Cootehill Arts Festival 2020 - Responding to Lockdown - An Artist's Perspective
I was contacted by Cootehill Arts Festival and asked to respond in one word to the question, "What does lockdown mean to you?" My reply was "contact".
Being an artist who works alone, the whole idea of reclusion in Lockdown didn’t seem so bad to me.
That was until I realised that the contact we have with others was taken away and we may never get it back in the same way.
Be it a kiss, a handshake, fist bump or a hug, people and cultures around the world each have their own way to express the happiness of sharing close space with another person, we take it for granted. Or at least we did… During the pandemic we were told to limit contact, to keep apart.
In the most worrying of times, contact was restricted and when some of us needed a hug the most, we could not get it. When a grown-up child worried about a parent but could only see them through a window or could not say goodbye properly when a loved one passed, we were deprived of the most natural of actions.
This sculpture is about the precious privilege of human contact.
The Hug is on view at Blessings, Cootehill for the duration of the Cootehill Arts Festival, 16th - 29 th July 2020.
Postcards of the works are available free from Cootehill Library and shops around the town. These are for you to send to family and friends around the world to let them know you are thinking of them.