Covid Self-Portraits

I started shooting on and off throughout the pandemic, to record what was happening in the world, via what was happening to me locked in my house. I used the props of the pandemic – the face mask and the gloves. The outcome is surreal and absurd and kind of funny, whilst also being a bit unsettling and unnerving.

This was my first one. I was going for a kind of sad – but also sinister – clown feel. I already felt quite destroyed by the pandemic at this point, because my livelihood had been taken away and I wasn’t entitled to government help.

This was around the time people went nuts about growing their own veggies and such. A friend gave me a monstrous courgette as an offering. There was no way I’d manage to eat it.

This was just after the time there were pictures of people crowding on beaches. I had coincidentally been working on troubleshooting a frustrating process for an art piece that involved many many beach balls.

I was always mystified as to the sacred status of toilet roll and eggs throughout the pandemic. I’m evoking playful religious allusions with the toilet roll wimple and egg idolatry.

Similar to the previous one, this time the hoarding is more explicitly referenced.

This was taken just after my birthday in lockdown. Eggshells are actually part of my sculptural vocabulary, so I’m referencing my wider practise here again, as with the beach balls.

This was the last one I took – well into the third lock-down. By this time I am feeling so alone and vulnerable and stripped of the world. I position myself like the plant in the window yearning for the light of day, but infected with masks.