Locked down and isolated in my den I began the 'Memory Series', photographs I took in Tokyo, Japan 2019 of seemingly every day life. That's gone for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 happened. I began suddenly longing for these moments of normal life that I took as an observer. I began stripping the colour out of the images leaving only the highlights of my memories of that day, of that specific moment. This became important to me in my isolation. I am in the south of the UK working alone, a fr1
Locked down and isolated in my den I began the 'Memory Series', photographs I took in Tokyo, Japan 2019 of seemingly every day life. That's gone for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 happened. I began suddenly longing for these moments of normal life that I took as an observer. I began stripping the colour out of the images leaving only the highlights of my memories of that day, of that specific moment. This became important to me in my isolation.
I am in the south of the UK working alone, a friend of mine Jim Ritchie, an artist in the North of the UK, (now as distant as the moon under lockdown), was also creating digital works. Ritchies' works are narratives based on futuristic sci-fi cityscapes of brutalist architecture. To quote him: "I think there is a bit of escapism involved within some of my images."
I wondered what these would look like together. So sent him a message would he like to collaborate on some works, he said yes.
Jim and I have never met irl, we became friends on FB some years ago. It is quite refreshing and also scary to work on another artists work. I was quite happy for him to alter mine as I do love his work and trusted I would love what ever he did. The problem I found was not what he would do to my work but will I do his work justice, and suddenly for the first time ever I had a fear of ruining... (Artists should have no fear, imo). However it is digital. So I am going to shake that fear and go 'DO!'
Connections and remaining connected to people is more important now than ever. Never before has our life been so precarious world wide. Trump and Putin are today still playing the pissing contest with nukes. Fires are still raging in some parts of the world. The planet is having some respite from our never ending need to rip it apart. Will this terrible pandemic end this? Will we change for the better as a human race?
The work we have created between us is not Futurism or Postfuturism although some aspects are the same: "To reclaim the power of media from the merchants and return it to the poets and the sages" -F. T. Marinetti', The Post-Futurist Manifest, February 1909, nor is it the idealistic architecture of Neofuturism, with glistening towers and clear blue skies. The works are 'Post Neofuturism' as a direct result of what is happening in the world right now. It is accepting of the past, which is our present and moving forward with what we have. It is inclusion not division. This work happened as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.