Michelle Reid, Quiet Evolution series, 2021/22, photo courtesy Stephen Robinson
Photo Credit
Michelle Reid, Quiet Evolution series, 2021/22, photo courtesy Stephen Robinson
Photo Credit
This iteration started as a lockdown project, as a reason to get into the makeshift kitchen table studios we set up during the late 2021 lockdown. Highly accessible yet fractured, compromised spaces of making that reflected our scattered and deformed plans.
When long days stretched into longer days, when everything was dim and formless in the ever-extending lockdown, the project was realised because a kernel of reason was in need. A reason, or simply an invitation to make - for ourselves and ultimately for each other. The project concept provided an important alternative strategy for art-making when everything was suspended and submerged. Gift, reciprocity and connection; the demoted and misplaced reasons that became the cornerstone of making as our regular dominant economies and demanding schedules dissolved. 11 artists each made a series of 11 (or 12 for symmetry) small works to split up and gift to each other when we could after lockdown.
The promise of a future encounter - a hot date! to summon, whenever needed - it was there. A lipstick kiss on the calendar, a plan for the artists to consider. It has to be said, that when we came to install the work talking about lockdown projects was feeling a bit tired ... once relevant, but we had moved on right? or at least we wanted to. Yet, as it happened, by the time these images and words were ready to share the Omicron variant was peaking and we were recovering in isolation, clocking up another 10 days at the kitchen table.
This iteration started as a lockdown project, as a reason to get into the makeshift kitchen table studios we set up during the late 2021 lockdown. Highly accessible yet fractured, compromised spaces of making that reflected our scattered and deformed plans.
When long days stretched into longer days, when everything was dim and formless in the ever-extending lockdown, the project was realised because a kernel of reason was in need. A reason, or simply an invitation to make - for ourselves and ultimately for each other. The project concept provided an important alternative strategy for art-making when everything was suspended and submerged. Gift, reciprocity and connection; the demoted and misplaced reasons that became the cornerstone of making as our regular dominant economies and demanding schedules dissolved. 11 artists each made a series of 11 (or 12 for symmetry) small works to split up and gift to each other when we could after lockdown.
The promise of a future encounter - a hot date! to summon, whenever needed - it was there. A lipstick kiss on the calendar, a plan for the artists to consider. It has to be said, that when we came to install the work talking about lockdown projects was feeling a bit tired ... once relevant, but we had moved on right? or at least we wanted to. Yet, as it happened, by the time these images and words were ready to share the Omicron variant was peaking and we were recovering in isolation, clocking up another 10 days at the kitchen table.