TOGETHER/APART by Natalie Christensen & Jim Eyre
Recently shown at Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this composite series of surreal cityscapes from our respective communities embodies the disquieting experience of how our lives have been transformed by COVID-19. We retreated from our daily routines and into our homes for an unprecedented period of time. And during that time, there was a marked uptick in our reliance on digital technology. In response to the isolation, we created these enigmatic landscapes to reflect upon the experience of roaming inside our smartphones in the time of coronavirus. Architectural fragments and elements of the landscape are mingled to present a sense of psychological fragmentation and dissociation.
https://nataliechristensenphoto.com/
The One Minute Hours by June Gersten Roberts
The One Minute Hours is a 24 minute video. From 8AM January 2020 until 7 AM December 2021, video maker June Gersten Roberts recorded one hour of the day or night, in her home, creating an collection of domestic intimacies, before, during and throughout the time of covid-19. The 24 minute hours was originally designed to be a include three dancers, a visual artist and a musician all to be recorded live , performing at different times of day. During covid the project transformed to become an intimate reflection on time, home and ageing with focus on one couple, the video artist and her husband, a visual artist husband, in their home.
Thomas Riesner
The Importance of Colour by Sandra McInnes Scott
Walking along by the sea, enveloped in mist, Jay wondered if he too were disappearing. He had a feeling of being absorbed, wiped out, erased by particles of light and dark fighting over how much should be seen by others. He watched people move toward him on the promenade, shapes that morphed into what he thought they were or wanted them to be. If he wanted to see a monster, half human, half animal then he could. Limbs appeared and disappeared, taking on mysterious new forms…moving, evolving. He became aware that one of the figures moving toward him was vaguely familiar. Friend or foe? He began to recognise the walk, the shape and suddenly in front of the figure he recognised the small animal often linked to this familiar shape. Pepi recognised Jay too and bounded forward wagging his tail and barking out his greeting excitedly. ‘Oh hi there ‘, Pepi’s owner acknowledged Jay in a surprised way…as if he’d opened a door to an unexpected guest. ‘Awful weather isn’t it?’ Marc grumbled, ‘Didn’t recognise you there for a moment’
Marc was wearing a bright blue jacket which was more noticeable now that the mist had been pushed aside by his large frame. Marc was a larger-than-life character whose voice seemed to rumble from the pit of his rather large stomach. Blue kind of suited his character thought Jay. His presence had snapped Jay out of his drowsiness and brought a little bit of the sky back into his halfway world.
‘Wish this mist would clear’, said Marc, ‘Can’t see a blooming thing’. Was going to drive out to mum’s today but daren’t. She needs some help with her garden but it’ll have to wait… damned weather’, and off he went, following Pepi’s doggy shape into the greyish void. Like being swallowed up by a cloud. Consumed by the same particles which would give birth to someone or something else soon. Like a great white black hole sucking in everything it came into contact with until it collides with another world and manifests something different.
This fog is having a weird effect on me , Jay thought. It seemed to him that because he couldn’t see very well on the outside that his mind was going into overdrive on the inside.
Life for Jay had become rather grey recently. The predictability of his life had gotten into his bones making him feel out of sorts with the larger world which he felt more and more cut off from. He had travelled a lot in his younger days as an engineer. He loved the sea and all her moods and listened avidly to the shipping forecast on the radio. It provided a thread to his previous life. The rewards of a land based life were different…they provided stability and predictability to some extent. He had eventually chosen this life for those very things when he married…but his soul remained at sea. His eyes had seen so many different countries and his ears had heard so many different languages. His senses had become attuned to when things were in harmony or discord….much like the different sounds of pipes when things went wrong in the engine room. He applied the same principle to his life and the people he met.
Whenever he thought of Elsa this principle came to mind. Elsa had been warm and friendly initially. Now she made cold sounds and seemed so distant. Jay had been impressed by her breadth of knowledge on many subjects and the way she did not hold back from expressing them. However, when Jay had a chance to stand back and reflect, he discovered that her knowledge base was rather shallow. Quick to anger, her tongue often caught fire. She had turned from friend to foe. Perhaps the grim weather of the maritime climate had had this effect on her…like rocking a boat out of mischief to test its effects. He had pulled back…. unsure he wanted to be rocked.
He looked up and glimpsed a tiny piece of blue sky …like a chink in the armour of the northern landscape. He had started to think a lot about colours recently with all the grey weather. He had been reading about Vantablack, the worlds darkest material, so dark that it doesn’t really exist. The light just goes in and bounces around and doesn’t come back out. In China, he had read that white is the colour of mourning…the opposite of here in the west. Both these extremes of white and black made the colour grey, yet black could totally consume any light so seemed to have the upper hand.
He looked down at his damp trousers and feeling chilly, he pulled his jacket collar closer around his neck, harbouring his chin. Everything felt damp. This had never really bothered him before. He realised he could see a little further now. Was the fog beginning to clear?
More figures loomed out of the mist, nodded their acknowledgement of his existence and disappeared again. He could still see no further than a few feet really. Much like my life now, he thought.
Things hadn’t worked out the way he had hoped or expected…but that’s life he thought. Life hadnt seemed the same since he lost his partner a few years ago. He’d had a few short relationships since, nothing serious. He felt lost these days and this grim weather seemed a likely analogy, yet at the same time was like a blanket of cold comfort, erasing him from sight…. yet…didn’t artists use grey as a background to highlight other colours he remembered? Different events in his life began to stand out now and gain new significance. Like a painting being revealed, he became aware that he was seeing things more clearly now.
He could clearly see the path to his cottage , more people were beginning to become visible. There were so many more people on the path than he’d realised. He felt he knew what he needed to do now as the fog seemed to part and blue sky became more visible.
In Difring by Dominic Andrew
The pain came and went. It permeated and seeped into the fabric of my skin like a stain. Bubbling and spreading like an expanding puddle that consumes and drowns any who dare peruse its depths.
I needed to find him. I almost wanted to find him. I wanted to be with him. He was to be my end and my glorious beginning. A rebirth, a new page, a fresh canvas. A life bleached white, without the marks, without the lines, without the scratches and the scars and the mistakes.
His embrace would be divine.
Down through dark halls is where he lives, that’s what they told me. They say a lot in the darkness of those halls, whispering untruths and singing sad songs.
I visited that forsaken place long ago. I silently crept down the sloping path to my own end, scared of the jagged blackness around me. I was eager to find him, apprehensive at our impending meeting, mystified by the tales that shrouded his visage.
Could he truly be what I had sought for so long? Could he truly envelop me in his crooked arms? Take me into the folds of his cloying breath?
These thoughts led me blindly through the endless tunnel of night; until I came to the door. It had no lock nor handle and was lit only by a dim candle casting its sad yellow glow.
I knocked.
It opened and I stepped into the room.
There were no candles here, only the dying embers of a fire, orange amongst white coals, illuminating the face of an old man.
It was him. I knew that, not by his appearance but by his feel. His aura stunk of the end, spoke of the collapse, it was fetid with the corpses of those who had taken their early exit.
His eyes shone dark and placid like the still water of a lake and his rough face haunted me with bared white teeth in that hallowed place.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“To stop the darkness, to stop feeling this way,” I answered back.
He pursed his age-old lips at that. Huffing and fussing until he could no longer find distractions in not answering my plea.
“It’s not your time yet,” he said. “It is not your time, the light lives whence you came from, it is still there. You have only to find it.”
Dwell Time 