An online only exhibition
Read: Timeout Article 4 May 2020
We are all getting used to the concept of Social Distancing, not an idea we saw coming as we welcomed 2020 with the bitter taste of bushfires in our mouths and the sight of flames seared in our minds.
My world has contracted, the dining table replacing my studio, my watercolours small enough to occupy that limited space. It's my habit to begin each day with a watercolour reflection on the state of things around me. I've been comforted by small pleasures; knitting, cooking and our sunny balcony but saddened to see empty shelves and abandoned playgrounds, birthdays celebrated alone and embraces from afar.
The idea that this too will pass sustains us and the creative impulse never wanes. I hope you enjoy these little paintings. Artist Statement 2020
Catalogue Essay by Marguerite Brown For many years Margaret Ackland’s practice has been concerned with portraying small moments that fill the narrative of life through finely rendered watercolour paintings. Ackland’s series Social Distancing documents the pandemic year of 2020, when Covid-19 crossed international borders and dramatically upended the narrative of all our lives. For some the disruption was fatal, while others were only mildly inconvenienced. Yet for a rare moment in human history nearly every living person was impacted in some way, large or small, by this global crisis.
While terms such lockdown, PPE and social distancing became part of the vernacular seemingly overnight, Ackland turned to her daily practice of making small watercolours to process this seismic shift. Based in urban Sydney, the everyday routines of people going about their daily business in a new, heavily restricted paradigm forms the subject of the resulting works. Even during a global catastrophe that claimed millions of lives the mundane activities of life march on, and the understanding of this brings an understated poignancy to the series. As the walk to school and morning coffee run depicted in Small Steps (2020) continued for some, in the hospital down the road others struggled for breath.
The work Apocalypse Now (June 2020) best displays this sense of incongruous duality. Ackland, who has long painted images sourced from newspapers in her ongoing series The Watercolour News, was drawn to a newspaper image of a man wearing a facemask and face-shield gazing at Pablo Picasso’s epic Guernica (1937) in Madrid. In Ackland’s work Picasso’s renown painting of human suffering, violence and chaos is juxtaposed with a solitary figure, shoulders rounded and hands in pockets as he quietly looks upon the scene. The alternate states of visceral human turmoil and passive observation are cast in sharp relief.
Ackland often navigates heavy themes with a wry sense of humour. In Take the indoor plants for a walk (2020) we see a figure viewed from behind with a pot plant in his backpack. While he was most likely bringing home a new plant from an outing, the title of this work is a humorous play on the importance that permitted spells of daily outdoor exercise had on our mental health, as ‘outside’ became a space for socialising and connection with the world beyond our living rooms and screens. The surrealness in the image reflects the strange and unsettling experience of having the authorities exert this level of control over our personal lives.
Amongst the depiction of individual figures Ackland also depicts moments of tender connection in the series. Face masked couples walk hand in hand or embrace, appearing like little islands separated and socially distanced from the island next door to contain the contagion. Other works such as Social Distancing #7 (Palm Sunday) depict a priest dressed in vibrant red and gold robes carrying a single palm that casts a long shadow across the sheet. During the pandemic Ackland’s local church services were live streamed, with the priest taking care to dress in full vestments and perform the complete service to an empty church. Works such as these draws on the beauty found in these rituals, and the solace contained therein for those who would seek it.
While documenting this period of personal and collective challenge, Ackland also acknowledges the moments of comfort she found in the simple pleasure of painting every day at her dining table, with her husband sat working at the other end. Together alone as we all endured.
