In the past six weeks working from home has changed from a choice to a necessity. With the countrywide introduction of social distancing measures, life before Covid-19 is becoming more of a distant memory as the days progress. For some artists, this new reality may inform their work long after the end of the pandemic.
Stephen Hough, an eminent concert pianist refers to the current situation as a “forced sabbatical without guilt”, his role as composer and writer both aided by his ability to stay at home as a response to the pandemic.
He takes solace in the familiar, noting that “I’m trying to dive deep into work as a way to live through this time of incomparable strangeness and uncertainty. The scratch of a pencil on a page or a key being struck is a familiar comfort.”
The change in routine is welcomed by Olafur Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist whose Tate exhibition was the highlight of last summer. Eliasson, who is spending his lockdown in Berlin, notes that: “I honestly don’t recall when I last spent over a full month in the same spot. This gives me a feeling of groundedness that I, amid the challenges that we experience these days, am very grateful for.”
For some, lockdown has even provided new inspiration in the mundane. Irish artist, Michael Craig-Martin, whose work has seen the hallowed halls of MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and IVAM in Valencia to name but a few, has found a new focus as a result of the isolation.
He says: “I’ve always drawn mass-produced manmade objects. Over the last weeks I’ve been drawing flowers, fruit and vegetables. It doesn’t seem to make sense to draw other kinds of things when one’s kind of cut off from that world. It didn’t feel right.
“The only place I ever go is the supermarket. And the most striking things in the supermarket are obviously fruit, vegetable and flowers — everything else is just packaging. I felt like I needed to register what I was doing.”
Architect and designer Thomas Heatherwick goes even further, with his belief that we have been preparing for living and working from home since the turn of the century. He feels: “The world was conspiring to design itself for us to be at home over the past 20 years.
“The digital revolution was set up so you could order food to your home rather than going to the baker, the butcher or the grocer’s. There are fewer people sending letters because of email. This digital revolution is driving us into the position where we can watch any film in higher quality than ever from home.
“You can do a PhD as well in bed. So, in a sense, we’ve been rehearsing for this moment over the past 15, 20 years. And technologies such as Zoom and Skype existed already: here they were, waiting for people to have to use them.”
During these most uncertain times, one thing is for sure – a change of art is absolutely certain.
