There is an angel on your shoulder by Perchik

“I am so lonely and scared. My mum and son are seriously ill. Mum is in intensive care. There is no one I have even to talk to. I am very scared and do not know what will happen next. I have no one else. My mother and son are the closest people.”

Hi, I am Perchik!
I have started my artistic career as a textile artist about 17 years ago. Since that time I have participated in a lot of competitions, exhibitions and projects. My artworks are in private collections around the world.

Two years ago I had to change my artistic field and to become an illustrator. I love my new specialization, as it opened up new horizons and possibilities.

Even as a textile artist, I was focused on social issues – humanity, social communication and helping people. This always was in the heart and the soul of my art. And my lovely green creatures, zhuzhas, have been helping me for over 10 years with that.

It is very important to show people that they are not alone, they can always be heard and get the necessary support from others. Only by working together we can make this world a happy place.

https://www.instagram.com/byperchik/

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Empty by Gemma Louise

Hollow.

Empty.

Nothingness.

The insides of my body have been scooped out,
Leaving me a shell of a person,
What replaces it is loneliness,
The realization setting in that everything and everyone will no longer be around.

The more people have left me behind the worse this feels,
All I am wanting is a human connection,
Not just hypnotized at a screen of messages,
Trying to squeeze out comfort from something two dimensional.

The loneliness echoes through every inch of my being,
Ringing it’s exasperated cry through my empty body,
Shouting the desperate lullaby to enforce the night’s presence to remain longer.

The moon laughs with its bright force,
The stars cluster to shine upon the freak,
My loveless corpse now a tourist of the undead hours,
Dragging my stiff legs as my soul searches throughout the night,
Halted by an ominous bridge.

Gathering the last of my strength,
My heart urges me up to take centre stage,
The moon’s beaming spotlight shining down on me,
Anticipation building at my final debut.

Eyes cast over the unintrigued audience,
Figures who previously left me behind to my soliloquy,
My broken voice reciting clunky lines,
Choked with despair at my last rations.

Toes cling around the razor edge,
Eyes now shut tight refusing to witness more,
My body tilts forward and topples over,
Breaking my leg, my heart and more.

Artist statement

Creativity of any kind has been something I have always been drawn to. In my own practice I create expressionistic paintings as a cathartic process to express my emotions and navigate my thoughts. To accompany this past time, I have been delving in to poetry to coincide with this aspect, and have been refining this over the past few years. The work I have chosen to submit for this feature is a stand alone poem I wrote during a pivotable moment in my life, and helped me process varying emotions and thought processes. I use poetry as another form of expressing my inner mind and have continued creating more, making my own personal collection.

Instagram – gemmalouiseartist

Changing the Narrative- No more Karma by Susan Holmes

A sense of hopelessness has become a normal reality which is impressed upon us at a very young age maintaining a state of suffering. I seek to explore a point of transition out of an old paradigm that contained within itself destruction and war. That a new light of consciousness has arrived on the planet which will bring new possibilities and access to personal dreams. To become more connected to your true self and be sovereign and free of global despair.

Susan Holmes was born in Lancashire England and at the age of 55 attended Arts University Plymouth gaining a BA in 3D Design 2018, followed by MA in Fine Art 2021. Her body of work is mainly sculptural and contains hand painted imagery or written work on forms that tell stories of her interaction with the planet on a spiritual/ecological level. Influence by the elemental nature of form, and energetic vibrational frequencies through the sensory experience of the systems of the body and the earth. Holmes explores these ideas through time and seeks to discuss the possibility that ecological systems reflect our own state of being. That time and gravity are shifting and therefore, the ability to understand our own capabilities to connect to the rhythms of the Planetary systems is the link between wellbeing and becoming custodians of the planet.

www.magentapi.space

From the sun to the Moon and back by Zorica Purlija

Responding to the unprecedented social, environmental and economic impacts of the COVID- 19 global pandemic these images archive this discordant time. Photographing family, friends and strangers, what I found during these stressful times is how important our relationships and the care we give towards our loved ones and the planet are, with uncertainty all around the reaction of fear can be overwhelming. I noticed times of frivolity when restrictions were lifted, anxiety from my daughter with homeschooling and then growing fear as Covid-19 continued, the photos are a collection of over a year’s daily observations or noticed moments attempting to present these fractured moments.

