Research relating to current commission: Remembering Together: Co-Creating Covid Community Memorials
Sumi painting, inkjet printer ink on paper
ink circles as a tool for curiosity, healing and expression
From a collection of ink drawings, I ask public to select three colours to represent their timeline, present time, the past pre-covid and pandemic lockdown.
One person choose a green colour for the close connection they experienced to nature, specifically local flora. This memory awakened an experience I had during lockdown. A really joyful one with my mother that I had forgotten. I saw my parent as a fellow artist, communicating through nature photography and words on WhatsApp.
Listening to colour theory podcast by Ed Charbonneau (artist whose main focus is on painting and faculty member in the fine arts department at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design). This podcast is amazing and recently listened to one about Mary Gartside
purple=present/future, mauve=pre covid, blue=lockdown,
Covid casts a shadow over both the past and the future
soft bright pink=present/future, magenta=pre covid, blue with pink edge=covid
A bit of light and a bit of dark
Light is generous. If you have ever had occasion to be out early in the morning before the dawn breaks, you will have noticed that the darkest time of night is immediately before dawn. The darkness deepens and becomes more anonymous. If you had ever been in the world and ever known what a day was you couldn’t possibly imagine how the darkness breaks. How the mystery and colour of a new day arrives. Light is incredibly generous, but also gentle. When you attend to the way the dawn comes, you learn how light can coax the dark. The first fingers of light appear on the horizon ever so deftly and gradually, they pull the mantle of darkness away from the world quietly before you is the mystery of a new dawn, the new day.
John O’Donoghue (1956–2008), Anam Cara
priest, philosopher and spiritual writer.
These years have shaped and continue to shape this present generation. We need to keep talking about what we all experienced.
Anna Magnusson, 2022, Good Morning Scotland. BBC Radio Scotland. 14th July 2022. 7.23am.
Scottish freelance writer, broadcaster and radio producer.
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Most of our communication has been over the phone. The natural human act of loving my mother, of going to my mother giving her hugs visiting her being a good son being a good friend. That became dangerous and wrong.
Blindboy, 2022. The Blindboy Podcast. 251. A post lockdown mental health plan. 13th July 2022.
Irish writer, satirist, musician, podcaster.
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My collaborator on Remembering Together project recommended BBC documentary Aids: the Unheard Tapes
One of the remarkable things about the response to AIDS was how fast people living with AIDS got together and made to make that own demands. We are not victims. We are people living with aids
Sir Nick Partridge, Terrence Higgins Trust
That message was actually really important. It gave us a sense of purpose and it gave us a sense of hope.
Paul Burston ACTUP LONDON
People can look back and see what happened with this sudden movement. People who had a condition suddenly challenged the system. And now you’ve got patient groups all over the world doing similar and disability groups, and they’ve modelled themselves and a lot of this stuff that AIDS did.
John Campbell
One thing that is true is that there is no certainties, and actually life is chaos. I think we just try to make some kind of order out of that chaos.
Johnathan
The experience of listening to these stories about people wanting to be recognised as people, and the rapid collectivity to be human and kind reminded me of an illustrated book by Niki de Saint Phalle.
