The Shape of Things III

 Each of the three books I have made thus far for my collaboration and exchange with Annwyn Dean, have been about Covid, lockdowns and the impact of it all.. 

Part of me remains intrigued that we aren't really seeing much reference to those times (? these times) in art. I am yet to see too many movies that include references to the pandemic isolation and lockdown; nor any tv series. Some books are emerging and some artwork is being made. Perhaps it is all still too fresh.

Nevertheless, the bizarre manner in which we have basically decided as a nation that we won't talk about it, we won't give regular updates or statistics and we shall carry on as if nothing happened seriously does my head in at times.

It was this nagging notion that sat behind the making of this book, which I have framed in my head as Collective Amnesia.

Here is some of what I have written about it:

The Shape of Things III continues the theme of experiencing changes through the different phases of the Covid pandemic. 

 

Book I considered how fluid time felt; and how unfocussed. Book II identified that things were beginning to take shape in my mind. In Book III I reflect on the shape of things behind us, the years since Australia first went into lockdown and where we find ourselves now.

 

The inspiration for this book comes from my sense that so many of us, as communities and even as nations, are suffering from some sort of collective amnesia, in the sense that we seem to be in denial about what happened, and what is still happening.  We don’t talk about it, we don’t report on it, and we don’t want to know how many deaths there have been this week, month or year.  

 

It feels to me like if we don’t talk about it, we don’t have to deal with it and its ongoing impacts.

 

The Shape of Things III is a reflection on how we really don’t want to acknowledge the true impact of the pandemic, speak about it, or consider what it means for the future.

 

Lest we remember.

 

The first 10 blue pages you see as you begin the book relate to the now - the months from July 2022 (when Australia re-opened international borders without restrictions) to April 2023. We have returned to a variation on 'a new normal'. The 28 white pages in the middle relate to the months from March 2020 to June 2022 - a time when travel and movement were restricted. These were hard, harsh and difficult times and full of fear with lockdowns, border restrictions, masks everywhere, limited contact with people, supplies short, business closed, distances kept. The final 2 pages, again in blue, refer to January and February 2020 - the times before everything changed.

On 17 of the white pages I have included the words collective amnesia. I have used one letter in white Letraset, on a single page, so as you turn the pages slowly, the meaning is revealed.

This is the toughest time, of which we have somehow agreed not to speak.

Each blue page holds a smattering of tiny circles cut from Annwyn's papers, representing that we can remember things we did last week, last month. That we recall events and happenings, with far more clarity than we recall the time of the white amnesic pages...

Yet somehow in the here and now, we find it hard to speak of things like case numbers, deaths, intensive care bed occupied by folk with Covid; as if we never spoke of those things and they just tick along in the background - nothing to see here.