Lockdown Still Lifes: Or what it means to be creative through a pandemic)

Lockdown Still Lifes Or what it means to be creative through a pandemic

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Ponderings: As a work of art, a social sculpture includes human activity that strives to structure and shape society or the environment.

Social Sculpture is based on the concept that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist.

Social Sculpture has to do with exploring new values, new forms of thinking and new ways of being in the world.

We are a bit unusual.

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About us: Lockdown Still Lifes is a community born as an immediate response to UK Lockdown on 28th March 2020. Members are invited to post photos that inspire them. It provided a visual insight into lockdown life during this unique time of social distancing and isolation. We found that by expressing yourself through everyday objects, people access a new and different narrative.

Throughout lockdown the group shared work and ideas, asking questions, and seeing the world through each other’s eyes. Exploring creative topics in weekly zoom meetings on themes as diverse as origins, dreams, obstacles and place, provided an arena where participants shared backgrounds, experiences and knowledge, in the process enriching and connecting with each other.

Unlocked: Moving out of Lockdown we have been given the opportunity to develop as a network and having a space in the artist community in Shirethorn House gives us the opportunity to reach out and connect with other organisations.

We want to invite a wide range of collaborators to work alongside to develop projects and activities that resonate with our original purpose.

Our manifesto: We are curious - we want to hear different perspectives, new views, alternative thoughts, stories from the past, speculations of the future. Keep them coming, we want to learn, grow and explore.

We are kind - life can be hard and difficult. We create a space, where we can feel supported, understood and safe. Where we can open up and share and access that deep creativity that resides in us all.

We Listen - one thing we learned in all those zoom meetings, it’s important, when one person talks for everyone to listen. This is how you create an equal community where everyone feels valued.

We Reflect - always, constantly.. Something we value and bring back to meetings, to the pages we post on, the images we take, the conversations we have. Without reflection, there is no depth..

We are ourselves and we are all artists, because Joseph Beuys says so...

kunstbureau.art facebook.com/groups/lockdownstilllifes kunstbureau.art@gmail.com 3

Men at Work - Roger Roach, Withernsea This picture of the groynes at Withernsea was taken on a grey summer afternoon at the seaside town, which I was visiting for the first time in the fifty years since I starred (!) in a London Film School student’s film entitled ‘A Jester’s Tale’, which was shot entirely on the sands.

The unseasonably cold and overcast day resulted in very few people being on the beach and as a result I focussed on the near silhouetted groynes, which resembled a large group of men at work, some appearing to be hauling nets. I thought of times long gone, before the idea of a seaside or even a holiday existed, when the sands would have been the scene of hard manual labour to ensure the community’s survival. I was pleased that my membership of the Lockdown Still Lifes group, enabled me to share the image with many other creative individuals. @BritonFerryBoy @yourcarsthestar 4

Pandemic > Now Wash Your Hands - Michael Barnes-Wynters, Kingston upon Hull, 19/04/2020 My mother came to UK from Jamaica to work for the NHS and so we were indoctrinated to wash our hands regularly. Lockdown for me highlighted the fact that people don’t wash their hands as often as they should. redcontemporaryarts.tumblr.com futuresventure.net 5

Quarantine Collage #12 (series #1) Striped Out #2 | Lockdown #1 | Britain 2020 Lisa Fielding-Smith, Visual Artist based in East Yorkshire The Quarantine Collage Series is a body of work I have been making throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, reconfiguring fashion model images of women from popular lifestyle magazines. The project takes the form of around 100 handmade paper collages. Placing an image of each collage in the Lockdown Still-life group and on other Social Media platforms regularly throughout the whole period of the pandemic, I used this process as a way of communicating with the world: A way of saying ‘I’m here, I’m still alive’ in a very dark period of time where so many people tragically lost their lives. These collages are an attempt to visualise the feelings of social misplacement and alienation caused by our extraction from society due to the necessary isolation processes of the COVID-19 pandemic. instagram.com/lisafieldingsmith 6

Hollow Man - Graeme Brooks, Goole Whilst many of us emerge from lockdown regaining basic human freedoms of movement, travel and social interaction, others due to chronic illness, addiction, disability, abuse, discrimination, mental health, or austerity remain trapped or caught in a perpetual and permanent restricted state.

‘Hollow Man’ is a portrait of my father, a loyal and generous family man, shipping accountant, business owner, footballer, builder, a comedian, entertainer and raconteur.

He died at home, surrounded by family, without his speech, identity, his persona, movement or memories, having starved to death following a ten year battle with Alzheimer’s.

