During the first coronavirus lockdown in March-May 2020, I became fascinated by communication in lockdown. At the time, I was studying a masters in photography and had learnt about glitching photographs and how to manipulate the very code of an image. During the lockdown, it very suddenly became the norm for people to communicate via video chats. Naturally, these inevitably and frequently broke down, the internet cut or buffered, images fractured, sounds reverberated. The people we clung to desperately for support were disintegrating before our eyes.
I decided to play with these technological errors by removing them from tech. Instead of screenshotting the glitches, I painted them. This is a slower and more intimate technique. The change in media means that the interruption in the image is unexpected and confuses the eye, inviting the viewer to question our reliance on virtual communication.
The final pieces are really beautiful and lonely memories of lockdown. There is a contradiction in their lack of hyper-realism and yet depiction of errors of realism in the form of glitches.
Interestingly, this craze for video calls seemed to fade out quite quickly and by the second and thirds lockdowns, people felt fairly content with a text or phone call- no one can imagine this a substitute for irl.
I am so relieved to no longer be in lockdown!
Some of these paintings have already sold so unfortunately I will not be doing an exhibition of them, but the remaining ones are for sale. Please do get in touch if you are interested.
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