Emerging out of ARE’s (Art Research Ecology) artists and scholars sharing their practice with each other over 3-years, and asking – Where do we as a research group go from here? – We created a match-making process. We pulled names from a hat pairing or grouping artists and scholars with each other, asking each match to meet, talk and see what would happen. We as a group wanted to know what new knowledge emerged, how these conversations could move our individual research along, and what new opportunities would present themselves as a result. Dolores Steinman, retired Neuroscientist, and myself were paired together.
“There is the physical lack of the person and this other infinitely unchangeable lack that was always present but now has no possibility of changing.” (Kirkpatrick, 2017)
The experience of isolation and confinement during the Covid pandemic, led many of us to create communities often connected through a collective bond of fear, loss, grief and helplessness. Whilst realising that fear, loss, grief remained persistently individual and unique there were points of commonality and connection. With serious play Davina and Dolores attempted to create the ineffable – tangible, touchable objects a materialisation of the ephemeral through conversations undertaken remotely via Zoom, collaborative writing, printmaking, gift-giving and sculpture. Objects that grew from relationality and gave comfort, that embodied loss and grief, not just of the dead but of lives changed by illness and aging.
I produced a series of prints both digital and screen printed combining cloud photographs from both our places of residence – San Pellegrino, Italy and Cornwall, UK with an image of my cupped hands that I had previously used in the sculptural objects Impossible Vessels made from screen printed swan’s feathers.
I sent one of these vessels to Dolores but it arrived squashed and disassembled which gave her permission to deconstruct further and playfully incorporate into photographs and a series of her own sculptures utilising glass heads, photography, feathers, film.
The collaborative writing, printmaking, gift-giving and sculpture culminated in a essay in ARE Journal 1 Winter 24/25 available through Amazon, Foyles and Blackwells Online and a F2F visit in San Pellegrino in Summer 2025.