The Covid-19 pandemic had a profound impact on everyone’s lives, disrupting our work and social lives, having an immense toll on our mental, physical, and financial health.
The shelter-in-place notices, nationwide lockdowns and strict health protocols introduced around the world at the beginning of 2020 served as a roadblock to our collective dreams for the future and dramatically altered our perspectives of the past. Rapidly, before we even wholly understood the situation, collectively we recognised that when the restrictions ended, our future would never resemble what we had been envisaged before the pandemic. Almost instantaneously a clear nostalgia for pre-pandemic times developed. Our lives had been severed, from the future, the past and in some ways even the present. An overwhelming shockwave of disruption ran through it in a way that most of us had never experienced. The four walls of my home became the only landscape I could explore, like many of us.
The only way I could process this ‘alternate’ timeline were entire months felt the liminal time between Christmas Day and New Year’s, was to turn to my creative practice. Those few days between and inclusive of the two holidays are measured by how many pre or post days we are to the holidays. And that is what it felt like in those days, weeks, and months we spent in lockdowns.
Utilising images taken throughout 2019, I reimagined these images of the past into new ethereal images that form some sort of potential future. Hopefully, one that is still full of colour but one where details are hard to envisage.
Hayley Milton, almost clear but there’s a two point five, 2019-2020
Hayley Milton, avoidance, 2019-2020.
Hayley Milton, bl(p)each, 2019-2020.
Hayley Milton, confushia, 2019-2020.
Hayley Milton, fading sun-tangerine, 2019-2020.
