the Sun shines hotter here but brighter there
Lockdown has created a universal restriction that has been felt globally. We now navigate a shrunk world, with our feet only taking us so far. Life has been reduced down to a repetitive blurring of days, from black through indigo, purple, pink, orange and green to blue, and then back to black again. This gradient is only broken up by walks that are a vital form of respite from the homogeny. Pre-COVID we often found ourselves walking with a destination, a purpose and time constraints. Lockdown has rendered these immaterial, allowing for a reduced pace and increased observation of not only the visual but also the feeling underfoot and internally. An imagined rendering of a time and place just out of reach allows for increased sensitivity in mapping the various stratification within the terrain. Lacking human interaction, communication outside the household is limited to video calling and cautious interactions on the street, highlighting the need of a digital world for my distant missed ones and my experience of lockdown to co-exist in.
The world has stopped and paused for a moment. The vibrations of planes, rush-hour commuting, pub gardens, club-goers, school children, football fans and tourists alike have softened down to leave bird song to emerge through. Golden light covers the sides of houses and hills, basking them in gentle hope for the future. The same light hits the water with broken refraction of the lost present, and FOMO of living now. I have experienced a special kind of conflict like none other I have felt before. The world is currently achingly beautiful, with Spring transitioning into Summer, nights getting shorter and days getting hotter. My surroundings are crying out to be enjoyed, yet we are surrounded by the threat of infection, lost lives and lost futures. Feelings of helplessness have smothered the land, alongside a humid blanket of existence suppressing normal breathing.
My work aims to address the frustration of lockdown, mapping mundanity, light, feelings and geographical landmarks through colour, text and photography creating contemporary psychogeographic readings of environments I reside in and places I long to be in. The slight changes in light at dusk and dawn dance across your eyes in a frustrating two-step, noisily receding and advancing between foreground and background. Feelings of being stuck equally dance between foreground and background, longing for elsewhere or another time. By recreating maps, I find myself negotiating the demarcation of space, and questioning the structures that determine who is valid to be in these spaces. I walk through liminal spaces in the city, wandering through deserted streets and industrial estates with mutated wildlife, whilst finding myself in a liminal space too. Stuck between wanting to be elsewhere and also nowhere; stuck between the past and the future but not quite living in the present.
The world has stopped and paused for a moment. The vibrations of planes, rush-hour commuting, pub gardens, club-goers, school children, football fans and tourists alike have softened down to leave bird song to emerge through. Golden light covers the sides of houses and hills, basking them in gentle hope for the future. The same light hits the water with broken refraction of the lost present, and FOMO of living now. I have experienced a special kind of conflict like none other I have felt before. The world is currently achingly beautiful, with Spring transitioning into Summer, nights getting shorter and days getting hotter. My surroundings are crying out to be enjoyed, yet we are surrounded by the threat of infection, lost lives and lost futures. Feelings of helplessness have smothered the land, alongside a humid blanket of existence suppressing normal breathing.
My work aims to address the frustration of lockdown, mapping mundanity, light, feelings and geographical landmarks through colour, text and photography creating contemporary psychogeographic readings of environments I reside in and places I long to be in. The slight changes in light at dusk and dawn dance across your eyes in a frustrating two-step, noisily receding and advancing between foreground and background. Feelings of being stuck equally dance between foreground and background, longing for elsewhere or another time. By recreating maps, I find myself negotiating the demarcation of space, and questioning the structures that determine who is valid to be in these spaces. I walk through liminal spaces in the city, wandering through deserted streets and industrial estates with mutated wildlife, whilst finding myself in a liminal space too. Stuck between wanting to be elsewhere and also nowhere; stuck between the past and the future but not quite living in the present.
