Beached
Sculpture by Sally De Courcy (United-Kingdom)

At lockdown I created an artwork about being shielded from society. The work would have limitations like myself, I only used materials I had at the point of lockdown. I'm stranded, I feel beached and so I used driftwood from a holiday. My practice uses cast contextually linked objects that reveal a narrative. I combined the driftwood with objects that related to my experience. I used fragmented doll parts as I felt depersonalised by being removed from society and the lack of agency of staying inside - I felt puppet like. I cast hands in reference to washing hands and the inability to shake hands. Bats signified the vector of Covid 19 and femurs represented mortality and our fragility during the resulting pandemic. The sculpture is bound in a Covid-like shape with bloody bandages, a reference to Florence Nightingale, and the new Nightingale hospitals. Covid 19 is often red in images and I rendered the driftwood red and meat-like, a reference to the possible origin of Covid 19 in the wet markets.

Mixed media, jesmonite, bandages, acrylic paint.

Artwork created by making molds of objects with contextual links - driftwood , doll parts, and a halloween bat ring. The latter objects were embedded into the cast driftwood and the driftwood pieces held together with bandages.