GALLERY OF

ARTISTIC RESPONSES

Klaire Doyle 'The Ephemeral Costumes'

Klaire Doyle 'The Ephemeral Costumes'

Klaire Doyle 'The Ephemeral Costumes'

Lindsay Pickett 'Social Rejection'

Lindsay Pickett 'Social Rejection'

Michael Bardales-Uriostegui 'Juan El Evangelista' 2020

Michael Bardales-Uriostegui 'Juan El Evangelista' 2020

Oil on canvas, 24"x18".

Bardales-Uriostegui replaces the white bodies commonly used in the pre-eighteenth century painting similar to Alessandro Turchi’s 'John the Evangelist' in order to shift the roles between the elite and Brown folx in his community. The painting depicts his uncle, Juan, in the foreground and at the center of the composition. Although Juan stares intensely at the viewer, it is unclear if he is on the verge of tears or if he has a relaxed expression. Juan wears a satin sap-green toga over the entire left shoulder and presses the Book of Revelations towards his body, down to his right ankle that rests on a mossy stone. In the middle ground, an eagle and vegetation are depicted. In the background, dark grey clouds and a dark blue night sky frames the subject. In Turchi’s era, specific colors were associated with biblical figures and were unique to each character. After learning this, Bardales-Uriostegui decided to address his heritage through the colors of the toga draped on Juan, the national symbol - the golden eagle. Bardales-Uriostegui’s work is contextualized through the inclusion of marginalized cultures and identities within the historical European narrative that inflicted prejudices against Brown folx. The composition of Juan el Evangelista is reminiscent of the church art that Bardales-Uriostegui experienced in Catholic school. Although not explicitly depicted in the image, Bardales-Uriostegui recontextualizes John the Evangelist’s biblical narrative to connect the autobiographical story of Juan, who passed away due to COVID-19 respectively. Bardales-Uriostegui explores how these traditions can be oppressive, yet spiritually liberating, and break familial relationships that keeps brown folx from being close to loved ones.

Lisa McKendrick 'Looking out of Windows'

Lisa McKendrick 'Looking out of Windows'

Watercolour, pen and ink on A4 paper.

"I am a New Zealand born British artist of Mexican heritage. My artwork is midway between figuration and abstraction. I like to create worlds that contain within them fragments of stories, thoughts or experiences.
Some of my new work is in response to current news stories, articles or headlines. For example "Listening to Stories" was in response to black members of the community telling their experiences, it does not refer to one particular story but references the need for stories and experiences to be heard. "Looking out of Windows" is about seeing the world from the window as we all go back into national lockdown. It references the isolation that many people experience from this as seen through floating singular eyeballs. "Untitled" was in response to issues of equality as the drawing shows a woman with an amputated arm amongst a dreamy cave painting. It references the past and the future and how we navigate our way through and progress in respect to equality and disability which is often a hot topic in current news. "Turbulance" also has a cave painting quality and speaks about movement and change as we head towards things unknown, a storm of uncertainty as we face the challenges of Brexit, climate change and a new US leader. A few of my new paintings have referenced the lockdown and "Head Cones" is one of these, two figures walk together and between them are spikes or cones and the girl has her head completely covered with a mesh fabric. It talks about social distancing and the implications of this and what it means to not be able to be close to people. Within this lies abstraction and fragments of unanswered questions."

Merny Wernz 'IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT'

Merny Wernz 'IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT'

Spray paint mural in Bristol, October 2020

Merny produces works in a variety of mediums including murals, painting using watercolour and acrylic, assemblage, model making and works on paper.
"I am documenting an ongoing artistic exploration of the human condition, vehicles machinery and engineering. Inspired by technical illustrations, diagrams contemporary meme culture and naive sign painting I have encountered on trips Mexico, South Africa and through personal research. The result is an anarchic embrace of imperfection and a sense of creative and technical nonchalance. Most recent works during lockdown tackle the unavoidable presence of the virus in our lives. The absurd absence of any kind of certainty and the depressing news we’re bombarded with daily, which I find so dystopian that it starts to be silly. "

Thomas Valianatos 'Trumptard'

Thomas Valianatos 'Trumptard'

"My audiovisual work (see here: https://vimeo.com/thomasvallianatos), is a hybrid artwork based on
New Media and Audio-reactive Live Visuals. The aim of the projects is to create experimental
2d/3d graphics in real time, with various techniques and Artistic Media such as Generative Art,
Music Visualization, Virtual Reality, Depth Cameras and Synthesizers. The art works, in their final
form, are presented as live audiovisual performances, video screenings, digital prints and original
drawings."