Zorica Purlija BIO b.1964 Zorica Purlija migrated age 8 from Montenegro, to Australia in1972, and is currently based in Sydney.
Graduating with Distinction in 1989 with an Associate Diploma in graphic design and photography at The University of Western Sydney, Zorica spent some years travelling through Europe, experiencing life and art. For the last twenty years she has been practicing as a fine art photographer while raising her family and in July 2020 she completed her Masters of Art in photo media, at the UNSW School of Art and Design.
Her current practice has been focused around attachments, the psychology and space around our primary relationships and how it impacts our future self. Her art is informed by feminist values and hopes to tap into our universal longings for equality.
She continues to exhibit widely, and her public profile continues to build, including internationally, exhibiting in Manhattan, Zurich, and Venice. This year she has been a finalist in the Head-on Photography Award, The Wyndham art Prize, the Ravenswood Women’s Art Award, and the Gosford Art Prize.

https://www.zoricapurlija.com.au/

Rest by Susan Williams

Digital image of a wool drawing on a sofa. I made this intervention during the first covid lockdown when I started using the rooms in my house and my furniture to make artwork hoping to capture some of the wider feelings and issues. The soft nature of the wool clings to the sofa suggesting a completely flopped body, perhaps tiredness, deep sleep, boredom, laziness or the opposite, a humorous reference to overdoing it. The image also has certain silliness, humour or absurdity to it. From the end of the sofa the body appears to be falling out of the picture, again with a kind of absurdity to it, being both serious and light. Another possible reading is darker, that of a police drawing around a dead body which for me reflected the anxiety about the best ways to cope with the pandemic, the daily distressing daily death tolls and over run hospitals.

I make site responsive installations exploring materials, light and space, often translating these works into photography, film and print. I use everyday materials with minimal intervention, keying into their surroundings. I start by working on site, exploring related materials and their inbuilt properties, mapping the space itself, developing ideas and associations as the work progresses. These daily experiments create an intimacy with the light, specific shapes and features and more broadly the experience of a place and its people. My aim is to make what is already there more visible, at times capturing what we don’t normally see, light, wind, space, the potency of a colour. Illusions such as floating and evanescence reoccur in much of my work making links to the magical and to the metaphysical, connecting with the ecology and spirit of a place. I am inspired by the everyday, the ordinary, the basics that are also the fundamentals of life which once explored become quite extraordinary.

www.susanwilliamsart.com

Discarded by Lindy Furby

Discarded: an installation
Discarded people:- Nurses, doctors, carers, drivers, shop workers, ambulance drivers ……essential workers. Discarded; dead as the result of lack of PPE, lack of care. A disproportionality of immigrants, blacks, Asians, …….. discarded.

This installation consists of 64 discarded facemasks on the ground. 50 printed with a drypoint image of a named person from an ethnic minority background who caught coronavirus whilst working in essential services and died. 10 printed with “I CANNOT BREATHE” (linking the Black lives matter movement with the reality of early covid symptoms) and 4 printed with DISCARDED.

These printed facemasks are strewn on the ground and people can view them but also can walk on them mirroring the treatment ethnic minority essential workers have endured.

At the start of the Coronavirus crisis I very quickly became aware that ethnic minority people in the NHS had unfeasonably high fatality rates (thanks to the Guardian). I subsequently discovered that this was true for other frontline workers, e.g. bus drivers, care assistants and taxi drivers. This made me very angry and stuck at home I decided to do something about it. I designed this installation and printed it on a small dye cutting machine on my dining room table,

Details:- Each facemask is a handprinted collagraph/drypoint print. To make these prints I made an acrylic drypoint plate of the person on acrylic – this was a sad process as I was absolutely aware that these are not statistics – these were people who will be sorely grieved by their family and friends. I inked the plate with black ink and burnished it clean. At the same time I rolled blue ink onto a facemask, I placed the face drypoint plate on top of the facemask plate and put dampened paper on them both and put it through the press.

I sent this installation down to London to be part of the Waterloo Arts Festival London in June 2020, but the message is as true now as it was then – that a disproportionate number of ethnic minority people were catching and dying from Covid 19 – later in the communities of the UK – due to poverty, poorer housing and work in sectors where there is a greater probability of infection.
I feel it is particularly pertinent to revisit this in light of the current NHS strikes and refusal of the government to pay doctors, nurses and other health workers salaries that reflect their important roles in our society. They were happy to clap them – empty gestures.
I still feel incredibly angry and frustrated by the inequalities in our society and the present governments denial and refusal to do anything about it.

I have always wanted to strew these facemasks in different public places to remind people of the early sacrifices of ethnic minority people in the history of Covid.

I currently live in Edinburgh but this summer will be moving down to Sheffield for family reasons.

I am a member of Edinburgh Printmakers and usually a landscape printer; this is not my first foray into what I call protest art. My previous installation Just the clothes on their backs bear witness was shown in Cork and at Saltaire Arts Trail last year. See my website www.Lindyfurby.co.uk (protest art and blog).