tumultuous time.

Not being able to explore the world during this tough time is pushing every creative artist to explore different path and alternative to fill the void of producing art in a stable environment. As a street photographer, my work revolves around the outside, the architecture and streets, the open air, the outdoor. Google Earth is nowadays my only resource for my work and my only escape on the outside.


This belongs to everyone, so enjoy the view


Deborah Davieswww.deborahdavies.art

I continued to make art over lockdown with regular supplies delivered via Amazon. It occurred to me that I was only able to make political art addressing the social issues of this time because some people had no choice but to risk their health delivering goods. They took the risk so I didn't have to as I proceeded to make art about social inequalities with the supplies they delivered to my door. This sculpture is built out of Amazon boxes.


Risk Economy

Richard Downes & Charlet Wilson - www.artconnect.com/profiles/dread-rhymes/projects/dread-rhymes-in-a-time-of-chaos

On the Island is a response to Boris Johnson promising to put his arms around 'vulnerable' people, a most unwelcome metaphor in our opinion and relates to an experience of social isolation

The poetry is by Richard Downes, Illustration and design by Charlet Wilson


On the Island

A Tissue of Haiku's focuses on deaths in nursing homes and disabled people's ongoing campaigns for full independent living.

Poetry and Photography by Richard Downes
Design Charlet Wilson




Gabriela Drees-HolzDreho.de

I compare Covid 19 to a snake, threatening so dangerous and quietly. In my artwork, the fabric snake penetrates the metal grille crocheted with wool.
The work is part of my video film "Art during the shutdown" (https://youtu.be/VOlS9bSTNzU), by presenting my works of art, created in isolation and fear, in an exhibition.


Corona penetrates everywhere

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