James Appleby 'Pandemic'

James Appleby 'Isolation'

Matt Martin 'Raising Hell'

Matt Martin 'Raising Hell'

These hand-drawn illustrations are a reflection of our consumption during the hardest of times. The need to show off brand loyalty and leisure activities in the face of oppression and daily violence. Protest, but give it your best look.

Hand drawn with ink to reflect our fragile, shaky existence in a world that wants us to stay home, out of the way, but also continue to prop up the capitalist system with the few pennies we have.

Virginie Foloppe 'The flame' 3, 2020

Virginie Foloppe 'The flame' 3, 2020

Image from a demonstration against pension reforms in France on January 9th 2020.

"In 1995, during the transport strike in France, I left alone to join a demonstration, speeding through it, in one direction and then in the other. That day, without my being able to precisely date it, a moment deeply marked my memory to the point of stopping my walk. While in front of a luxury hotel, a man was smoking a big cigar, the air reddened by the torches of the railway workers was filled with the words of Telephone "I dreamed of another world". Familiar images of Jacques Demy came back to me, but there it was, in the street. This luminous moment returned to me, intact, on December 12, 2019. At the heart of a procession whose heat again drunken me with its power. Unlike smoke bombs, the red flame torch, used for pathways in the event of serious danger on the road, appeared to me as a metaphor for the serious social danger that threatened us all. In contact with this distress signal, the faces of the demonstrators burn and paradoxically become more embodied in their striking beauty, the one that so often caused me immense joy, almost childish, leading me irresistibly in the frisky quest for images, running in all directions so as not to miss a thing. I was afraid it would stop all the time, even though I had been in the street since January 19, 2019, with the Yellow Vests. This is why this series begins with the call of a woman yellow vests. During a speech, Nadia, a bus driver, said how much she regretted not joining them in November 2018, "they started the ball rolling."

Walla Alradhi 'Escaping my own barcode'

Walla Alradhi 'Escaping my own barcode'

"It all started when we had the first lockdown, I felt that the world seemed weird and unrealistic to me. I couldn’t control my feelings which lead me to forget about my dreams and to lose hope. Didn’t know from where to start and how long it’s going to stay. People’s reaction and the fake news that I heard also, uni work which was left didn’t know if I had to complete it or just pack all of my stuff and head back home its all made me feel confused to the level of human error.

Self portrait of me illustrate the confusion I felt. Through the days slightly I started to control my feelings by thinking positively and motivate myself to complete uni work and let it flow. I started believing in myself by blocking all of the negativity from the surrounded news/world/people. Also, I learnt how to be responsible and to love and take care of myself like a flower that wants to bloom. after achieving all of my list I got out from all of my confusion that I felt and I realized that it was just a test for me and for the entire humanity to test our patience and our strength to always stay strong no matter what to believe in our self and to be thankful of every little thing that we have."

Vijay Raghavan 'Desires of throne, 1 (Black matters in the social discrimination)'

Christian Alexander Bailey

AJ Illustration

Katherine Maher 'Let's Build Up Another Sky Scrapper While They're Not Looking'

Jacob Talbot 'Anthropocene'

Jo Pearl 'All The Rage'

Lidia Lidia 'Play Mates'

Jacob Weeks 'To remember, recollect, think of, bear in mind'

Jacob Weeks 'To remember, recollect, think of, bear in mind'

Jacob Weeks 'To remember, recollect, think of, bear in mind'

Richard Hyde 'Climate change selfie'

Richard Hyde 'Climate change selfie'

May Lavie 'Lumen Being'

May Lavie 'Lumen Being'

"Hello, my name is May Lavie and I am a musician from Tel Aviv, Israel.
I am the creator of an EP called “Lumen being” in which I sample audio recordings of activists, intellectuals and other celebrities along with electronic producing and live instrumentation.
My aim in this project is to raise consciousness to various social & political issues, both worldwide and where I live
I believe that by using the words and thoughts of others, I am able to express more
profoundly my own point of view."

