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fLIP46: Wonder

Image © Naomi James

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03. Welcome Editor’s Note

12. Feature: Lockdown Polaroid Decay by Naomi James
22. Feature: Interview with Professor David Bate by Arun Misra
39. Feature: In Wonder John Kelly
46. Feature: The Guilded Cage by Virginia Mazzocato
54. Exhibition highlights:
57: Member’s Views:
58: Book Review:
60. Satellite Group: Central London

Naomi James: Lockdown Polaroid Decay

In a time when we do nothing but question, my curiosity led me to a Polaroid based project. As lockdown began, I submerged a set of Polaroid images in liquid to see how they would disintegrate and decay. They remained closed in a box, much as we were to be for the coming months.

The first group, I removed and photographed on the 13th May when the first easing of measures took place. On June 1st, as further restrictions lifted, I retrieved more images- a key day for me as a teacher when the first pupils returned to school. The almost cellular quality feels fitting as we wonder where this virus, and the response to it, will take us next.

John Kelly: In Wonder

On 23 March the UK awoke to reports of Boris Johnston ordering everyone to “stay at home.”  A social distance of 2m between people was a new requirement.

I wondered how people would cope with this imposed mandate.  How could they visit friends and loved ones?

I set out within a 30 minute walking distance from my front door to observe how my local community reconfigured their everyday lives in a “new normal”.
In wonderment I saw – a daughter’s Mothers Day visit from the footpath; sons visiting parents but keeping outside the family home; grandparents who hadn’t held and cuddled their new-born grandchild; a family celebrating mum’s birthday in the front yard; a brother dropping off food for his sister; a young couple playing Solitaire on their i-phones; and caring friends checking up on each other.

No wonder the British are so resilient.

Virginia Mazzocato: The Gilded Cage

Almost from birth, women carry a cultural background of fairy tales and stories with happy endings. I am wondering where the fairy-tale dreams go when we grow up and what happened to Prince Charming and his castle.
At this time of my life where I should have ticked all the boxes of society’s expectations: family, kids, home, economic security, I find myself somewhere between fantasy and reality, dreams and waking states, still hovering in a limbo between childhood and adulthood.
Using the house as a symbol of shelter, the womb and maternity, my work examines the house as a feminine representation – a place of success and failure, of possibility and disillusion.

Interview with Professor David Bate by Arun Misra