Letters from a Strange Year

The project was initially conceived as a physical exhibition and has evolved and grown into an idea that hopefully will engage a wider audience. The project has a number of strands one of them being a virtual presence with a website

The work produced by both myself and Sarah is rooted in this very strange time and has expanded to include a book. A book, in the words of Susan Hiller, can be a place where artists work. With this in mind we have used the book as a place to write letters to this strange year, but also to explore the conversations that we had over the period. All of these conversations took place on social media which allowed us to look back and reflect. We have juxtaposed fragments of these conversations throughout the book alongside images of the paintings. These fragments offer both context and a the same time a sense of dislocation, similar to the sense of dislocation that we have all been experiencing.

Above is an image of Boundaries. One of pieces that made direct reference to the pandemic and explored the notion of boundaries that surround us and separate us.

Reculver, above, is one of the paintings that chart the walks that I would take during lock down. It was interesting to to see the synergy between places I visited, the light, time of year and how this manifested in the paintings.

Argaka, left speaks of the warmth and heat of summer and the longer days.

The images below shows a collage of both my work and Sarah's.

Write your own letter to a strange year

As the project grows we would like to ask you to submit your letter to a strange year. We would like you to submit a letter, or a poem, drawing or painting, any kind of artistic response that can fit on a A4 piece of paper. There is a submissions form on the website and more information. unfortunately we can not return any of the works.

We will exhibit some of the submissions in our real world exhibition at Vout Vintage hopefully in late April/May, we will confirm dates as soon as we can.