A new film by Joe Pomeroy examines the impact of lockdowns on Leeds and London artists

If you ever wondered how other creatives dealt with the pandemic, Joe Pomeroy’s new film explores what it was like to be locked down in two UK cities. A brief description of the project can be found here.

Many of us thought the world would shut down in 2020, but it gave us a chance to develop our art, complete a project, or learn a new skill. Although, for most of us, closing down society and banning all but a few people from physical contact wasn’t quite as simple as that.

Award-winning filmmaker Joe Pomeroy has written a new film that explores just what was going through artists’ minds during this unprecedented societal shift. The exhibition A Portrait of Lockdown explores how four artists based in London and Leeds dealt with this situation and the work they produced.

A southeast London artist named Birungi Kawooya is our first stop. As she explains, she was unmotivated to create artwork during the lockdown and wasn’t inspired to start again until the Black Lives Matter movement gained national and international recognition in the summer of 2020.

Throughout the film, Birungi emphasizes the importance of taking time out to rest and rejuvenate, so that you can be creative again and confront systemic racism. Craig Keenan, an artist from east London, shares how the Coronavirus virus affected his life during the lockdown, and how it directly influenced his artwork.

Craig’s illness inspired him to create an unusual work of art, a ghost impression made from a white facial tissue he was using. He reflected his time period graphically and whimsically in this piece.

Thirdly, Julia Pomeroy, an artist based in Leeds, discusses how the lockdown directly affected a part of her final degree year and how her work was directly influenced by the way people communicated during the lockdown.

Roberto Grosso, an Italian artist based in London, created a piece of artwork called Heroes, inspired by the David Bowie song of the same name, in tribute to the amazing work of the NHS during the lockdown.

Having produced the film during the Covid 19 pandemic and during the national lockdown over two years influenced its visual approach and production process, according to Joe.

I conducted all my interviews through video calls, which were then recorded onto my laptop,” he recalls. After that, I asked the artists to film themselves working on mobile phones or with the help of their flatmates or partners. I also filmed the empty streets of lockdown with my mobile phone.”

With the lockdown eased, he was also able to shoot important visual sequences with the artists. “In post-production, I placed the artists’ work on either side of them in accordance with the portrait theme,” he says. ” Despite being shot on mobile phones, the visual approach is quite lo-fi, but fits well with the overall theme and subject matter of art and lockdown.”

As BBC Good Food’s in-house videographer, Joe produces recipe and presenter-led videos full-time. Art is The Cure, Joe’s first documentary film, won the Texas Autism Film Festival’s Best Short Film award in 2019. His current goal is to become a documentary director full-time and build up a body of work.

Robert Poirrer

Robert Poirrer is a contributing author who covers Hollywood latest movie releases and web series for the MovieThop website. He has a decade of experience in writing movies based articles for numerous renowned media outlets. He is excellent at creating unique content based on emerging trends in a variety of categories especially entertainment, movies and lifestyle. When not writing articles you could find Robert enjoying mountain biking trips with his friends. He graduated in English Literature from North Carolina State University.