13 Vacant Retail Sites across London vinyled with Lockdown Love Stories
12th - 30th August 2021 ♥ curated by Philippa Found ♥ Sponsored by Derwent London

1. 29-31 George Street, W1

2. 58 Rathbone Place, W1

3. 22 Tottenham Court Road, W1

4. 11 Howland Street, W1

5. 101 Tottenham Court Road, W1

6. 89 Whitfield Street, W1

7. Blue Star House 234-244 Stockwell Rd, London SW9 9SP

8. Greencoat House, 1 Greencoat Row, Francis St, London SW1P 1DH

9. 5-8 Hardwick Street, EC1R 4RG

10. Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JJ

11. White Collar Factory, 1 Old Street Yard, EC1Y 8AF

12. White Chapel Building, 10 Whitechapel High Street, E1 8QS

13. Brunel Buiding, Canalside Walk, London W2 1DG

Billboard outside Highbury & Islington Station, London, 20th March - 2nd April 2023

Lockdown Love Stories beamed across the DMI tube announcement board on tube platforms on the London underground.

‘In the second national lockdown creating platforms for love and connection is more important than ever At the heart of lockdown love stories was the idea of creating connections in a time of social isolation, and ways of bringing stories to diverse communities to represent their voices through storytelling. I’ve always thought that the Underground is a brilliant potential exhibition space. I’m always looking for ways to infiltrate non-art public spaces with art and writing to reach new audiences. I think there’s a particular anxiety around the tube in this pandemic. It’s usually the heart of London but now is a space of caution and anxiety. I wanted to bring some resonant content to people still travelling during this anxious time and show the human side of this space – and the pandemic.’ Philippa Found.

Lockdown Love Stories, participatorary art project, website, 500 anonymously submitted true stories, launched 7th May - ongoing.

Lockdown Love Stories is potentially incredibly isolating, but what’s more isolating is shame. I wanted to show people that whatever they were experiencing emotionally as a consequence of lockdown, they weren’t alone, and needn’t feel ashamed. Lockdownlovestories.com is a website that asked people to anonymously submit their real-life experiences of love in lockdown – whether good, bad or complicated. Since its launch in May, more than 500 stories of falling in love, dating in lockdown, turbo relationships, surviving long term relationships and breaking up have been shared on the site. The project has been featured on ITV’s Lorraine, BBC Radio London, Grazia, The Metro.

When lockdown happened I thought the shift that happens to love and dating will be profound – I wanted to tell that story and tell it in such a way people were able to reveal truths they wouldn’t normally share. So that collectively I could reveal the reality of the experience of love, to normalise the intense emotions that are normally silenced and oppressed through a culture of shaming.

I was anticipating stories of loss, loneliness and heart ache and wanted to create a safe space for people to be able to share their stories and see that what they were experiencing was not abnormal, wrong or shameful. When our real life narratives do not follow the idealized, prescribed course of events often represented in popular culture, we can experience internalized shame. I wanted to show people, it wasn’t them, and they weren’t alone in the complex feelings being triggered at this time.

Having access to regular people's real life private truths gave people a sense of connection, hope and reassurance. If people could find love in this time, then it could happen to them, if people were being ghosted and heartbroken then it wasn’t just them.

Storytelling has a unique capacity to incite empathy and make people feel connected to one another. In lockdown this was more important than ever.

In Lockdown Love Stories I created a space for connection in a time of isolation, a time capsule of this unique moment in our history, and a public monument to love.

By using Instagram as a platform to show this project I took a platform that is synonymous with feeding societies unhealthy culture of comparison by offering unrealistic idealised representations of love and life and instead offered the antidote to that - presenting not ‘look at the idealized curated version of what love looks like’, but instead: ‘this is what the real experience of love feels like.’ The antithesis of Instagram, on Instagram. Normalising the reality of the experience of love.

Visit lockdownlovestories.com to view the full project

2020, Endurance performance-sculpture, 12 hours of the artist’s exhalations captured in 1000 balloons, dimensions variable, Chelsea Cookhouse Gallery

For 12 hours I capture each of my exhalations in pink balloons. Each balloon contains five exhalations. A self-portrait and a document of time and space, I extend my body into the space around me and use my breathe to create. The balloons become surrogate off-springs, evocative of the body and stretched skin. Their act of creation alluding to pregnancy, reproduction, breastfeeding, the giving away of the self to create, and the repetitive menial tasks and intense physical endurance of early motherhood. For the final minutes of the performance my daughter joined me, seated on my lap, silently passing me the final balloons to inflate.

Mad Girls Love Song, 2019, Performance Art Novel & Spoken Word Performance

‘We are mad girls and we feel too much, and stories like these don’t end well for us….

We live in a culture that tells us it is uncool to care too much. That presents the woman who holds feelings for an ex, who still has unresolved questions in her mind, who is still not over it as being not romantic but desperate, needing to be fixed, ‘mad’. These common representations shame silences women from expressing their true stories, articulating their questions, being proud of caring or not being over it. I decided the most radical act might not be to shy away from that but go deep into those unresolved needs, wants and desires. To own them. To be a mad girl…

Starting in October 2018 I went on a year long journey of discovery. Into my old phones and emails. To retrieve old text messages. To work out what happened with us. I made it my mission to understand. What do you do when you have questions but no one will answer them for you: I visited tarot readers, played with white magic, consulted google, interviewed friends. For a year I embodied this position. I pushed my memory to its limits. I scrutinised, analysed. I wrote 80,000 words and once I was done, I wrote this spoken word piece: this is my Mad Girl's Love Song….

2019, Video, 5 minutes 25 seconds

What does it mean to make art once you become a mother, to chose to leave your child to create something that may never be seen? What does becoming a mother mean for your identity? Who even are you anymore? You’re everything I feared becoming. I always knew you’d be like this… My old self and my new self battle it out in a verbal show down.

With visual reference to Tracey Emin’s video art work, The Conversation, 2000, and Conversation With My Mum, 2001, in which Emin explores the decision as an artist and woman to not have children, In Conversation Between My Old and New Self, I explore the less spoken about –but no less complex and contentious – reality of the effect of having children on the self and identity of a female artist.