Claire Cooper-Walsh 'The Last Tree Standing'

Claire Cooper-Walsh 'The Last Tree Standing'

Claire Cooper-Walsh 'The Last Tree Standing'

Simon Meiklejohn 'The Fascinator'

Simon Meiklejohn 'Fascinator'

Nichola Bartlett 'The culling of the Mink'

Arty Print Party 'I AM LOST '

Arty Print Party 'I AM LOST '

"I find collage fascinating; Ian Monroe ‘s essay helped me crystallize my own unstructured thoughts about the nature of collage. He talks about collage as a technique that creates an elemental edge, an active boundary, where transformations performed at this edge gain significance and meaning. I was freed from the pressure of producing “good” drawings, to make this "Luvvie SOS" series of collages, celebrating peoples eccentricities which is so important in these strange times."

Stuart York 'Wild Waves'

Stuart York 'Wild Waves'

Stuart York makes prints with bright colours and dull humour. The aim is to bring fresh air, sunshine vibes, and a splash of something slightly sinister to the paper.

York gets inspired by dreaming of fantastic tropical places, by controlled urban lines and chaotic organic shapes. Bright colours, clean lines, and messy fillings. He hopes to inspire viewers to imagine their own narrative in the scenes created, a world of nostalgic colour.

Whilst incarcerated indoors he dreamt of faraway places, luscious lands, and an ocean odyssey. The piece WILD WAVES was created from the driest of objects; books were slow roasted in the oven until crispy and warped, enabling York to create erratic marks full of movement, energy and fury.

Vardit Goldner 'Ferme des Refusés'

Vardit Goldner 'Ferme des Refusés'

Yula (Robin) Kim 'Urgent'

Yula (Robin) Kim 'Urgent'

"I am an artist with ample abroad life experiences; 4 continents (Asia, Polynesia, Africa, and Europe); 5 countries (South Korea, China, Hawai'i, Uganda, and the UK). Hence, I have experienced diverse cultural, political, environmental, rural, and urban life experiences during my childhood and teenage time. These experiences raised my interest in nature and the environment. When I lived in Hawai'i and Uganda, I have been numerous tropical birds, include some endangered species around my living areas.
However, when I found stuffed birds in the Natural History Museum in London, I found them quite different from the living birds. A wide range of collection of dead bird bodies reminded me of imperialism and colonial perspectives of seeing exotic birds. On the other hand, it reminded me of how humans are collecting exotic items (from nature, and in other regions) for their goods, says to be fashion or scientific research, and increase the quality of life.

Therefore, I decided to make this artwork related to poaching and the collection to emphasize the idea of how nature is being treated like a toy or some sort of accessories nowadays in numerous areas from educations to the purpose of decoration .
I decide to make a realistic wing sculpture as I found the abstract innate aura of birds' wings. Hence, I researched detailed parts of wings from the outline and inner shape of the feather to the general anatomical forms at the Natural History Museum. Then, I have selected different kinds of tropical/exotic birds' wings based on my second research at the London zoo and the wild. During the research of making these wings, I found that light clays have various colours and they can be mixed again (to create new colours). Moreover, I found that clay could capture the detailed and smooth-lined textures of wings. Therefore, I used a sharp object to curve detailed parts of each feather on the wing to make it realistic as possible. Then I attached these feathers to the body (which is also created by the clay) and built the wing as real as possible. Furthermore, the size of wings is based on their realistic size (based on my researches in the wild and the zoo) to embrace the feeling of imitation of the real-life object."

