Abigail Flood

abilouiseflood@gmail.com Website

Non-Appearance

This project explores ‘non-appearance’, the feeling of absences and the emotions which accompany these experiences. This body of work uses soft sculptures, polaroid and digital photography as instruments to document passing moments and experiences of emotions in time.

Due to the current pandemic, we routinely experience and feel the absence of our pre-COVID-19 day-to-day lives. Missing family and friends; we long to return to our normality. These feelings that are deeply ingrained in both our psychological and muscle memory – they are undeniable and demand to be felt.

Beginning in late 2020, I made use of the integrity and spontaneity of the polaroid camera to document moments and feelings in time. With a focus on personal experience, I captured the times in which I’ve felt the absence of my girlfriend most - often occurring a couple of times in one day. I felt her absence in early mornings, in cold evenings, even in lonely cups of coffee.

The importance of clothes transcends cultures, time and geographies. Clothing indicates who we are as individuals, and even without us, this relationship with identity and the body continues to exist. Through the act of stitching together second-hand clothing - pre-worn, pre-loved - each article which has lived a life before this. These soft sculptures exist as an ode to the presence of absence - the absence of friends, family, acquaintances and strangers during the isolating days of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Throughout the early months of 2021, I digitally photographed these fabric presences in solitary home environments as a means to visually articulate feelings of dispiritedness. A feeling that became part of homebound routines during a time which has felt uncontrollable and unfaltering.

Non-Appearance addresses the experience of existing during the time of crisis and isolation that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the absence of physical human connection and the subsequent emotions felt by the artist. This work offers both a visual and physical depiction of moments which are considered simultaneously relatable and deeply personal.