SEVEN artists spanning seven generations have created artworks inspired by life under lockdown as part of a new exhibition and film project.
They include 16-year-old Jodie Campbell who painted her grandmother and neighbours, capturing through her portraits the lives of those she painted and how they dealt with lockdown.
Life Under Lockdown will be touring across hospitals in Edinburgh and Lothian, starting at the Western General where patients and staff will be able to see the artworks from tomorrow. A film telling the story of each artwork is also available to view online.
“The group of seven artists who differ in age, experience and artistic practice have produced a powerful and diverse body of work,” said curator Hans K Clausen.
“Collectively the work provides a reflective and poignant glimpse into how the global pandemic affected lives and how visual art could provide a platform and connectivity to share these experiences, both sad and joyful.”
A series of frescoes created by artist Olivia Irvine, who represents the over-60s age group, helped her to come to terms with the Covid-related death of her father. The frescoes are inspired by objects belonging to her parents and the artwork titles reflect their time together but are also related to grief and to grief in art.
Emelia Kerr Beale created a series of textile works based on the culture of banner making. This artwork echoes the message of solidarity and thanks to key workers that children drew and displayed on windows, which was their only external visual stimulation at the time. They associated them with their own imagery and with quotes from texts and emails they received. Intricately crafted, the musings from this initial lockdown period ponders how people find intimacy in times of limited touch, the relationships they foster through emailing or the moments of rest they seek within chaos.
Glasgow-based Dan Sambo and Hannah Brackston became first-time parents during lockdown and made a number of temporary installations for their daughter Amelia, using everyday objects and items linked to absent family members. The installations have been used to create a set of photographic prints.
In response to research highlighting how the most impactful effect of Covid-19 on children is parents’ stress, their work is meant to inspire adults to find some lightness through the act of play and highlight the importance of being creative.
David (Cully) McCulloch took inspiration from the new cultural daily vocabulary brought by the pandemic and developed responses to how words and phrases impact the way people are expected to live in lockdown. Playing with ambiguity, he made a number of signs inspired by the pandemic’s new common visual language, taking hospital signs and re-appropriating them into moments of poetic reflection offering more than just instructions.
In Study For A Kiss, Virginia Hutchinson focused on the idea of touch and how interactive experiences with art objects can embody this.
David Rushton, the oldest artist in the group, who represents the over-70s, documented the closure of the Museum of Model Art and its conversion into a temporary space for work and play throughout lockdown by building a miniature model of it. With the museum’s limited opening, the world around the viewer is effectively excluded, reflecting lockdown experiences of isolation and separation.
The exhibition is delivered by Tonic Arts, Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation’s Arts in Health and Wellbeing Programme. The film is available online at www.elhf-tonicarts.co.uk
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