It’s very difficult to express the changes that have occurred since starting this post back in March. I was researching the electro magnetic spectrum towards new work and a potential UCL Observatory/Lumen Studios collaboration and looking ahead to installing the audience participatory work Scales of Intangibility at a secret location in Edinburgh with Hidden Door.
Change came on a global and personal scale with no time to prepare or assimilate. Suddenly no exhibitions, no gallery visits, no studio access and above all this was the loss of my Mother. A tiny woman with huge impact and treasured wherever she was known. Many people have found lock down a time to reflect, slow down and enjoy the spring awakening but for many others it has been blighted by loss.
This blog is a diary of interests that usually relate to my work and I use it to remember things I’ve seen and to help contextualize my thoughts. My Mother’s illness and death have been the main focus of my thoughts since March so writing about it serves a similar purpose of holding onto something.
My very active and independent Mum became seriously unwell at the beginning of lock down and was taken into hospital. So began weeks of waiting, telephone calls and anxiety. No hospital visits and little information to be gleaned from busy overstretched staff. A couple of weeks in came the feared news that she had contracted Covid-19. We all must endure the ultimate loss of our parents but to be forcibly separated while they suffer was never a consideration. For a time one ward had a covid designated tablet and so Mum, who had never used a mobile let alone smart phone, was introduced to Skype. Often she was too weak to lift the tablet and so we spoke remotely to the space above her head, the darkness of a blanket or the blurred view of a patient opposite. Occasionally, and especially the first time after weeks of isolation, when our eyes locked across the covid divide and we exchanged smiles her exhausted face lit up. From these depths it seemed impossible but slowly she recovered enough to be discharged and I moved in to care for her at her Suffolk home.
Her joy at being home soon dampened as her new reality became evident. Fighting for breath at the slightest exertion and despairing at her failing body she clung to her faith and prayed for release.
In three weeks she was back in hospital. A week later she died in the early hours of a foggy June morning. I was able to be with her at the end for her final few hours, a raw and precious experience for both of us.
The three hour drive from home to the hospital as the sun dipped and then rose, bracketing the night she died, was a surreal experience compounded by a comprehensive display of extreme weather heightening my mortal awareness of the sublime in nature.
Masked, I stood at the bedside holding her hand as she drifted in and out of sleep and lucidity. When she asked if this was the end I had to say yes, we have to say goodbye and grasped clumsily for appropriate words of comfort. She replied that she wasn’t afraid and told me that she loved me. Presently, she opened her eyes one last time and maybe it was the anecdotal light she saw that drew her gaze upwards as her face softened in willing acceptance. Slowly her consciousness ebbed and each faltering intake of breath grew a little further apart so that I didn’t notice for a few moments when she had gone.
At the funeral the Reverend spoke of her earthly body, no longer needed, being returned to the elements. Nature seemed very vibrant that day.
Time passed, passes fast.
I have spent a lot of time distractedly editing webpages of old projects. What to do with all these images of past work, past events. Now I have inherited my Mother’s photographs too. Albums of blurred, faded images of people and places, many unknown.
Process driven work is good at times when focus wanders. Cutting shapes for a hanging sculpture I had started before life was abruptly suspended – Paradise (suspended)
A meshing of images and geometries which serve as a motif for the unknown universe fragmented and suspended echoing a time when dreams have been put on hold and the routines of daily life broken and held in limbo.
Made a post lock down foray to Epsom Downs to try and spot the comet Neowise.
Naively thought on arrival that the packed car park at 1am was fellow astronomy enthusiasts but it turned out to be a hang out for displaced clubbers. Advised to leave by a couple of concerned girls who said that if I had the camera out here it would certainly get nicked. There was too much light pollution anyway.
Lock down solargraph retrieved and scanned to discover some pinhole alignment issues. 
Back in March …
Researching early radio and television transmissions.
FM radio and television signals can penetrate through the ionosphere and then travel at the speed of light through space but as they are omni-directional the signals soon become extremely diffuse and hard to pick up. A receiver on another planet would need to look for unusual patterns to pick the signal out from all the background noise present.
Hidden, an exhibition at the RCA showcasing work from the College’s technical and non-academic staff.
Kam’s video game was very popular
I joined Olga Suchanova for her Solargraphy workshop as part of the exhibition programme she had curated at Lumen Studios Crypt.
The exhibition explored how solargraphs are able to “condense time” within one image. Solargraphs capture the movement of the Earth around the Sun, as well as the tilt of the Earth. 
We each made a pin hole camera from a drinks can with photographic paper inserted inside. Mine is now attached to the drainpipe to catch the daily arc of the sun.
Susan Eyre 