by Lily Bodanyi-Miller
A response to XYZ can mean a number of things – it might involve your emotions or your environment creating a catalyst to induce an energy that morphs into leading you towards creating something. Responses can come from sound, colour, intimacy or taste. We are fully immersed, involved and affected by everything that surrounds us, whether we are conscious of this or not.
My response to ‘XYZ’ acknowledges my first major awareness of the worryingly polarised political climate within the UK. The drawings symbolise how I see our society from the recent past and the present. The drawings demonstrate how capitalism can create unprecedented divides in the distribution of wealth. Much of our press influences our way of thinking. Brexit has polarised our population. Life in the UK is feeling disjointed and chaotic. Optimism – can we indulge ourselves to feel this in the future?
My most recent piece (Living Destruction – part 3) is a direct response, including my emotional response, to the Pandemic. My seemingly continuing malaise means that I am observing life around me in a way that I hardly recognise. It’s claustrophobic, it’s chaotic and it has a hint of a dystopian society. Our freedoms are restricted, and life is being lived under constant threat of a ‘killer virus’.