Riitta Composite Soup Suite

Covid Commemoration

I spent the first lockdown about 10 seconds away from my studio which is in a set of buildings that had been a Victorian dairy. The farmers used to bring their cows up from the marshes to be milked, it must have been quite a sight, a herd coming up the hill and then through the gates to the parlors. The architecture meant we were a household behind gates. Instead of isolation, I had people to talk to and any time of the day or night I could indulge my need to make stuff.

I also thought a lot about my mother, I’d never understood how she could talk fondly of the calamity of the second world war and her collections of plates and figures.  Early on I thought about when she’d been living the care home, I thought about this a lot. The objects she had around her chair and table there were a condensed, preciscised, version of her home, which was in turn where I stayed, surrounded with her memories that were clutter to my eyes.

I couldn’t make a photograph of people clapping, so I asked my friends to go to an analogue photo booth and make head shots with their masks on, which I re-photographed and printed on plates that had come from house clearances.

Douglas

#galleryanyplace

Everything being closed, I staged my own exhibitions.

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