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My Beady Eye - Martin Beeson, London N8 My photographs attempt to reveal the prolific, unexpected, and often hidden beauty and drama within the mundane. martin.beeson@gmail.com Insta: @martin.beeson.146 8

Differing Viewpoints - Sarah Pennington, Leading Lights at Thorngumbald Clough I thought a lot about clarity of communication during lockdown, and about how we need more than one information source or point of view to be able to draw conclusions and chart safe passage. In contrast to a lot of the messaging delivered during the pandemic, these two light towers work in tandem to guide sailors past treacherous shifting sands – although in this image combination they look away from each other. During this period of isolation, the LSL conversations and presentations have shared inspirational information and personal perspectives on art world ideas – each of us speaking our own truths from set starting points, but finding correlation between our ideas. This is an ongoing multi-media project, currently being explored in the HARI (Hull Artist Research Initiative) Project Space at 47 King Edward Street, Hull.

Previous works by Sarah at revelationsontheedge.wordpress.com 9

Late for the Bus - David Davies, Iceland Japanese tourist in a homburg hat and overcoat running to catch his bus.

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Obsolete Installation - Julia Roach, Carpark at Skidby Mill.

Taken late afternoon when we had gone out for an airing at Skidby Mill. The light fell on the Hull phone box in an almost spiritual way. If it had rang, I would have expected God to be on the line. I had a few things I wanted to say. But it didn’t. camouflagedexposure.wordpress.com 12

Young Busker Takes Five - Ronnie Fletcher, Photographed in York This young man was resting after accompanying his Dad on Trumpet, who played accordion. His Dad handed him a can of pop and wondered off leaving him to guard the instruments.

“Ok for me to take your picture” I asked, he just looked right at me and smiled.

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Larkin in Middlesbrough - Jill Howitt, Middlesbrough (reminds me of Hull) I took the photograph as part of my research into public art, but the message also sits perfectly with our weekly conversations during lockdown that were so important to us all. Sharing ideas and work with the group gives me fresh perspectives, extra pairs of eyes, and has changed the way I write and think about art.

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And the Beat Goes On - Glynis Afiba Neslen, (Whispers funky disco hit 1977) Hull HU5, 1st floor Flat, Westbourne Avenue; My Living Room Table, by the window which is South facing.

“The lock down prompted my growing and nurturing of plants and putting them first amidst the clutter. The drum symbolizes the beat of life going on continuously, placed with the mint which always feels refreshing and the young Aloe Vera bought on Hessle Road previous to COVID and the Lockdown, ready for rejuvenation. The watering can is for the water of life. The Earth Brown of the curtain and the drum contrasts with the green life of the plants and the moon silver watering can compliments the sun’s golden/white rays catching the leaves of these medicinal herbal plants and the white paper and tray through the window of my living room It all reminds me of looking after my health, especially gut and joints during isolatory stillness. Gardening focussed my mindfulness as did music and got me moving to the slow beat of the Earth.

The lockdown still(ed) life group enabled expression through still life/tableau photography and this image makes me meditate on health and well being and the interconnectedness of selfcare with a wider universe of human souls and Mother Earth. “And the beat goes on” sang the Whispers. youtu.be/rPJz3syNbtE

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Art Studio Sky - Sarah Mole, Hull Shirethorn House This pic is taken from my art studio. A place I feel so free it’s fantastic.

Creating art, with a rooftop view over the city. At the top of a reclaimed space full of brilliant artists. Networked to a dynamic range of artists and creative mentors with a beautifully diverse skill sets and a paid creative project on the go that involves exploring the land. I could pinch myself.. it’s so good. I paint and create experiences that are supposed to be freeing. They often involve walking, creating artworks together and leaving them for people to find. I love maps, strata and exploring how we feel about places and how we can change how we feel about places by being creative in them together.

Lockdown Still Lives has been such a great thing to be part of. I feel like I learn something every session. It’s a great group of people and it’s wonderful to continue what has become a creative support network into a real studio environment.

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The Humber Bridge - Michele Noble, Foreshore Hessle It’s a detail of the reinforcement below the Humber Bridge. I took it from the Humber foreshore path 2021. I love the abstraction and the way nature is adding its own pattern to the mix.

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Litfaßsäule - Marianne Lewsley-Stier, Leeds, October 2021 I love these and you see a lot of them in Germany, where I am from, but very rarely here in the UK. I was very excited to spot this one on my first visit to a proper gig after a very long time and it felt symbolic with the big ‘We’re back’ message on one of the posters.

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The Dalesman - David Bales, Reading (Berkshire), Wednesday 24.2.21 15.53 A flier I posted for the teatime discussion we were having that day for Lockdown Still Lives: Show and Tell on the subject of ‘A place I Know’. My contribution was about Malham in the Yorkshire Dales and for my little talk I had been looking at some old maps of the district when I noticed this and scanned it. Did wonder whether or not anyone actually got my reference to the movie ‘An American Werewolf in London’ In memory of Brian Glover (R.I.P.) a proud Yorkshireman 19

book design: martin@atomluft.com

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