Paul Tuppeny 'Brexitania'

Paul Tuppeny 'Brexitania'

Stuart Jones 'Flow'

Kathryn Reilly

Parumveer Walia 'Please, Wake Up Tomorrow'

Parumveer Walia 'Please, Wake Up Tomorrow'

In uncertain and challenging times, the idea of waking up in itself becomes an act of resilience. After having read the news of multiple people claiming their lives in this quarantine, the work was conceptualized to communicate the necessity of holding on- of waking up to see the light of day trickling in through your windows. Every morning, right after opening his eyes, the artist would click one photograph from the same spot in his bed, documenting the light filtering in through the window. Parumveer has struggled with mental health himself- he knows how it feels to be in the dull and dreary places mental struggles can take you to. Hence, he wished to communicate that while we may be physically or mentally alone where we are living, there is someone hoping and praying that we wake up the next day. The title is written in the personal voice, addressing the viewer directly to create a sense of an intimate bond, something these times have stripped us off. This is intentional, to communicate that regardless of who is viewing this work, whether he knows them or not, Parumveer is hoping that they wake up tomorrow morning, do not give into the dark of the night, and are here with us, happy and alive.

Louisa Pankhurst Johnson 'Transhumanism'

Louisa Pankhurst Johnson 'Transhumanism'

The Bionic man children’s toy in the 70`s is based on Martin Caidin’s book about a cyborg with a micro chip in his arm. Caiden foretold programming would occur in the future, whereby we would be conditioned to a transhumanism agenda, with the microchip in the arm as children, so we are more readily receptive to this issue, the NWO.
Transhumnism could connect us to AI . The microchip will advocate a better than human, human, but in fact we will be unable to think for ourselves. Agenda complete. The powers to be would and could control us against our will.

The Ladder:

Gallantly stretching the moulds of creation,
Are nodes of technology and science salvation,
To evolve our genetic mutation,
As natural selection or propaganda notation.

Our stable is a place to rest,
Mother nature and nurture contest,
In the realms of scientific discovery,
Human evolution could be inventory.

Expansion of laws and motion,
Contribute to generations of illusion,
Trickery and magic with electric wands,
Tailored to homo sapiens defaults.

Poem by ANNA. R. LLEWELYN-JENKINS

'Vote 2020'

Parumveer Walia 'the destructing'

Parumveer Walia 'the destructing'

‘the destructing’ is a series of photographic negatives, created back in 2018. As an Environmentalist and Artist, Parumveer has always been aware of the adverse, irreversible changes we continue making to our global ecosystem. The series captures mundane and common natural sights- clouds, landscapes, a flock of birds, and so on. However, the process of developing the negatives of these images and inversing the colors and chiaroscuro reveals new, concealed worlds which remains characteristically familiar, and yet unrecognizable. These are the same sights we see on the daily, but with an apocalyptic, radioactive, unfamiliar veneer over it. The calming blue and whites of the sky are replaced by glowing pinks and chemically greens. In other images, the white clouds are not-so-white anymore; rather specked with black, soot-like pigments. These images elucidate and warn us of the potential world we are creating for ourselves every day, an inevitability we are helplessly falling into. In a way, these images are already manifesting in our world- the pictures showing the on-ground reality from crisis like the Australian fires or those in California show similar burning, radioactive reds covering the skies as far as the eyes can see. If we continue supporting ideas, or individuals who support ideas, of climate inaction and skepticism then the apocalypses we talk about may not be too far away.

Website

Anne Begana Sarim 'DO NOT TAKE PART IN ART EXHIBITIONS ABOUT THE PANDEMIC HYPE UNLESS YOU WISH THAT HISTORY WILL TELL THAT YOU WERE MORONS'

Monika Lorincova 'The Brexit deal Artist'

Monika Lorincova 'The Brexit deal Artist'

'The Brexit deal' is an oil and mixed media painting on canvas portraying figures sitting around a table playing a card game. This game is a metaphorical representation of the UK's current political situation. Each figure serves as a symbol of a country involved in the Brexit negotiations. In the middle of the table- the pot- lie different aspects of the country's future that will be/ might be affected by the next move. One of the figures is throwing some light at the table, perhaps to highlight how much is at stake, whilst in the background behind the light is another figure, supposedly uninvolved, lurking like a spy, waiting for the outcome. This figure represents the super-powers such as the US or Russia who are trying to figure out their own win from the situation.

To submit your artistic and creative responses to current news, movements and happenings, send up to 5 images of your work to artistsrespondingto@outlook.com.

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