Snapshot 11: Behind Closed Doors

PRESS RELEASE:

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Snapshot 11: Behind Closed Doors reflects on the collection works created during lockdown by the 2018 John Moores Painting Prize winning cohort and originally exhibited in Snapshot 01: Painters Posting Paintings. Each work was posted between 2-3 artists and the images collaboratively-created during the 2020 Lockdown. From a point of critical reflection two years after the images were show in Snapshot 01, the Level 5 History of Art and Museum Studies students have recontextualised the collection to explore life Behind Closed Doors by identifying prevalent themes relating to the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020/21.

Organised into four thematic sections: pop culture; internal organs; food; and mental health. Each case uses works that reflect one of these to examine the negative impacts of collective experiences of Lockdown on the artists and the public during a time of uncertainty, isolation, and illness.

The display case on pop culture examines artist’s deployment of absurdity and satire as a tool to convey the destabilisation of the integral parts of society that were slowly crumbling, as the world turned was upside down by the regulations and curfews set in place in 2020.

Internal organs examine how the loss of bodily autonomy during the pandemic heightened concerns about personal health, foregrounding the challenges of social distancing and the need to prioritise collective care.

Our selection of works relating to food brings insight into the state of the everyday life throughout the pandemic and highlights how it came to be altered as a result. Small pleasures to either satisfy the social or physical desires were now limited and restricted, ensuing the feeling of loss and yearning for those simple joys.

The final case focuses on mental health by considering the shared emotional strain of the lockdown period, highlighting how restrictions produced feelings of loss and confusion, as people remained confined to their homes except for essential reasons. The very first image presented ‘Shame’ contains moody and melancholic connotations due to its visual signs and colour palette. Presenting confinement by having tally marks drawn on the piece, interplaying with the rest of the artworks that each wield text to directly present the message they set out to convey to the audience.

The aim of this display is to provide an overview of the states of displacement prevalent during this period and demonstrate the unique circumstances of the ‘Painters Posting Paintings’ artistic collaboration.


Curatorial team 2026:
Petra Bukvic
Alice Dolan
Nakayla Myrie

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